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JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A quiet word from a visitor paying a condolence call to Benjamin Netanyahu may have been the seed that sprouted into a surprise Israeli unity government deal.

Last week, the prime minister was sitting “shiva” a seven-day Jewish period of mourning Buy windows 7 key, for his 102-year-old father, when Shaul Mofaz, head of the centrist Kadima party, came to Netanyahu’s Jerusalem apartment to express his sympathies.

After a handshake, the muted conversation between the political rivals touched on the possibility of a governing partnership, said a legislator privy to details of the coalition-building contacts.

“It’s not that they were talking politics,” said the lawmaker. But he said Mofaz and Netanyahu, leader of the right-wing Likud party, exchanged a relevant word or two — “and last night, it was done”.

Israelis had gone to bed Monday night certain that parliament, at Netanyahu’s request, would vote to dissolve itself and schedule a new general election on September 4, more than a year ahead of time.

But while deputies debated the motion in a curiously drawn-out overnight session, behind the scenes, Netanyahu and Mofaz concluded an agreement to form a government of national unity that will control 94 of parliament’s 120 seats.

All but a select few Kadima and Likud legislators were kept out of the loop. One Mofaz ally, Kadima lawmaker Otniel Schneller, told Reuters: “I was totally taken by surprise.”

Kadima’s 28 parliamentary seats strengthen Netanyahu’s hand should his religious coalition partners rebel over legislation to end an exemption from military service for ultra-Orthodox Jews that is due in the coming months.

Opinion polls show his party would have done well in an election, which the government was at pains to point out would not have weakened Israel’s resolve to confront Iran over its nuclear program, with air strikes if it deemed them necessary.

“But when it became clear to me that I could form a very broad government, I saw I could preserve stability without going to elections,” Netanyahu told a joint news conference with Mofaz on Tuesday at which he said Iran remained an important issue.

Netanyahu’s political coup also shook potential rebels in his own Likud Windows 7 Product Key, where ultranationalist pro-settler members had challenged him at a party convention on Sunday over choosing candidates to run in an early election.

He indicated on Tuesday that talks had begun during the mourning period Office 2010 Key, which ended on Sunday, when he was closeted in his apartment.

“We started discussing (a deal with Kadima) concretely … four or five days ago,” Netanyahu said at the news conference.

Israeli media reports said Defence Minister Ehud Barak was also at the Monday night meeting between Netanyahu and Mofaz in the prime minister’s official residence, along with a clutch of advisers.

Barak had good reason to push for an agreement — opinion polls showed his small “Atzmaut” party would not have won a single parliamentary seat in an early election.

Mofaz’s Kadima party was also forecast to do badly. Opinion polls showed it would have dropped from 28 seats to just 11 with Mofaz, a dour-looking former defence chief, newly in charge.

“It would have been irresponsible for me to have told (Netanyahu) ‘No’,” said Mofaz, citing policies Kadima could now promote to ease the economic burden on the middle class and resume peace talks with the Palestinians stalled since 2010.

(Additional reporting by Allyn Fisher-Ilan; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

World Israel

PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — Officials at Northern Maine Regional Airport do not believe the facility will be hurt by the bankruptcy filing of Pinnacle Airlines Corp., whose subsidiary provides flight services to the airport.

Pinnacle is the parent company of Colgan Air, Inc., which provides nonstop service to and from Boston’s Logan Airport to the airport in Presque Isle and to Hancock County-Bar Harbor Airport in Trenton.

The Memphis, Tenn.-based airline on April 1 filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York. The company listed assets of $1.5 billion and liabilities of $1.4 billion. Under Chapter 11, the debtor usually proposes a plan of reorganization to keep its business alive and pay creditors over time.

“I don’t think it will mean that much to us,” Scott Wardwell, director at the Presque Isle airport, said Tuesday. “We are watching it, but right now it does not look to be impacting us. It is a minor annoyance.”

M. Allison Rogers, manager of the Trenton airport, was unavailable to comment Wednesday.

At this point, Colgan Air is in the process of pulling its planes out of both airports.

Colgan Air petitioned the U.S. Department of Transportation this past September to end its service between Boston and Presque Isle and between Boston and Bar Harbor sometime this year. Colgan Air expressed a desire to close its Boston office because the market it serves has become smaller.

The federal Department of Transportation’s Essential Air Service program, established in 1978 during the period of airline deregulation Tattoo Ink, provides federal assistance to air carriers serving smaller communities that otherwise might lose service because of economic factors.

Under Essential Air Service regulations, Colgan Air was not allowed to leave until a replacement could be found.

Last month, Peninsula Airways of Alaska was chosen to operate under the Essential Air Service program at both the Presque Isle and Trenton airports. Specifically, PenAir will service Presque Isle year-round and provide additional service to Bar Harbor in the summer, while Cape Air will increase its presence in Maine by serving Bar Harbor year-round.

Wardwell said Pinnacle has launched an exit plan to vacate the airport Tattoo Case Box, but said PenAir has not yet set a final date to enter the market. He estimated that it would be at least two months away.

Sean Menke, president and CEO of Pinnacle, said in a statement the company would use the Chapter 11 process to “reset our financial and operational structure in order to position Pinnacle for viability over the long term.”

He added that their business model is not sustainable because of increasing operating expenses Starbrite Tattoo Ink, liquidity constraints, business integration delays and difficulties associated with combining its operations. Those obstacles, according to Menke, have hindered the company’s ability to maximize its growth potential.

Pinnacle’s network partners are Delta Connection, United Express and US Airways Express.

The company will use the Chapter 11 process to continue implementing a turnaround plan to address its operational and financial challenges.

According to information provided by Pinnacle, company officials will restructure key operating agreements with Delta Air Lines and cease Essential Air Service flying for US Airways. They also will look to the work force for cost savings.

Pinnacle also has asked the DOT to accelerate the process to find replacement carriers for the Essential Air Service markets it serves through Colgan Air.

Menke said the company is committed to delivering safe, reliable travel throughout the process, and they will continue to maintain an appropriate fleet and accompanying staffing levels.

Readers may click through your slideshow Discount Christian Audigier Clothes, but they’ll hate you a liiitttle bit more than they did when they got to the site. And I bet they’ll feel the same way about whatever advertiser was unlucky enough to get stuck on the page with some stupid thing that a reporter did with a little bit of hate in his heart and fingertips.

– The Atlantic magazine reporter Alexis Madrigal Discount Missoni Dresses, in a story called “The Pernicious Myth That Slideshows Drive ‘Traffic’”

The New York Timesand Washington Postlead, and the Wall Street Journal tops its world-wide newsbox, with Republican Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico publicly breaking with the Bush administration on the Iraq war and calling for an immediate change in strategy. This is yet another sign of the growing number of Republicans who aren’t willing to wait until the September progress report to express their unhappiness with how the war is progressing. And now that several high-profile Republicans have expressed their views, more are expected to follow. Domenici said he does not support an immediate withdrawal but would sign on to legislation to put in place the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, which calls for a withdrawal of most combat troops by the end of March. “We cannot continue asking our troops to sacrifice indefinitely while the Iraqi government is not making measurable progress,” Domenici said.

The Los Angeles Timesleads with numbers that say U.S. and NATO troops killed more civilians in Afghanistan in the first half of 2007 than the Taliban and other insurgents. Of course, there are plenty of caveats to the explosive statistics. Western officials say that sometimes it’s impossible to know who is a militant and insist that civilians are killed primarily because of the Taliban’s tactics of putting them in the front lines. But, still, according to U.N. figures, by late June Western-led forces were responsible for the deaths of 314 civilians in the year, while militants killed 279 people. USA Todayleads with word that Homeland Security investigators looking into fraud in the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita are dealing with more than 11,000 potential cases. About 700 people have been charged with swindling the federal government as it gave out more than $7 billion in assistance after the hurricanes. Officials warn it could take years to go through all the potential cases.

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The NYT and WP note that several of the Republicans who have had a change of heart recently, including Domenici, are up for re-election next year. Democrats weren’t too impressed with Domenici’s defection and basically said that they’d have to wait and see if he is going to put his money where his mouth is next week when Iraq will be brought back to center stage in the Senate. “Republicans will have the opportunity to not just say the right things on Iraq, but vote the right way, too,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said.

In truth, Domenici’s stated reason for breaking with the White House seems a bit baffling. Besides the slow pace of the Iraqi government, Domenici says he had his change of heart after having conversations with families of New Mexico soldiers who were killed in Iraq and asked him to do more for the others serving there. “I heard nothing like that a couple of years ago,” he said. But he’s not the only lawmaker making strange-sounding statements. Republican Sen. Susan Collins Buy DKNY Dresses, for example Chloe Dresses sale, who is also up for re-election and has expressed frustration with Iraq, “said her talks with voters convinced her that the war remained the top issue,” reports the NYT.

No one doubts that, as a NATO spokesman told the LAT DKNY Dresses sale, “No [Western] soldier ever wakes up in the morning with the intention of harming any Afghan citizen.” But the statistic goes a long way to show why more Afghan civilians are increasingly angry about the perceived carelessness of the Western-led forces in their country, even though according to analysts most still support their presence. President Hamid Karzai has also expressed his anger with the troops over the civilian deaths. “Afghan life is not cheap Buy Bandage dresses, and it should not be treated as such,” he said.

The NYT fronts a dispatch from Baquba, Iraq, where U.S. troops have begun to team up with local Sunnis, including some who used to be insurgents, to fight al-Qaida in Iraq. This is notable because the area doesn’t have a rigid tribal structure, which makes it more difficult to create alliances than in the much-reported Anbar Province. But the story also makes other interesting points. It seems Sunnis are more willing to work with Americans now that they think it’s only a matter of time before the number of U.S. troops in Iraq begins to decrease. And the NYT says it was actually “America’s most ardent foe” that has made these types of alliances possible. Residents were so resentful of the “severe version of Islamic law” imposed by al-Qaida in Iraq that they are now willing to work with U.S. troops to make sure the jihadists don’t come back.

Meanwhile the LAT goes inside with a great story out of Baghdad that shows how U.S. and Iraqi forces can do good work together, but it can all be brought to an abrupt end by factional interests. In the Zafaraniya neighborhood, a U.S. platoon leader and a Sunni Iraqi army captain developed a strong rapport and were able to track down and arrest several important members of the Shiite Mahdi militia. But then Discount Missoni Dresses, “at the urging of Interior Ministry officials,” the Iraqi army captain was arrested and detained for three weeks in what turned out to be “a powerful warning about the resources that the U.S. military’s enemy in east Baghdad can bring to bear.”

The NYT off-leads word that the two doctors who rammed a Jeep into the airport terminal in Glasgow are likely the “main operatives, if not the leaders,” of the terrorist network. It’s believed they rushed to carry out the Glasgow attack after the London one failed. Yesterday, the LAT quoted a British official who said the  airport attack “has all the hallmarks of an improvised Plan B.”

USAT fronts Discount Herve Leger gown, and everyone goes inside with, a new study that contradicts the stereotype that women talk more than men. Researchers used digital technology to record the conversations of almost 400 university students in the U.S. and Mexico, and found there was no statistically significant difference between the sexes. They both utter about 16,000 words a day.

See all of Slate’s inauguration coverage. Discount Herve Leger v neck

Click here for a slide-show essay on the merchandise commemorating the inauguration of Barack Obama.

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