Free Republic

South Korean Finance Minister Jin Nyum has a lot of political capital riding on the ongoing takeover talks between United States automobile giant General Motors and bankrupt Korean carmaker Daewoo Motor. However it ends up, the hoped-for sale of Daewoo - which will be crucial to restoring confidence in the country's economic restructuring programme - will have a direct impact on more than one member of the Jin family. The minister's younger brother, Jin Sang-bum, is a long-time executive at Daewoo and is now vice-president in charge of operations at two factories in Kunsan, North Cholla province. The factories produce ...

Russia's Lukoil, Latsis Group express joint interest in Hellenic Petroleum, Yukos, OMV also interested ATHENS, Greece (AP) _ Russia's largest oil producer, Lukoil, and the Latsis Group expressed joint interest Monday for a 30 percent stake in Hellenic Petroleum, Greece's largest refiner. Yukos Oil, Russia's second biggest oil company, also expressed interest, one of the advisers to the sale said, but did not announce how large a stake it was looking at. In a joint announcement, Lukoil and the Luxembourg-based Latsis Group, owned by Greece's Latsis family, said they would set up a joint venture to acquire the stake. Paneuropean ...

A team from the World Health Organisation has arrived in Baghdad to begin research on a possible link between cancer and depleted uranium used by US-led forces in the Gulf War. The five-day mission will investigate claims by Baghdad that there has been a significant rise in cancers and birth defects since 1991. The six-member team arrived in Baghdad and met Health Ministry officials and viewed documents supporting Iraq's claims. The team leader, Abdel Aziz Saleh, an Egyptian doctor working for the WHO in Cairo, told reporters that the mission would pursue the causes of concern Iraqis raised earlier ...

Ecopetrol, PDVSA Gas and Texaco Sign Agreement to Study Gas Pipeline Interconnection Between Colombia and Venezuela Ecopetrol, the national oil company of Colombia, PDVSA Gas, an affiliate of Venezuela's national oil company and Texaco today announced the signing of a non-binding memorandum of understanding (MOU) to conduct a feasibility study to evaluate the construction of a natural gas pipeline to interconnect Colombia and Venezuela. The proposed pipeline would be approximately 200 kilometers in length and would connect Texaco's and Ecopetrol's offshore infrastructure in the Guajira region in northeast Colombia to markets in Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela. Texaco and Ecopetrol supply approximately ...

Singapore's new laws curbing political campaigning on the Internet are already causing casualties as a current affairs portal becomes the second to close down in a week. Sintercom, which runs chatrooms and a "Not ST" section as an alternative to the pro-government Straits Times newspaper, is due to pull the plug on Wednesday after eight years. "It's mainly a personal decision. I'm just too tired to go on," Sintercom's editor Tan Chong Kee said. "Logistically it was impossible to continue," he said, adding he was "a little disappointed" with the new rules. Under a bill passed last Monday to amend ...

HANOI -- When the entire e-mail system suddenly went dark throughout Vietnam last month, the government-owned agency that administers the Internet told its subscribers not to panic: The disruption was caused by routine maintenance on the country's firewall. Vietnam and other Asian governments have installed nationwide firewalls, or electronic filters, that keep Internet users from connecting to Web sites that the regimes consider politically, religiously or sexually offensive. But one of the principal custodians and censors of the Vietnamese firewall now acknowledges his wall is overmatched and doomed. "Control through the firewall is no longer effective," said Do Quy Doan, ...

Story Filed: Tuesday, August 07, 2001 12:57 PM EST BEIJING (Reuters) - Investigators have sacked three local officials and suspended two more over a mining accident that left at least 81 missing and feared dead in the southwestern region of Guangxi, the Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday. "The investigation team into the July 17 Nandan mine flood claimed after investigation that the top officials of Nandan County were responsible for the flooding of mines,' the official news agency said. Earlier, Chinese police said they had detained 15 people suspected of trying to cover up the accident at a tin ...

03 August 2001 Text: U.S. Business Executives, Yugoslav Officials Meet in Washington (Aug. 3: To discuss investment opportunities in Yugoslavia) (820) Business executives from AOL-Time Warner, Motorola, Caterpillar, and the Marriott corporations joined visiting Yugoslav officials in Washington August 3 to discuss potential U.S. investment opportunities in the Balkan country. The event was sponsored by the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), an agency of the U.S. government that provides financing and political risk insurance to American companies investing in emerging markets. "Our intention today was to allow our guests from Yugoslavia to make their own case for their country ...

Freedom of Expression and the Internet in China A Human Rights Watch Backgrounder INTERNET IN CHINA As the Internet industry continues to expand in China, the government continues to tighten controls on on-line expression. As recently as July 11, 2001, President Jiang Zemin condemned the spread of "pernicious information" on the Net and called existing legislation "inadequate." (1) Since 1995, when Chinese authorities began permitting commercial Internet accounts, at least sixty sets of regulations have been issued aimed at controlling Internet content. The broadly-worded regulations represent a clear violation of the right to freedom of expression, and the government is ...

Story Filed: Monday, July 30, 2001 2:27 AM EST BAGHDAD, Jul 30, 2001 (AFX-UK via COMTEX) -- Oil Minister Amer al-Rashid said yesterday that the planned 2.5 bln usd 1,380 kilometer gas pipeline transporting Iraqi natural gas to Turkey will be linked to the east European and Russian network. "We decided with Turkey to extend, in a second stage, the pipeline coming from eastern Europe and Russia," Rashid told Iraqi television. "This project is important as Turkey suffers from a real energy crisis, and it is within its rights to diversify its gas supply," added the minister, who has just ...

BOISE, Idaho--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 24, 2001 via NewsEdge Corporation - Washington Group International (NYSE:WNG) today announced that it has received a letter of intent from Carbones de la Guajira, S.A. to provide management services at a coal mine in northern Venezuela. Under the letter of intent, Washington Group will provide key management personnel and engineering support for Carbones de la Guajira's Mina Norte Mine, an operation with an annual production potential of at least 1.2 million tonnes of high-quality coal. The Mina Norte Mine produced some 900,000 tonnes of coal in 2000. Washington Group's goal is to increase production to a ...

Chicago, April 4 (BridgeNews) - Lucent Technologies received a multi-million dollar pact from China Unicom. Under the terms of the pact Lucent will provide the telecom service operator with its CDMA wireless technology. --Blue Derkin, BridgeNews * * * The following is the text of today's announcement, with emphasis added by BridgeNews. BridgeStation users will find links to company data at the end: Lucent Technologies Signs a Four-Million-Line CDMA Wireless Contract With China Unicom --- The Largest CDMA Contract Ever in China Business/Technology Editors BEIJING--(BUSINESS WIRE)--MAY 15, 2001--LUCENT TECHNOLOGIES (NYSE: LU) ANNOUNCED TODAY THAT CHINA UNICOM, THE SECOND LARGEST TELECOM ...

New York, April 9 (BridgeNews) - U.S. prosecutors are stepping up a probe into whether Exxon Mobil Corp. flouted the U.S. trade embargo against Iran, the Wall Street Journal's online edition reported Monday. Investigators are subpoenaing records and questioning former executives to examine whether Mobil, before its merger with Exxon, had a role in a deal in which Kazakhstan oil was sent to northern Iran in return for Iranian oil delivered in the Persian Gulf. The report said that even though the oil was ostensibly controlled by Kazakhstan, the U.S. Justice Department and the Customs Service are looking at whether ...

Summary Seoul’s fledgling space program has accelerated with a move to abandon a 1979 agreement with Washington that limited missile development. Motivated by economic, security and nationalistic concerns, Seoul is pursuing a highly indigenous space program – one that could defend the peninsula while lessening Seoul’s dependency on the United States. South Korea’s late entry into Northeast Asia’s space race will spur commercial competition and may trigger increased regional missile proliferation. Ironically, the problem may not be so much North Korea as South Korea. Analysis In mid-January, South Korea announced it intends to join the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) ...

GENEVA (AP) -- Rounds of depleted uranium fired by NATO warplanes in Kosovo two years ago contained deadly plutonium, but at ``very low'' levels that pose no health risks, U.N. officials said Friday. Laboratories in Switzerland and Sweden found ``traces'' of plutonium on four spent rounds of ammunition collected by a U.N. team in November, the U.N. Environment Program said. ``The amount of plutonium found in the depleted uranium penetrators is very low and does not have any significant impact on their overall radioactivity,'' the U.N. statement said. The U.N. team is trying to determine whether any danger could be ...