World’s top brewers finalize $107 billion tie-up, sell Miller brand to ease US market concerns
World’s top brewers finalize $107 billion tie-up, sell Miller brand to ease US market concerns
LONDON (AP) — The world’s two biggest beer makers will join forces to create a company that produces almost a third of the world’s beer. But in the U.S., the deal will not bring arch rivals Budweiser and Miller under the same roof.
Budweiser maker AB InBev announced Wednesday a final agreement to buy SABMiller for 71 billion pounds ($107 billion).
To ease concerns the brewing behemoth might get a stranglehold of the U.S. market, SABMiller will sell its 58 percent stake in a venture with fellow brewer Molson Coors for $12 billion. The deal includes rights to the Miller brand name and gives Molson Coors full control of operations.
The combined company — which as yet does not have a name — will also need to address regulatory issues in China, where SABMiller has a leading position with a 49 percent stake in the Chinese beer Snow. China is the focus of intense interest, as it already drinks a quarter of the world’s beer.
“This combination would create the first truly global brewer,” AB InBev Ceo Carlos Brito told reporters in a conference call after the deal, which is set to be completed next year.
Global push to end Syria war seen as most serious yet, but no roadmap on how to get there
BEIRUT (AP) — The international community is mounting its most serious effort yet to end the nearly 5-year-old Syrian war, rallying around a second round of talks in Vienna this weekend amid the emergence of a Russian proposal that calls for early elections.
But the global push for peace so far excludes any of the Syrian players, and experts say any hasty decisions risk leading to even greater bloodshed.
While world leaders seem to be in agreement that the time has come to put an end to the carnage in Syria that has killed more than 250,000 people, there is still no clear roadmap on how to get there.
Still, the stepped up diplomatic activity, coupled with the U.S. decision to send special operation troops into northern Syria — something the Obama administration had long sought to avoid — reflects a new urgency and a shift in dealing with the world’s most intransigent conflict.
The Russian proposal calls for drafting a new constitution within 18 months that would be put to a popular referendum and be followed by an early presidential election. But it makes no mention of Syrian President Bashar Assad stepping down during the transition — a key opposition demand and a sticking point in all previous negotiations to end the civil war.
European plan to label settlement products reflects international disapproval with Israel
JERUSALEM (AP) — The European Union’s decision Wednesday to start labeling Israeli products made in the West Bank delivered a resounding show of international disapproval over Israel’s expansion of Jewish settlements and raised the pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to renew peace efforts with the Palestinians.
Israel condemned the measure as unfair and discriminatory, but it appeared helpless to stop its growing isolation over the settlement issue and its treatment of Palestinians. Relations with the EU in particular have deteriorated in recent years due to disputes over the settlements.
“The EU decision is hypocritical and constitutes a double standard,” Netanyahu said, adding that Israel had been unfairly singled out.
Speaking from Washington, he said, “The EU should be ashamed.”
Israel captured the West Bank and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war and began settling both areas shortly afterward. The Palestinians claim both areas as parts of a future state, a position that has global support.
Student protests move to different level when athletes participate
WASHINGTON (AP) — Few paid attention when a black student started a hunger strike at the University of Missouri to protest racial strife on campus. As soon as the football team supported that hunger strike by refusing to practice for or play in the school’s lucrative NCAA games, the university’s president and chancellor were forced out and changes were discussed.
The stand taken at Missouri illustrates a new trend for college millennials. Frustrated with what they perceive as insensitivity by school administrators, they are taking their generation’s penchant for social media protest to the next level: Using their on-campus celebrity to pose a threat to the bottom line.
“They forced the administration to take the protest seriously given the money that is generated via athletics. To say that you will not play on Saturday is tantamount to a major donor pulling their funds,” said D’Andra Orey, a political science professor at Jackson State University in Jackson, Mississippi.
Students have been organizing and protesting racial strife at universities all year — from a noose being found on Duke University’s campus, to spray-painted swastikas and nooses at the State University of New York’s Purchase campus, to a fraternity video at the University of Oklahoma using a racial slur to describe how the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity would never accept black members.
Last month, a popular marching band at Howard University, one of the nation’s premier historically black colleges, wore all black during a halftime football show in a show of solidarity with students frustrated about financial aid and other problems.
Debate day-after: What rivalries? What insults? GOP presidential candidates play nice
MIAMI (AP) — The elbows-out GOP presidential contest appeared on Wednesday to have entered a kinder, gentler phase.
Jeb Bush, the son of the president who popularized that phrase, pointedly refrained from going after former protege Marco Rubio. GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, previously the resident insult machine, did not speak ill of any of his Republican opponents during an hourlong interview Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show. Not of Rubio, who is rising in the polls. Not of Ben Carson, who has faced questions about details in his personal life story. Not even Bush, who Trump has frequently blasted as a “low energy candidate.”
“I am being nice. I’m trying to be,” Trump said during the interview on MSNBC.
The cease-fire by two of the race’s most aggressive candidates began during Tuesday’s night’s debate, may be forced by circumstance, and temporary. Bush’s criticism of Rubio for missed Senate votes had backfired on the former Florida governor, whose focus now is on projecting command of a tougher-than-expected battle for the Republican presidential nomination. Trump’s new diplomatic style, too, comes as he competes for Carson’s supporters, who mostly like the retired neurosurgeon for his even-tempered, pleasant approach.
However temporary, the shift in tone was dramatic for both candidates and reflects dwindling time remaining before the first votes of the 2016 presidential contest are cast in February. One more nationally-televised GOP debate remains this year, on Dec. 15, before voters plunge into the holiday season. The timetable means the coming weeks are critical for the remaining candidates in the unruly race to correct and focus their campaigns.