By TANALEE SMITH, Associated Press Writer

SYDNEY, Australia - An Australian doctor proposed Monday that the government pay up to $47,000 for kidney donations to overcome a chronic shortage.

The suggestion touched off debate around the country on the idea, which critics say will end in the poor selling their organs to the rich.

Kidney specialist Gavin Carney said allowing the sale of organs would save thousands of lives and billions of dollars in care for patients on transplant waiting lists. He also said it would stop people from buying organs on the black market in developing countries, where they pursue risky, unregulated surgeries.

Australia has one of the lowest rates of organ donation in the developed world, about 10 donors per 1 million people, according to a federal health task force.

“We’ve tried everything to drum up support for organ donation and the rates have not risen in 10 years,” Carney was quoted as saying in Fairfax newspapers. “People just don’t seem to be willing to give their organs away for free. … Let’s pay people some money for a new car or a house deposit and those waiting lists will be halved within about five years.”

Carney, a professor at the Australian National University, could not immediately be reached by The Associated Press.

Carney’s proposal was immediately criticized by transplant groups, who fear it would exploit poor people.

The idea was dismissed by Health Minister Nicola Roxon, who said Australians would not be allowed to market their organs. “But we do know that we need urgent action in this area of organ donation,” Roxon told Australia Broadcasting Corp. radio.

Rather than paying people for organs, Roxon said her ministry would act on some of the recommendations of a federal task force that recently completed a review of the organ donation system. She did not specify its recommendations.

The task force attributed Australia’s low organ donor rate to a decrease in road accidents and strokes, lack of public awareness, and poor identification of donors in hospitals, among other factors. In comparison, Germany has 15 donors per 1 million people, the Netherlands has 25, the United States 27, and Spain 35, it said.

Selling or buying organs is illegal in Australia, as in most countries, and carries a penalty of six months in jail and a fine of up to $4,130.

More than 1,800 people are waiting for kidney transplants in the country but only 343 kidneys were donated last year, Fairfax reported. Transplant Australia, a national charity and organ support group, said the average wait for a kidney transplant is four years.

The group’s chief executive Chris Thomas said his organization rejects paying for organs and instead is working with the government to change the donation system. He said Carney’s proposal would leave poor people vulnerable.

“It really focuses on the poor and people who are least able to pay for things in society. They get attracted to these types of things,” he told ABC Radio. “We’d reject that.”

Kidney Health Australia also rejected Carney’s proposal, saying it would be open to “many ethical issues and abuse.”

“In my opinion it is inappropriate for the Australian medical system to consider, and is counter to the Australian culture which promises an equitable approach in all things,” KHA medical director Tim Mathew told The Associated Press. “The commercial trade in organs is not something we can support.”

Carney said the suggestion that paid donation would exploit poor people was “a red herring,” telling ABC radio that government regulation of organ commercialization would ensure high ethical standards and medical safeguards.

“I don’t support (illegal trade),” Carney said. “But I also do not agree with the fact that we should let people just rot on dialysis until they have been on dialysis so long they are untransplantable.”

Last week, health officials in the Philippines announced that foreigners will be banned from receiving kidneys for transplant there in an attempt to crack down on a thriving black market in organs sold by poor people.

By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent

MUNSTER, Ind. - Hillary Rodham Clinton called for a vote Friday in the Democratic-controlled Congress on a summertime suspension of the federal gasoline tax, a plan that Barack Obama dismissed as a political stunt that would cost thousands of construction jobs.

“It’s a Shell game. Literally,” Obama said to laughter from his campaign audience, adding it would mean little for hard-pressed consumers.

The Democratic presidential rivals highlighted their differences in ads and speeches across North Carolina and Indiana, two states with primaries Tuesday.

Polls point toward a particularly close finish in Indiana, which is next door to Obama’s home state of Illinois.

Surveys show him with a dwindling advantage in North Carolina, and Clinton decided to spend all of Friday and Saturday in the state before returning to Indiana for a final push.

The two primaries have 187 national convention delegates at stake.

Obama, the front-runner, leads in the overall delegate competition, 1,736.05-1602.5. Clinton won a decisive victory last week in Pennsylvania and is counting on a strong run through the late primaries to persuade convention superdelegates to help her overtake her rival.

Jolted by Thursday’s defection of Joe Andrew, a former national party chairman, Clinton responded with a letter from seven other former party heads and the family of an eighth.

“Her base of support includes women, Hispanics, seniors, Catholics, middle and low-income Americans, and rural, suburban and urban voters. That’s a formidable coalition tailor-made for victory in a November general election,” they wrote.

They added that if the election were held today, Clinton would defeat Republican Sen. John McCain and win the White House. “Obama would lose to the presumptive GOP nominee,” they wrote.

Polls are equivocal on that point. Moreover, they have been particularly volatile in recent weeks as campaign criticism takes its toll on the two Democrats and Obama grapples with controversy stemming from the rhetoric of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Despite a fierce, occasionally personal campaign, to a surprising degree the former first lady and Obama have generally agreed on most policy issues.

That made the proposed suspension in the gasoline tax an exception.

And while there is little support among the Democratic congressional leadership for the plan, it was a disagreement that both presidential contenders appeared content to perpetuate.

“All I hear about is gas prices. Gas and diesel, everywhere,” Clinton said in Kinston, N.C. “Some people say we don’t need to get a gas tax holiday at all, it’s a gimmick … I want the Congress to stand up and vote. Are they for the oil companies, or are they for you?”

Later, in Hendersonville, she added, “I know where I stand and I know where my opponents stand. … Senator Obama doesn’t want us to take down the gas tax this summer and Senator McCain wants us to, but he doesn’t want to pay for it.”

Clinton has proposed making up the lost revenue by imposing a windfall profits tax on oil companies.

Obama’s rhetoric grew sharper, as well.

“She even borrowed one of Bush’s favorite phrases,” he said dismissively of the New York senator. “She said every member of Congress should have to tell us whether they are with us or against us.”

He said the average consumer would save a “quarter and a nickel” a day, and only $28 in three months.

McCain also favors the gasoline tax holiday, and Obama said sarcastically that showed Clinton “has his vote,” and that the two are reading from the same political playbook.

McCain told a town-hall audience in Denver: “I want to give the American consumer a little bit of relief just for the summer. Maybe they’ll be able to buy an additional textbook for their children when they go back to school this fall.”

Clinton launched a television ad several days ago critical of Obama on the issue.

“The economy’s in trouble. When the housing crisis broke, Hillary Clinton called for action: a freeze on foreclosures. Barack Obama said, no. Now, gas prices are skyrocketing, and she’s ready to act again. … Barack Obama says no, again.”

Obama’s aides said they were responding with a new ad for the campaign’s final days.

Within the congressional leadership, Clinton’s position has found relatively little support, and no votes are currently anticipated in either the House or Senate.

“First of all, there is no reason to believe that any moratorium on the gas tax will be passed on to the consumer,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters on Thursday.

“… This has not been the history of a lower gas tax being passed on to the consumer. Second of all, it would defeat everything that we have been trying to do to lower the cost of oil.”

In the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said recently that rank-and-file Democrats are divided on the issue. A spokesman said during the day there will be no gasoline tax holiday in legislation Democrats intend to unveil next week.

The dispute centered on a pair of taxes, 18.4 cents per gallon of gasoline and 24.4 cents on a gallon of diesel. The money raised goes into a fund that pays for construction of highways and bridges.

In Indiana, Obama said a summertime gasoline tax holiday would cost 6,000 construction jobs. The campaign circulated material showing the estimate came from the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, a trade group. The group said the impact on North Carolina would be 7,000 jobs lost.

___

Associated Press Writer Beth Fouhy in North Carolina contributed to this report.

By JOHN WILEN, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK - Retail gas prices fell slightly Friday — the first time in 18 days they haven’t risen to a new record — and analysts say pump prices may be peaking for the year. Oil futures, meanwhile, soared after Turkish airstrikes on Kurdish rebel bases in Iraq injected some supply concerns into the market and the Labor Department’s employment report gave investors reason to be optimistic about the economy.

The national average price of a gallon of regular gas fell 0.1 cent overnight to $3.622, according to a survey of gas stations by AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. That’s the first time since April 14 that retail prices have fallen. Diesel prices fell 0.2 cent to a national average of $4.249 a gallon.

“It could go up just a little bit more,” said Fred Rozell, retail pricing director at the Oil Price Information Service, in Wall, N.J., but, “I think it’s running out of steam.”

Prices could reach $3.70 a gallon, “at the most,” Rozell said, but are highly unlikely to rise to $4 on a national basis. Still, motorists in parts of states such as California and Hawaii are paying $4 right now.

Soaring gas prices are cutting demand for gasoline, and analysts have long theorized that falling demand will eventually force prices lower. However, gas prices bucked those forecasts for most of the spring and followed oil’s sharp gains.

On Friday, light, sweet crude for June delivery rose $3.80 to $116.32 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Turkish warplanes bombed Kurdish rebel bases inside Iraq for three hours overnight, a rebel spokesman said Friday. When conflict breaks out in the Middle East, investors often buy on concerns that supplies will be disrupted.

Some investors were also buying crude on a view that the economy is improving, analysts said. The Labor Department said employers cut far fewer jobs in April than expected.

“If the jobs (situation) isn’t as bad, maybe we’d see a snap back in demand,” said Phil Flynn, an analyst at Alaron Trading Corp. in Chicago.

For a change, investors shrugged off the dollar, which rose on a theory that the employment data means the Federal Reserve is less likely to cut interest rates further this year; falling rates tend to weaken the dollar.

A rising dollar undercuts the appeal of commodities such as oil as a hedge against inflation, and makes oil more expensive to investors overseas. The rising greenback helped pull oil prices back to nearly $110 a barrel on Thursday. Oil’s climb to almost $120 on Monday from about $64 a year ago was largely due to a protracted decline by the dollar, analysts say.

However, oil’s connection to the dollar can be broken when other factors predominate, as they did Friday.

“It’s not a perfect relationship, and on any given day, oil will choose to go its own way,” said Jim Ritterbusch, president of energy consultancy Ritterbusch and Associates in Galena, Ill.

Still, analysts think the market’s decision to shrug off Friday’s stronger dollar will be short lived, particularly if the Fed holds interest rates steady and the dollar continues to gain.

“It will be difficult to sustain (oil price) rallies in the face of any further strength in the dollar,” Ritterbusch said.

And that means retail gas prices will likely rise no higher than $3.65 to $3.70 a gallon, before falling back toward $3 a gallon over the summer, he said.

In other Nymex trading Friday, June gasoline futures rose 7.65 cents to $2.9547 a gallon, and June heating oil futures rose 9.61 cents to $3.2138 a gallon. June natural gas futures rose 21.8 cents to $10.779 per 1,000 cubic feet.

In London, June Brent crude futures gained $3.65 to $114.15 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.

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Associated Press writer C. Onur Ant in Istanbul, Turkey, contributed to this report.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O) has three weeks to accept Microsoft Corp.’s (MSFT.O) $31 per share cash-and-stock offer or Microsoft will mount a proxy battle to win investor support for the takeover, Microsoft said on Saturday.

Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said in a letter dated April 5 and addressed to Yahoo’s board of directors that “now is the time” to negotiate final terms of a deal, one which would mark the biggest takeover yet in the high-tech industry.

“If we have not concluded an agreement within the next three weeks, we will be compelled to take our case directly to your shareholders, including the initiation of a proxy contest to elect an alternative slate of directors,” Ballmer wrote.

A Yahoo spokeswoman was not aware of the letter and would not immediately comment on Yahoo’s reaction to the move.

Ballmer said Microsoft is growing impatient more than two months after the Redmond, Washington-based software behemoth made its unsolicited takeover offer for Yahoo. At that time, the bid represented a 62 percent premium to Yahoo’s share price.

“While there has been some limited interaction between management of our two companies, there has been no meaningful negotiation to conclude an agreement,” Ballmer wrote.

The Microsoft letter argues that the economy and the market for Internet stocks have deteriorated in the intervening period, and that Yahoo’s share of Web search and online advertising business has declined, referring to industry market reports.

“During these two months of inactivity, the Internet has continued to march on, while the public equity markets and overall economic conditions have weakened considerably,” Ballmer wrote.

Meanwhile, Yahoo has adopted measures that make a merger with Microsoft more costly, Ballmer complained.

(Reporting by Eric Auchard in San Francisco and Daisuke Wakabayashi in Seattle, editing by Philip Barbara)

INDIANAPOLIS - ATA Airlines has discontinued all flights and filed for bankruptcy.

The Indianapolis-based airline says in a statement on its Web site Thursday that it became impossible to continue operations after it lost a key contract for its military charter business.

ATA announced last month that it would leave its hub at Chicago’s Midway Airport. The airline had flights from Midway to Dallas/Fort Worth and Oakland, Calif. It also had flights to Hawaii from Oakland, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Las Vegas.

A message left for an ATA spokeswoman Thursday was not immediately returned.

[Source: Yahoo News]