THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2012
PAGE 3
NEWS OF THE WORLD
ASIA
Putin voices doubts about upcoming election in Russia
Putin
MOSCOW — Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Wednesday he could face a runoff in the March presidential vote, his first acknowledgement that he may fail to muster enough support for an outright victory.
Putin's statement signaled he might be willing to accept tarnishing his father-of-the-nation image if he fails to win more than 50 percent in the first round on March 4, rather than risk inking more public outrage through blatant vote rigging.
Putin said that "there is nothing horrible" about a runoff and he's ready for one, according to Russian news reports.
Evidence of fraud in favor of Putin's party in a December parliamentary election triggered the biggest protests since the Soviet collapse two decades ago.
But he also warned of the dangers of a second round, saying it would lead to a "certain destabilization of the political situation." The need for stability in Russia has been the mantra of Putin's campaign.
Putin won his previous two presidential terms in 2000 and 2004 in the first round. After moving into the prime minister's job due to term limits, he has remained the No.1 leader, but has seen his support dwindle amid growing public frustration with his rigid controls over the political scene, rampant corruption and rising social inequality.
Opinion polls show support for Putin between 40 and 50 percent. If he fails to get a majority of the vote, he will face a runoff on March 25, most likely against Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov.
MIDDLE EAST
Taliban officials deny rumors of negotiations
KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban denied Wednesday that the movement is planning direct talks with the Afghan government to end the 10-year-old war, while a leaked NATO report suggested the insurgents are confident they will regain power after international troops leave.
While she didn't mention the United States, Afghan officials have complained privately that the peace effort has so far been dominated by American efforts and talks with Taliban representatives. Washington insists it is only setting the stage, and any eventual talks must include Karzai's government.
Taliban spokesman Zabuliull Mujahid rejected those reports as "baseless," saying in a statement that exploratory talks between the insurgency and the U.S. and its allies have not yet reached the stage for negotiations.
"Before the negotiation phase, there should be trust-building between the sides, which has not started yet," Mujahid said.
While both developments were setbacks to Afghan President Hamid Karzai's efforts to broker peace, his government got a boost from Pakistan's top diplomat who declared her nation's support for an Afghan-led reconciliation process.
"Our only prerequisite to be supportive of an initiative is that it should be Afghan-led. It should be Afghan-owned. It should be Afghan-driven and Afghan-backed," Pakistan's Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khan said at the Afghan Foreign Ministry.
NORTH AMERICA
Plot to extract son of Gadhafi from Libya to Mexico fails
MEXICO CITY — Prosecutors said Wednesday they broke up not one, but two Indiana Jones-style plots to "extract" the son of late dictator Moamar Gadhafi from Libya and bring him to Mexico as his father's regime crumbled.
The plan to sneak out al-Saadi Gadhafi involved piles of stolen passports, white-knuckled officers involved in theft.
Gadhafi
to land in war-torn Libya and luxury homes bought under false names in Mexico, according to Assistant Attorney General Jose Cuttahuaac Salinas.
He said it was led by a Canadian woman, a Danish man and two Mexican suspects who were charged this week with attempted immigrant trafficking, falsifying documents and organized crime.
Salinas said the group hired pilots to fly from Mexico to Kosovo, from there to the Tunisian capital of Tunis and on to Libya in July, but that attempt failed to extract the dictator's son.
"They weren't able to do it out because the pilots refused to carry out a secret land." Salinas said.
The ring, purportedly led by Canadian Cynthia Vanier, then allegedly made arrangements for a second attempt, hiring pilots and a plane. But Mexican authorities were tipped off to the scheme by a series of anonymous e-mails and arrested the four suspects in November, before the second flight could take off.
AFRICA
Spokesman for radical Islamist sect undergoes questioning
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — The purported spokesman for a radical Islamist sect responsible for hundreds of killings in recent weeks in Nigeria has been arrested, an official with the country's secret police said Wednesday.
The official with Nigeria's State Security Service declined to give many details about the man known by the nom de guerre Abul-Qaqa, simply saying that officers are questioning him. If it is him, the spokesman's arrest could prove to be a boon for Nigeria's weak central government, which has remained unable to stop attacks by the sect as known by Boko Haram.
However, the same agency paraded a supposed spokesman only weeks earlier who apparently had only a loose affiliation with a group that has splintered and become even more dangerous. And a national spokeswoman tried to deny the reported arrest without being able to explain the apparent confusion gripping an agency charged with protecting the nation.
Ahmed Abdullahi, the Borno state director for the secret police agency, told The Associated Press on Wednesday night that officers tracked down the man through signals sent out by his mobile phone. The agency later flew him to Nigeria's capital Abuja for further questioning.
Abul-Qaqa served as the spokesman for the radical wing of the sect, often as a go-between between its leaders and trusted members of north Nigeria's media. He issued claims of responsibility typically the same day as attacks to journalists working for either the BBC's Hausa language service or The Daily Trust newspaper, the two most trusted sources of news in Nigeria's Muslim north.
TECHNOLOGY
Abdullahi declined to give the man's name, and it wasn't clear whether he faced criminal charges or had legal representation.
Facebook starts to plan for initial public offering
SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook Inc. has filed papers for what's expected to be the largest initial public offering ever to come out of Silicon Valley and one of the largest in U.S. history.
Ending months of breathless speculation, the 8-year-old social networking company has submitted registration documents with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that set a preliminary goal of $5 billion.
Facebook had discussed raising as
much as $10 billion. Final pricing will not be set for months, and the size of the IPO probably will increase with investor demand.
The filing sets the stage for an IPO in May and reveals important numbers about Facebook: 845 million users, 483 million daily users; annual revenue of $3.7 billion; $1.8 billion in operating income and $1 billion net income. Facebook created a dual-class stock structure that ensures that founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, a hands-on leader, will remain in firm control of the company he dreamed up in his Harvard dorm room.
Facebook selected Morgan Stanley as its lead bank to handle the IPO with assistance from four others. Morgan Stanley's resume of recent Internet IPOs includes Groupon and Zynga. Investment banks will receive as much as $500 million in fees depending on the valuation.
Now the frenzy to own a piece of Facebook, already off the charts on private trading exchanges, promises to get even more clamorous.
Facebook, one of the world's best-known brands, is an international phenomenon, touching the lives of more
than 800 million people around the globe.
The IPO was inevitable. Facebook had tripped the regulatory wire that forces companies with more than 500 shareholders to disclose almost as much information as publicly traded companies.
The registration documents spell out how much the company intends to raise and what it intends to do with the money, as well as giving the first official glimpse into the company's financial performance.
The IPO will create enormous wealth
in Silicon Valley and more than 1,000 new millionaires among the company's 3,000 employees, which many hope will give a boost to the local economy including the housing market and car sales.
Young technology companies like to say they do things differently. In June when Groupon filed for an IPO, founder Andrew Mason said: "We are unusual and we like it that way."
Everyday investors are also hoping that as friends of Facebook they will get a chance at a piece of the IPO.
Google's owner's manual for investors contained a letter from co-founders
Larry Page and Sergey Brin offering a similar warning. "Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one."
Page and Brin thumbed their noses at Wall Street by demanding an IPO that would be open to all investors. Google used a Dutch auction, which meant that the general public had a better shot at buying the stock before the shares began trading, rather than giving access only to the investors handpicked by the investment bankers.
McClatchy-Tribune
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