China vs. Rio Tinto Execs: Why Confrontation Isn’t Over

When the Chinese government announced earlier this week the formal arrest of four Shanghai-based executives of global mining giant Rio Tinto — one Australian citizen and three Chinese nationals — it seemed a deliberate ratcheting down of a case that had stunned foreign investors in the country. After all, Beijing had effectively dropped the case’s most ominous element: the charge that Rio’s Stern Hu and his three colleagues had allegedly stolen “state secrets,” in part by bribing executives of Chinese steel companies, who are Rio’s largest buyers of iron ore. Under a state-secrets charge, the four men faced the prospect of a secret trial and the possibility of lifetime sentences

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46 killed, hundreds wounded in Iraq attacks

A series of bombings mostly targeting day laborers killed 46 people and wounded 215 in Iraq on Monday, the Ministry of Interior said. Opposition leaders Mir Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karrubi, along with former reformist President Mohammad Khatami, should be tried for attempting to lead a Western-backed “velvet revolution” that aimed to topple the regime, the official said. “If Moussavi, Khatami …

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Iraq: BP, Chinese win lucrative oil contract

Iraq awarded a lucrative oil contract to BP and China National Petroleum Corp., government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said Wednesday, while rejecting other companies’ offers for other oil fields. The joint BP-CNPC bid was for the al-Rumeila oil field, one of the largest in the world. The energy companies are expected to increase production at the oil field by 50 percent, to 285,000 barrels a day, for a service charge of $2 for each additional barrel produced, al-Dabbagh said in a statement

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Protests Greet Ahmadinejad Win in Iran: ‘It’s Not Possible!’

Iran’s Interior Minister announced Saturday that incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won 63.29% of the vote in the nation’s closely watched presidential poll. The announcement, greeted with widespread skepticism by Iranian opposition supporters and by foreign analysts, has brought thousands of people onto the streets where they have encountered a strong police presence and the threat of violence. Rumors of vote rigging had been flying for hours before the official announcement.

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