Daily News Channel
It is a Saturday and nearly noon in Bidor, Malaysia, a small rural town about 160 km north of the nations capital, Kuala Lumpur. The coffee shops are filling up with people, mostly rubber and oil palm farmers, many of whom roar into town in new Toyota and Ford pickup trucks
Truth, as they say, is the first casualty of war.
You can’t get to the town of Ruili by plane or train. There is only the road
The way to make $100 million dollars on Wall Street, so the old joke goes, is to start with $200 million. Or you could trade oil
The bank that never sleeps is holding an all-night sale. Citigroup, in an effort to improve its bottom line and repay the government, has put a “for sale” sign on numerous pieces of its business, downsizing what once was the nation’s largest bank
A global commodities trading company says it is considering a settlement to legal claims that it is responsible for the deaths of 15 people and thousands of illnesses after 500 tons of toxic waste were dumped in the African nation of Ivory Coast. The Dutch company Trafigura said studies by 20 experts it has hired conclude that the chemicals did not harm anyone
Four employees of the Shanghai office of Australia’s Rio Tinto, the world’s second-largest mining company, have been arrested over allegedly stealing China’s state secrets, the Shanghai state security authority said Thursday, according to Xinhua. An Australian, identified by the Australian government as Stern Hu, had been held along with three Chinese co-workers since Sunday, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said
A deal between mining giant Rio Tinto and Chinalco, a state-owned Chinese aluminum company, was called off after it became a hot-button issue in Australian politics. Meanwhile, Rio Tinto announced it has signed a non-binding agreement with BHP Billiton for iron ore production in Western Australia.
Eighteen months ago, when the world was awash in asset bubbles, there was perhaps no market more overheated than commodities. Prices of everything from iron ore to palm oil to corn reached dizzying heights.