(MCT) MILWAUKEE – Already caught up in an FBI investigation of a scheme to sell stolen… (MCT) MILWAUKEE – Already caught up in an FBI investigation of a scheme to sell stolen infant formula, a New Berlin, Wis., grocery wholesaler is also in the middle of a complex lawsuit involving the sale and distribution of millions of counterfeit condoms.

Kaloti Enterprises has steadfastly denied dealing in stolen infant formula. But it admits buying and selling a shipment of counterfeit Trojan condoms as well as a load of fake Duracell batteries.

The company’s defense: It didn’t know the products were counterfeit.

“Kaloti Wholesale Inc. bought a load of condoms from a company in New York that it has dealt with for many different products over the last few years and had never had any problem,” Ahmed Quereshi, attorney for Kaloti, said in an interview last week.

Only after Kaloti sold the condoms and batteries did it discover they were not authentic, Quereshi said.

“Condoms and batteries are not top 100 items,” Quereshi said, explaining that the company focuses its business on the top 100 products sold in grocery stores – goods such as cereal and detergent. But, he explained, Isaac Kaloti, a part owner, “got a good price” for the condoms and batteries, “and the rest is history.”

Invoices filed with the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, N.Y., show that in January 2007, Kaloti’s supplier, Alex Trading Inc., paid a Canadian company $56,000 for 6,400 cases of Trojan condoms and $18,400 for 400 cases of Duracell batteries. The products were immediately sold to Kaloti for an undisclosed amount, and Kaloti then sold them to a third wholesaler, which did not pay for the goods because it discovered they were fraudulent.

Quereshi said that none of the nearly 250,000 condoms made it to market and that this was the only time the firm has been involved in the condom business.

The condom lawsuit – an action filed last year in New York against some 40 companies and individuals – was one in a string of embarrassing incidents to hit the wholesaler. The other defendants – none, with the exception of Alex Trading, related to Kaloti – are alleged to have bought and sold more than a million other counterfeit Trojans. Church ‘ Dwight, a law firm, is seeking $10 million from every defendant. – Cary Spivak, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

(MCT) WASHINGTON – U.S. businesses are betting that the federal government will soon put mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions, and they’re making sure they have a say in shaping a vast new regulatory system.

Some of the country’s biggest businesses support a cap-and-trade system, the approach that Congress is considering. Under cap and trade, the government gives or sells companies allowances to emit certain amounts of greenhouse gases, and companies may sell unused allowances to other companies.

While it may sound simple, the details would be complex, and the plan would affect the entire economy and require monitoring for decades.

The U.S. Climate Action Partnership – which includes U.S. auto makers, other big manufacturers such as Alcoa and Caterpillar Inc. and energy companies such as FPL Group, Duke Energy and PG’E Corp. – supports a cap-and-trade system, but its members have questions about key elements, such as how emissions could be offset and how much they’d have to pay for the allowances.

“In the last year there’s been a sea change” in business thinking on a mandatory federal emissions policy, said Truman Semans, the director for marketing and business strategy for a group of large U.S. companies at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change’s Business Environmental Leadership Council.

The council comprises 44 companies with $2.8 trillion in market capitalization, a sizable chunk of the world economy. Most favor a mandatory market-based emissions policy, Semans said.

Semans argues that businesses naturally want to shape the system to suit their interests, but they also see opportunities as the world is forced to find ways to cut emissions of carbon, the main gas that’s causing the Earth’s average temperature to rise.

Semans said the “chances are not great” that Congress will pass a bill this year, but “there’s a high chance that 95 percent of the solution will be on the table.” – Renee Schoof, McClatchy Newspapers

(MCT) JERUSALEM – Gaza City was plunged into darkness on Sunday night when the Gaza Strip’s only electrical plant shut down after Israel cut off fuel supplies in response to a surge in rocket fire by Palestinian militants.

The director of the Gaza power plant said it had run out of fuel reserves after weeks of Israeli supply reductions, but Israeli officials accused the militant group Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, of staging a crisis.

The plant supplies about a third of the power in the Gaza Strip, serving 800,000 people, half of them in Gaza City, the area’s main population center, according to officials at the plant.

Israel supplies about 60 percent of the power to the Gaza Strip, and Egypt about 10 percent. Those supplies have continued uninterrupted. But Israel is Gaza City’s only source of fuel, and since October it has reduced supplies of gasoline and industrial diesel used by the power plant in an effort to press Hamas to halt militant rocket attacks from the territory on southern Israel.

The cutbacks had caused rolling power outages of up to 12 hours a day in various areas, disrupting the operation of Gaza’s main hospital and water and sewage pumps.

When an Israeli army raid that killed 19 Palestinians in Gaza triggered a surge in rocket fire at southern Israel last week, Defense Minister Ehud Barak ordered the sealing of all crossings into the Gaza Strip, halting shipments of food, fuel and medical supplies.

The director of the Gaza power plant, Rafik Maliha, said because the regular fuel shipment from Israel had not arrived Sunday after the closure of the Nahal Oz fuel terminal, and because reserves had run out, the power plant was forced to shut down.

The United Nations relief agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, warned the shutdown could drastically affect hospitals, sewage treatment plants and water facilities. – Joel Greenberg, Chicago Tribune

(MCT) KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Feb. 5 will be the biggest presidential primary day in American history.

More than 70 million registered voters in 24 states will choose more than 2,700 Democratic and Republican convention delegates on Super Tuesday, almost 10 times more than in all the primaries and caucuses so far. Before they do, they’ll be bombarded by TV ads, phone banks, campaign appearances and surrogates for at least eight major candidates and by nonstop polling, punditry and predictions.

“Super” seems inadequate, so it’s been dubbed Tsunami Tuesday. So surely, on back-to-normal Wednesday, we’ll know who the two major presidential nominees are?

“It’s way, way too early (to know),” said Bill Lacy, former Sen. Fred Thompson’s campaign manager and a veteran of former Kansas Republican Sen. Bob Dole’s campaigns. He said it was “plausible” that candidates in one or both parties could fight for the nomination for months, well into the summer.

The first Super Tuesday, in 1988, was designed to give Southern states a bigger role in picking presidential nominees. But both parties quickly grew accustomed to the idea of multi-state primaries and caucuses as a way to settle nominating contests early, end intraparty bickering and save cash for the big battle in the fall.

Deciding the nomination quickly was part of the rationale for this year’s voting behemoth, too. But it may have grown bigger and more complicated than anyone anticipated, yielding confusing results.

Virtually all 24 states have adopted detailed – and different – rules for awarding delegates. The rules are so dense, in fact, that few observers agree on how many convention delegates will be picked that day.

The best estimate: 1,029 Republican delegates pledged to specific candidates and 1,678 pledged Democratic delegates. That’s just more than 40 percent of all the delegates in each party. If a candidate could carry them all, he or she almost certainly would lock up the nomination.

If there’s no final decision on Super Tuesday, operatives in both parties said, attention would turn to the primaries in Texas and Ohio on March 4, in Pennsylvania on April 22 and in other states. – David Helling, McClatchy Newspapers