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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 1, 1999)
Oil companies to merge ■ Exxon and Mobil ap working to complete billion dollar merger, officials say. WASHINGTON (AP)-E$xon and Mobil moved swiftly Tuesdayto? conclude their $81 billion merger after federal regulators cleared the way - with conditions -for the deal creating the world’s hugest publicly traded oil company. The merger reroutes two of the biggest remnants of tile 1911 govelii*; ment breakup of Jdm D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil empire. s Company officials Said they would comply with government requirements that the new oil giant sell 2,431 of its nearly 16,000 gas stations, spegjfkalfy those in the Northeast, Texas and California, as well as a refinery and other assets. ' T - ' • -is,**. ' “This settlement should preserve competition and protect consumers from inappropriate and anticompeti tive price increases,” said Federal Trade Commission Chairman Robert Pitofsky. “Exxon and Mobil have accepted terror and conditions specified by the FTC and will comply fully and in a timely manner” Exxon Chairman Lee Raymond said in a statement only hours afro- the FTC gave its condition id approval to the deal, concluding a ‘yearlong review. Within minutes of the FTC action, executives of the two companies filed papers in'New Jersey and Delaware, wherbExxon and Mobil had been reg istered; officially creating the new Exxon-Mobil, a company producing , percent df the world’s oil with 120,000 employees and $138 billion in *8S^S ' . The New York Stock Exchange announced that beginning today, the Exxon and Mobil symbols would be scrapped, and the new company would be traded under a new Exxon-Mobil symbol, XOM. Without the conditions the FTC imposed, the agency said, the new com pany would violate antitrust laws and “significantly injure competition” in some parts of the country. So the com missioners voted 4-0 to approve a set tlement requiring Exxon, the country’s largest oil company, and Mobil, die second largest, to sell off assets where they dominate markets. The FTC noted Exxon’s and Mobil’s retail market dominance in the mid-Atlantic and Northeast states, in Texas, and in California, where in many areas they accounted for 20 per cent to 35 percent of the retail gasoline markets. &BBj*.^S^Sce)v SptJJ a,Se 2600„ *274* ,0f u Ju cans of f^ * .'~’s55»5sSS£r -- When time is better spent for studying, (* shop the web for Hu,ker products. 0 For all your Christmas giving. : . > . ^*- V1 • ^ ; ' -V ‘ :. .• -'4 . .1 BiSBiiSRIiiHi w nounu-tnp airrare • 7 nights hotel accommodations t %. • Round-trip airport & hotel transfers • Free utelcome. beach & evening partj$s • Free admission to night dubs. 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Cuba, U.S. battle for custody of boy MIAMI (AP) - Days after he was rescued off die coast of Florida, a 5 year-old Cuban boy is starting to ask questions about Ins future, now caught in a political tug-of-war between Cuba and the United States. Elian Gonzalez fled Cuba with his mother and stepfather in a small power boat that sank during the 90-mile cross ing to Florida Nine people died, includ ing his mother and stepfather. Elian was found alone Thanksgiving Day, cling ing to inner tubes off die Florida coast near Fort Lauderdale. Family members here want him to stay, saying he will have a better life off the communist island. His father has demanded he be returned to Cuba. “He’s concerned,” said cousin Marisleysis Gonzalez. She said Elian wanted to know whether he’d be sent back to Cuba or be allowed to remain in the United States. “He told me, ‘I don’t want to go back, I don’t want to go back.’” For now, Elian spends his days play ing with new toys and getting acquaint ed with three young cousins about his. age. A stream of family and friends have visited with gifts ranging from jewelry to jigsaw puzzles. The boy’s relatives have been care ’* ful about talking to him about the two g days he spent afloat after t^e over rv loaded 17-foot Dowerboat sank- & «-— He s very concerned. He told me, 7 don’t want to go back, I don’t want to go back”’ Marisleysis Gonzalez boy's cousin Elian has become the center of an international custody battle. From politician^ feyexilegroups, everyone has an opinKSB aboutWhatfc best for Elian. “If jkjapleare taking that perilous journey C my feeling is he should stay here,” Go* Jeb Bush said. The Cuban American National Foundation distributed flyers with a pic ture of Eliaaand the phrase “Another child victimnf FideFCastro” to dele World Trade Seattle. luan Miguel ’ § on Cuba’s ForeignMuust^ ^help him file a request demandSig that his son be returned. ^ “I want my son tabe returned to me as soon as possible/TEonzalez said in a ' telephone mterview*feorn his home in of Cardenas, alllamgoingto giving any more -interviews.” 'Jp '‘HBghaasaid that he would like to see \the case resoled amicably outside of a the family can prove the is ah unfit parent, a state uHjjudgewquld have to return to hiS^ather because he is the ning bidftogica^ parent, said Perlmutter, director of the “University of Miami’s Children and • £ r<’: ' | BELFAST, Northern IriHapdSfA^ - Five years ago, Martin first stepped into StonmSft | Parliamentary Building, the Belfast headquarters of his lifelong British enemies, to enter negotiations oppo | site suspicious civil servants. But on Tuesday, Stormont’s ; bureaucrats went to work for McGuiniiess f- the high school dropout and framer IRA chief who is' now minister for education in Northern Ireland’s new four-party coalition government. The Sinn Fein negotiator is by far the most controversial appointment in Belfast’s 12-member Cabinet, all of whom started learning their new jobs Tuesday, 602 days after the Good Friday peace accord formally pro posed the plan , Shortly before midnight, lawmak ers in London’s House of Commons ■ voted 318-10 to approve legislation that authorized the British govern ment to transfer substantial powers to the Belfast administration on Thursday. “For die first time, all shades of political opinion in Northern Ireland will have a stake in the future,” * Britain’s Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Mandelson declared when opening the Commons debate. “After a quarter of a century the curtain is finally coming down on direct rule,” he said, referring to the British government’s exclusive con trol of affairs in Northern Ireland since abolishing a Protestant-domi nated parliament in 1972. McGuinness, who is credited with directing a bombing campaign that n Lo 19* tha safe hands. “I went back to school today,” he quipped as he visited Department of Education offices in the prosperous Protestant town of Bangor, (he kind of ] place where Sinn Fern voters are in 5 short supply. “l am on a learning curve, but I am prepared to learn,” he said. “I am pre pared to work hard.” - McGuinness said his new job had nothing to do with the issues that drove Northern Ireland’s, past three decades of bloodshed — whether die Protestant-majority state would remain linked with Britain or be absorbed into (he neighboring Irish Republic, as he still wants to happen. “It’s about children, our greatest resource,” he said. “How we nurture them, how we care for them, how we protect them and primarily about how we educate them.” The province’s major Protestant newspaper, the Belfast News Letter, said die idea of McGuinness as edu cation minister was “something only the most audacious of lampooning scriptwriters could have dreamed up five years ago.” The ministers were quick to adapt to their newfound status. Their departments issued a string of upbeat press releases pledging their determi nation to tackle the kinds of practical problems — insolvent pig farmers, looming hospital closings and traffic congestion — that a generation of political impotence had denied than.