Legion of Angels News Archive

SAN FRANCISCO - After more than five months of sparring, the battle for control of Yahoo Inc. has turned into a bare-knuckles brawl with a whiff of desperation hanging over all the key combatants.

The showdown intensified late Saturday after Yahoo (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people ) revealed that it had spurned Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people )’s latest attempt to buy its online search engine in a joint proposal made with activist investor Carl Icahn, who is leading a shareholder rebellion aimed at removing Yahoo’s current board.

Icahn, who has no experience running an Internet company, would have been left in charge of Yahoo’s remaining pieces had an agreement to sell the search engine to Microsoft been reached.

“It’s not surprising that Yahoo would reject an offer like that,” Gartner Inc. (nyse: IT - news - people ) analyst Andrew Frank said Sunday. “It would be just too complicated to do.”

Neither Microsoft nor Icahn responded to requests for comment Sunday.

Yahoo’s explanation for rebuffing Microsoft left little doubt that both Yahoo and Icahn are now willing to explore options that they had previously scorned as they appeal to Yahoo shareholders before a pivotal Aug. 1 vote.

The shareholders are being asked to either support the current Yahoo regime that has overseen the Internet icon’s recent struggles or roll the dice on an alternate board led by Icahn in hopes of finally working out a deal with Microsoft.

Hoping to fend off the revolt, Yahoo’s board is now willing to sell the entire company to Microsoft for $47.5 billion, or $33 per share - a price it rejected as too low 10 weeks ago. But Microsoft has said it has no interest in buying Yahoo in its entirety as long as the company’s current board is in place.

Yahoo evidently has concluded it miscalculated by demanding $37 per share in early May, prompting Microsoft to withdraw its bid to the dismay of Yahoo shareholders as they helplessly watched the company’s stock price sink back toward $20.

As for Icahn, he is now pushing Yahoo to sell its search operations to Microsoft - an idea that he implored the company’s board not to pursue just last month.

Icahn hasn’t publicly explained the reasons for his change of heart, but it might have to do with the significant losses he may suffer on his 5 percent stake in Yahoo if he can’t find a way to drive the company’s stock price above $25.

Yahoo shares finished Friday at $23.57, after rising 10 percent last week on hopes that Microsoft’s decision to side with Icahn might pave the way for a deal.

Microsoft’s latest run at Yahoo indicates that the world’s largest software company still believes it needs its rival’s search engine to counter the intensifying threat posed by Google Inc. (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people )’s dominance of the Internet advertising market.

But with its own stock price down by 29 percent so far this year, Microsoft appears less inclined to spend the more than $40 billion that it would take to buy all of Yahoo.

As an alternative, the Redmond, Wash.-based company is trying to pry loose just Yahoo’s search engine for substantially less money. Microsoft had previously offered to buy Yahoo’s search engine for $1 billion and invest $8 billion for a 16 percent stake in what was left of the company.

Specifics of the latest offer haven’t been publicly spelled out, although Yahoo said it included “a number of improvements.”

Yahoo has steadfastly refused to part just with its search engine, maintaining that selling such an integral part of its business would cripple its ability to compete in the Internet’s steadily growing ad market.

Yahoo instead is embracing a partnership with Google that will allow its rival to sell some of the ads displayed alongside the search results on its Web site.

The alliance, involving two companies that control more than 80 percent of the U.S. search advertising market, is expected to face a rigorous antitrust review. Lawmakers have scheduling a hearing Tuesday to review the competitive fallout from the proposed partnership.

By using Google’s superior technology, Yahoo estimates it can boost its annual revenue by about $800 million and accelerate a turnaround plan that has been drawn up during the past year by Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang, who co-founded the company 14 years ago.

Yahoo is expected to update analysts and investors on its progress July 22 when it releases its second-quarter earnings results. The pressure on Yang and the rest of Yahoo’s board will intensify if Yahoo’s profit and revenue disappoint Wall Street.

If he wins the shareholder vote, Icahn already has vowed to fire Yang as CEO and replace him with a more seasoned executive. That has led to some speculation that Yang might resign before the annual meeting to placate shareholders, but publicly he has signaled his intention to stay on the job.

Icahn hasn’t identified who he has in mind to run Yahoo, but some analysts believe he will spell that out when he files his definitive proxy statement - the paperwork that is supposed to be mailed out to voting shareholders. Icahn is expected to make that filing soon.

With just a few weeks of campaigning before Yahoo’s annual meeting, it looks like the gloves are coming off.

Microsoft and Icahn apparently presented its latest bid in a surly manner, framing it as a “take it or leave it” proposal that gave Yahoo’s board just 24 hours to respond, according to Yahoo.

In a testy response that could further escalate the tensions, Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock branded Microsoft’s hard-nosed tactics as “ludicrous” and chastised the software maker for its “completely absurd and irresponsible” refusal to negotiate with Yahoo’s current board.

Frank, the analyst, expects even more acrimony and surprising twists before Yahoo’s shareholders meeting.

“The public statements from everyone are tracking so poorly to what they have subsequently done that it’s awfully hard to predict what will happen next,” he said.

Source — Forbes

LOS ANGELES - Firefighters got a gift of a mild, mostly windless night and a forecast for similar conditions Sunday as they attempted to protect thousands of Santa Barbara County homes from a huge wildfire, one of more than 300 taxing their energy and resources around the state.

“The firefighters are stretched thin, they are exhausted,” and some have gone days without sleep, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as he visited a command post in the coastal region of Santa Barbara County, where nearly 2,700 homes were threatened by a four-day-old fire in the Los Padres National Forest. The blaze has blackened about 13 square miles.

Fires have burned more than 800 square miles of land and destroyed at least 69 homes throughout California in the past two weeks. One firefighter died of a heart attack while digging fire lines.

About 1,400 fires have been contained, but more than 330 still were out of control by Sunday morning.

Cooler air
The Santa Barbara County fire, now the state’s top priority, was less active Saturday because of cooler, moist air, said county spokeswoman Pat Wheatley. And evening fell without the return of the late afternoon “sundowner” wind that had sent flames racing up to homes earlier in the week.

“We’ve been pleased by some cooperative weather,” Wheatley said. “The ’sundowners’ that we were afraid could happen did not happen much tonight so that gave us an opportunity to fight the fire without fighting the winds.”

The fire was 28 percent contained, she said.

Over 2,600 homes were under mandatory evacuation orders Saturday and residents of 1,400 others were warned to be ready to flee if the flames gathered speed.

The fire, fueled by 15-foot-high, half-century-old chaparral, still had the potential to roll through a hilly area of ranches, housing tracts and orchards between the town of Goleta and Santa Barbara, keeping firefighters on their toes.

“They’re feeling very good about this, but they are not taking this fire lightly at all,” Wheatley said.

Temperatures dipped to around 60 degrees during the night, but were forecast to reach the high 70s later Sunday.

Nearly 1,200 firefighters were assisted by a DC-10 air tanker and other aircraft dumping water and fire retardant along ridges and in steep canyons.

Investigators think the fire, which began Tuesday, was human-caused. The U.S. Forest Service on Saturday asked for public help in determining who set it and whether it was sparked accidentally or on purpose.

Meanwhile, cooler weather helped crews attacking the two-week-old blaze that has destroyed 22 homes in Big Sur, at the northern end of the Los Padres forest, but the fire continued to grow slowly on all flanks Saturday night.

The fire, which had blackened 111 square miles, was only 5 percent contained with full containment not expected until July 30, but morning fog that moved in from the sea helped prevent it from advancing on Big Sur’s famed restaurants and hotels.

“We’re gaining ground, but we’re nowhere near being done,” said Gregg DeNitto, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service. “There’s still a lot of potential out there. The fire has been less active the last couple of days. We’ve had favorable weather; they are taking every opportunity to get some line on it.”

The weather was expected to become hotter and drier over the next couple of days, he said, with wind and temperatures rising and humidity dropping.

“The fire still has the potential for movement and the potential to get out of our containment lines,” he said.

Source — MSNBC

SANTA BARBARA, California (CNN) – Authorities overseeing the battle against hundreds of wildfires in California had a mixed assessment as the weather forecast for Sunday stirred both hope and concern across the state.

Saturday’s firefighting efforts went according to plan, the U.S. Forest Service said. The outlook, however, remained mixed Saturday night. Sunday’s weather forecast gave encouragement to crews battling a fire in Santa Barbara County, but sparked concern among those fighting a blaze in the Big Sur area.

Containment of the Basin Complex Fire, in the Big Sur area, remained at 5 percent, but firefighters were close to completing a fire line along the northwest portion of the fire, the Forest Service said. On Sunday a controlled burning operation is to begin there to remove brush and other fuel from the wildfire’s path.

But Sunday’s forecast for the area was for much warmer temperatures, which could give the fire a boost, officials said.

The fire — which threatens a 25-mile stretch of California Highway 1 — has burned more than 68,000 acres so far, and 1,777 homes, 20 commercial properties and 195 other buildings are threatened, the Forest Service said.

Some 1,440 residents of the area have been ordered to leave their homes, although some have stayed in an attempt to protect their homes or businesses.

Only 22 structures have been lost to the fire so far, the Forest Service said. On Saturday, hand teams were beating out flames edging near the post office and a lodge in the town of Big Sur, it said. iReport.com: Watch helicopters fill up with water just off the coast

Authorities are keeping an eye on Palo Colorado, a community of about 1,800 in a valley on the northern fringe of the affected area, the Forest Service said. If the fire would get into that valley, it said, concern would then be raised about Carmel, which sits over the next ridge.

Carmel is about 10 miles from the fire.

Further south, in Santa Barbara County, the forecast called for continued cooler temperatures. In addition, winds have been moving the fire north and east, away from Goleta, a city of about 29,000 just west of Santa Barbara.

More than 2,800 homes, 228 commercial properties and 200 other buildings have been threatened by the wildfire there in recent days, but only one residence, a motor home, has been destroyed, the Forest Service said.

As of Saturday morning, the Gap Fire had charred 8,357 acres, said Marian Kadota of the Forest Service, but containment increased from 14 percent to 24 percent as firefighters had made “good progress” on the southern end of the fire.

Meanwhile, a 48-year-old homeowner was arrested for setting backfires without permission as firefighters continue to battle two of California’s most threatening wildfires.

The man was arrested for setting backfires around his home near the Big Sur area, Cliff Williams of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said Saturday night. A backfire is a fire started to check an advancing fire by creating a burn area.

Firefighters discourage residents from setting backfires because homeowners do not know the location of firefighters and can inadvertently trap them, Williams said. The fire can also get out of control and injure other residents, he said.

The homeowner, who did not have any firefighting experience, was arrested for setting backfires in the area without permission and for disobeying an order by a firefighter, Williams said.

The Forest Service said Saturday it has set up a “tip line” as part of its investigation of the Gap Fire. Because the fire appears to have started in an area accessible to the public, investigators are looking for information that might indicate it was started by humans.

They are asking anyone who might have seen vehicles or people in the area where the fire started late Tuesday afternoon, or who have other information, to call (805) 961-5710.

During the past two weeks, more than 1,700 wildfires — most sparked by lightning — have charred a half million acres in California.

All but 100 fires are considered contained. About 20,000 federal, state and local firefighters have been battling the blazes.

“The firefighters are stretched thin, they are exhausted,” and some have gone days without sleep, said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in a report from The Associated Press.

Source — CNN

Douglas Kmiec is the kind of Catholic voter the GOP usually doesn’t have to think twice about. The Pepperdine law professor and former Reagan Justice Department lawyer (Samuel Alito was an office mate) attends Mass each morning. He has actively opposed abortion for most of his adult life, working with crisis pregnancy centers to persuade women not to undergo the procedure. He is a member of the conservative Federalist Society and occasionally sends a contribution to Focus on the Family.

He is also a vocal supporter of Barack Obama. Kmiec made waves in the Catholic world in late March when he endorsed the Democratic candidate. But Kmiec insists that while he still considers himself a Republican, his choice is clear this election year. “I have grave moral doubts about the war, serious doubts about the economic course Republicans have followed over the last seven years, and believe that immigration reforms won’t come about by Republican hands,” he says. “Senator McCain would not be the strongest advocate for the balance of things that I care about.”

A new TIME poll of Catholic voters reveals that Kmiec is part of a broader pattern. Although Obama was thought to have a “Catholic problem” during the Democratic primaries, in which Hillary Clinton won a majority of Catholic votes, he has pulled even with John McCain among that constituency — Obama now polls 44% to his GOP opponent’s 45%.

There are 47 million Catholic voters, and while they are too numerous and varied to speak of as a monolithic Catholic bloc, they have long been a kind of holy grail for presidential candidates. The winner of eight out of the past nine elections has captured a majority of Catholic votes (they voted for Al Gore in 2000), and there are large Catholic concentrations in key states like Florida, Ohio and New Mexico.

The trick is figuring out what Catholics want. For decades, they were part of the New Deal coalition and were largely concerned with economics and foreign policy. More recently, Republicans have cut into that advantage by appealing to Catholics on social issues, a courtship that culminated in George W. Bush’s victory in 2004. The TIME poll confirmed that a majority of Catholics (59%) can be broadly defined as pro-life (opposing abortion except to protect a woman’s life or health or in cases of rape or incest). But these pro-life Catholics are actually split into two voting camps.

Many conservative Catholics consider abortion to be the determining factor in their electoral decisions, and as a result they almost always support Republican candidates. But for other Catholics, social issues can be trumped in times of economic and national insecurity. What’s interesting about this year is that Catholics like Kmiec are moving from the first group of voters to the second.

Republicans entered this election season from a position of disadvantage with Catholics for the same reasons they face problems with the general electorate: the economy, high gas prices and the ongoing war in Iraq. But they’ve also failed to embrace the model of Catholic engagement that Bush spent six years putting into place. The Obama campaign is taking advantage of that opportunity. Just as Ronald Reagan brought large numbers of Catholic Democrats into the GOP in the 1980s, Obama is hoping to woo them back and create a new Catholic category: Obama Republicans.

Tending the Flock
When Kmiec was growing up in Chicago in the 1950s and ’60s, Catholics ran the city’s Democratic political machine. The New Deal had cemented their loyalty to the party, but those ties began to fray in the late ’60s and early ’70s as many Catholics felt alienated by everything from the Roe v. Wade decision to urban busing initiatives. Kmiec was part of the wave of Reagan Democrats who were drawn to the Republican President’s policies and vision.

The Republican Party worked to keep them in the fold. In the late 1990s, the Republican National Committee (RNC) created a Catholic Task Force, and by the end of the 2000 election cycle, the party had compiled a list of 3 million church-attending Catholics. The RNC spent $2.5 million contacting these targeted Catholics with direct mail and phone calls.

But that was just a dry run. Four years later, the RNC recruited some 50,000 Catholic team leaders to conduct parish-level outreach for Bush’s re-election campaign; the volunteers were led on the ground by more than 75 field coordinators working for the party. Their efforts were supplemented by a group of outside organizations funded by leading conservative Catholics like Tom Monaghan, the founder of Domino’s Pizza. One of these groups, Priests for Life, spent $1 million on television and newspaper ads in the last month of the campaign.

The Catholic initiative was the most ambitious religious outreach effort ever undertaken by either party. And it paid off. Bush might have expected more competition for those votes from his Catholic opponent. But John Kerry found himself the target of stinging criticism from a few bishops who argued that he should be denied Communion because of his support for abortion rights. No one on the Kerry campaign was devoted to Catholic outreach, and Kerry chose not to respond to the attacks. Bush won the Catholic vote that year, 52% to 47%.

Faith of the Democrats
The GOP’s success with Catholic voters in 2004 was an astounding victory born out of Bush’s personal appeal to pro-life voters and six years of party organizing at the parish level. But it also sparked a backlash in many Catholic circles that is shaping the current election.

Alarmed that their fellow Catholics were being told that abortion and gay marriage were the only relevant Catholic issues, progressive Catholics have founded several organizations in the tradition of the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, who preached a “consistent ethic of life.” One group, Catholics United, ran radio ads in the fall of 2007 targeting pro-life Republicans who voted against expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, arguing that such votes were not “pro-life.”

The American bishops also made an effort to broaden their teaching. In the fall of 2007, they released Faithful Citizenship: A Call to Political Responsibility, an unusual document that counsels against divisive politics and reminds Catholics that “all life issues are connected.” Such statements have cleared the way for Catholics like Kmiec to re-evaluate what it means to cast a pro-life vote. “It’s been 20-some years of trying to get the next vote on the court to overturn Roe,” says Kmiec, “and I asked myself, What does that amount to?” He worries that by backing the GOP strategy of holding out for a ban on abortion, pro-life voters have not focused on more pragmatic ways to reduce abortion rates.

In a climate in which Catholics aren’t voting based on a rather narrow ideological agenda, the mechanics of how campaigns court them become more important. And it’s on that level that perhaps the biggest changes from 2004 can be seen. McCain has a team of Catholic politicians, including Sam Brownback and Frank Keating, who serve as his surrogates but has few aides within the campaign to coordinate outreach. The lack of high-level religious advisers became obvious earlier this year when McCain accepted the endorsement of Evangelical pastor John Hagee, who has called the Catholic Church “the great whore of Babylon,” a phrase unlikely to warm the hearts of McCain’s Catholic supporters.

Obama’s campaign more closely resembles the 2004 Bush outreach effort. An extensive religious outreach team has focused the bulk of its work on training ordinary Catholics to reach out to friends and neighbors by holding “values” house parties and explaining their support for Obama. The Democrat also has a roster of high-powered Catholic surrogates who have fanned out across swing states — including Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey Jr., whose father, the pro-life former governor, was widely viewed by Catholics as a victim of Democratic intolerance after he was not allowed to speak at the party’s 1992 convention.

Obama, whose work as a community organizer was partly funded by a Catholic social-justice group, recently laid out his plan for a new and improved faith-based initiative. It is a policy extension of the phrase he often uses — “I am my brother’s keeper” — to express his belief that members of a society are responsible for one another. And it is an idea rooted in the Catholic concept of the common good.

This “bottom-up, personal responsibility” message, as he describes it, appeals to Kmiec, allowing him to be not just a McCain skeptic but also an Obama supporter. That decision has not come without a cost — this spring Kmiec was denied Communion by a priest who denounced his endorsement of Obama. But with Catholics almost twice as likely to name the economy, Iraq and terrorism as their top concerns over abortion and gay marriage, Kmiec has plenty of company. Come November, that priest may be holding on to a very full bowl of wafers.

Source — TIME