RENO (Thomson Financial) – US President George W Bush warned today that letting Iran acquire atomic weapons risked putting the Middle East ‘under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust.’

‘Iran’s active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust,’ he told a veterans group here.

Bush’s speech to the American Legion aimed to convince a war-weary US public that the war in Iraq was the central front in the fight against what he described as the Sunni Muslim extremism of the Al-Qaeda terrorist network and the Shiite extremism fuelled by Iran.

‘Iran’s actions threaten the security of nations everywhere, and the United States is rallying friends and allies to isolate Iran’s regime to impose economic sanctions. We will confront this danger before it is too late,’ he said.

Tehran denies seeking nuclear weapons and says that its atomic programme means to provide civilian power.

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PARIS (Thomson Financial) – Lagardere Active said it has acquired the French online advertising company ID Regie for an undisclosed sum, in a bid to strengthen the position of its Lagardere Publicite unit in the internet market.
The group said ID Regie sells advertising space for over 30 websites including Price Minister, Alapage, LDLC and Top Achat, and in 2006 doubled its gross operating profit to 1.1 mln eur.
At end-2006, the company employed a total of 11 staff, Lagardere Active said.
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KUALA LUMPUR (Thomson Financial) – German car maker Volkswagen AG is conducting due diligence on Malaysian national car maker Proton Holdings Bhd as part of negotiations for a possible strategic alliance, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi confirmed for the first time.

He told Agence France-Presse late Wednesday it is important for Proton to be ‘comfortable’ with its potential partner.

‘And as soon as that is confirmed, then I believe we must tie up the deal as quickly as possible,’ he said.

He gave no other details of the possible tie-up.

If the alliance is pushed through, it is expected to give Proton a boost in efforts to reclaim its top spot in the local car market.

Abdullah said Proton’s launch Wednesday of the Persona, a replacement model for the 14-year-old- Wira, had ‘nothing to do’ with the timing of Volkswagen’s ‘due diligence’ study.

‘But it does prove to everyone in the world that Proton is still capable of coming (up) with an excellent and superb product,’ he said on the sidelines of an awards ceremony.

‘We are confident that Persona is the product that will put Proton back in the map and as the leader in the Malaysian market.’

Proton recently reported bigger-than-expected net losses of 591.36 million ringgit for the year to March 2007.

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OMAHA, Neb. (AP) – Student loan company Nelnet Inc. will pay the original $1 million settlement it reached with Attorney General Jon Bruning in addition to a larger sum announced last week, Bruning said Friday.Bruning had absolved Nelnet of making the payment after the Lincoln-based company agreed to pay $2 million and quit offering some services to universities as part of a settlement with the New York state attorney general’s office.Bruning, a Republican who is running for U.S. Senate, said Friday’s action eliminates the ability of his political foes to create the perception of a conflict of interest. Bruning has received $16,000 in contributions from executives of Nelnet and affiliated companies.’If there has been a misunderstanding by anyone about the nature of the state’s agreement with Nelnet, I want to fix that,’ Bruning said Friday.He said he approached Nelnet and they agreed to pay the $1 million, which will go toward student loan assistance programs in Nebraska.Nelnet President Jeff Noordhoek said Friday that the money is going to a good cause, and that Nelnet has led the student loan industry in an effort to improve transparency.New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is investigating conflicts of interest in the industry and has reached settlements with 11 other lenders, including Citibank, Sallie Mae, JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America.Fines paid by the companies will be used to educate students about financial aid.Nelnet announced plans last month to end agreements with 110 alumni groups by mid-August and stop paying the groups for using member lists. It also will no longer answer financial aid questions on behalf of universities.In April, Nelnet acknowledged what it called have ry small’ mistakes in some dealings with colleges. The company paid $4,800 to Western Illinois University for referring students to the company for private loans and gave two financial aid officers at an unidentified school in Albany, N.Y., plane tickets to travel to New York City for a ‘theater event,’ the Nebraska attorney general’s office said.According to the agreement Nelnet signed, the company also gave school employees tickets to sporting and entertainment events and paid for them to travel to marketing events. The New York City theater trip was only one example of this.Nelnet also reimbursed university employees for taking trips to the company’s service centers in Denver, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Fla., and in Lincoln.Nelnet says it serves students in 50 states, has about 3,500 employees and $26.2 billion in net student loan assets.Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) – The U.S. Air Force’s most technologically advanced and expensive fighter jet, the F-22 Raptor, is designed to be a stealthy killer capable of downing bogies at supersonic speeds.

But critics say the changing nature of warfare in the age of terrorism, combined with the unparalleled superiority of U.S. air power, make the Cold War-era conceived Raptor an overpriced luxury.

‘The real issue is, who are we going to fly the F-22 against?’ asked military aviation author and lecturer James P. Stevenson. ‘I don’t think al-Qaida is going to shrink back into their caves because there are F-22s flying overhead rather than F-16s.’

Elmendorf Air Force Base is getting the first of 40 Raptors this week, making it the first base outside of the contiguous U.S. to house them. When their arrival is complete at the end of 2008, the base will be home to more than a fifth of the Air Force’s Raptors.

The fighter is capable of cruising faster than Mach 1.5 — more than one and a half times the speed of sound — without using its afterburner. It can perform tactical maneuvers at altitudes greater than 50,000 feet, far superior to current fighters. Its stealth capability means it can attack air and ground targets before they even know it’s there.

But that comes at a steep cost.

The basic sticker price is $135 million per plane. When research, development and testing costs are factored in, the cost balloons to more than $350 million each.

Initial plans called for buying 750 Raptors, but increasing costs have cut that number drastically. The Air Force now says it needs 381 of the planes but it may not have funding for more than 183. The planes are being built by Lockheed Martin, Boeing and United Technologies Corp.’s Pratt & Whitney unit.

The program has gotten bogged down by competing interests that want their products in the aircraft, said Pierre Sprey, a former systems analyst for the Defense Department and a designer of the F-16 and the A-10 Warthog. Combined with the Air Force wanting the Raptor to be a technological marvel packed with everything that would fit, that has resulted in poor planning and the program’s exorbitant cost, he said.

‘They made it so complicated and hopeless that it took forever,’ Sprey said. ‘It’s just disgraceful.’

Pursuing the stealth technology was simply a waste of time and money, he said, because it isn’t possible to completely cloak a fighter against long-wave or infrared radar.

Retired Air Force Col. Everest ‘Rich’ Riccioni, of the Pentagon’s advanced tactical fighter program, was one of the early planners for the Raptor prototype. Since its conception in 1981, it has morphed from a streamlined, surgical fighter into an overpriced and bloated technology showcase, he said.

‘When you design something with a lot of capability, it’s got to have a purpose,’ Riccioni said. ‘We don’t have an air superiority problem. The purpose isn’t there.’

When planning for the Raptor first began, it was intended to combat aerial Soviet Union threats. It has since evolved into a versatile fighter capable of striking ground targets and conducting information warfare as well.

But that evolution has cost the project, both politically and mechanically.

Earlier this year, six Raptors were participating in an inaugural flight between Hawaii and Kadena Air force Base in Okinawa, Japan, when several of them experienced computer glitches that crippled their navigation systems and hindered communications.

As a result, the Air Force had to repair 87 of the fighters that faced similar problems.

And in March 2004, the General Accounting Office, the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, said in a report the plane has had problems with its tail fins, canopy and computer software. It also said the Raptor’s avionics processors, developed in the 1980s, are obsolete, and replacing them will take years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

While the Air Force tries to work out the kinks in the fighter, a Congressional spending cap coupled with the jet’s rising costs has kept whittling away at the number of jets it can afford to buy.

But Air Force officials say cost notwithstanding, the Raptor is long overdue because the commonly used F-15 — first flown in 1972, the year Don McLean’s ‘American Pie’ was released — is an aging relic.

Lt. Col. Mike Shower, squadron commander for the first Elmendorf Raptors, said no enemy aircraft even comes close to the F-16. But that doesn’t mean the Air Force should maintain the status quo, he said.

‘Our old stuff is essentially on par,’ said Shower, who has piloted both the Raptor and the F-15. ‘There is a significant amount of threat out there, but the F-22 absolutely dominates when we fly.’

Raptors will replace a squadron of F-15s at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii beginning in 2011, and they will also replace F-117s that are based at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.

Those upgrades are much-needed, said Loren Thompson, of the Virginia-based Lexington Institute think tank.

He said the Air Force’s F-15s are ‘falling apart’ and that, although the F-16 is still far superior to other fighters, maintaining a decisive technological edge is essential to deterring military threats the U.S. might face.

‘People are so preoccupied with terrorists that they aren’t thinking about fighter aircraft,’ he said. ‘But if we didn’t buy the F-22 we would have a reason to worry.’

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.