4 jailed in China

Unexpectedly harsh jail sentences of seven to 14 years for four Rio Tinto employees charged with taking bribes and stealing commercial secrets could augur tougher times for foreign companies and errant executives in China's unruly business world.
Seeking to protect its business ties from what it termed the men's "deplorable behavior," the mining giant promptly fired all four.
The court's rulings against Australian citizen Stern Hu, former manager of Rio Tinto's iron ore business in China, and three Chinese co-workers suggest authorities are taking a sterner stance toward foreign companies caught violating the country's often selectively enforced corruption code.
The 10-year sentence for Hu was "very harsh," Australia's Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said after the verdict was read out Monday by the lead judge at the Shanghai People's Intermediate Court. It was unclear whether Hu or his co-workers, who have been in custody in Shanghai since July, would appeal.
Rio Tinto, based in London and Melbourne, is a key industry negotiator in price talks with China's state-owned steel mills, and the arrests of its employees last August were initially thought linked to Beijing's anger over high prices it paid for iron ore — a key commodity for China's booming economy. That belief was shaken last week after the four pleaded guilty to taking bribes from steel mills trying to get preferential access to ore supplies.
Australia said Hu's sentence wouldn't affect ties with China, but some experts said the secrecy of parts of the trial underlined worries companies already have about doing business in a country where legal proceedings are often opaque.
The verdict also comes as other faultlines appear between Beijing and the global corporations eager to tap a fast-growing market of more than 1 billion. A recent survey showed a growing number of foreign businesses in China feel shut out under new government policies promoting homegrown technology. Internet search giant Google's high profile decision, meanwhile, to move its Chinese site to Hong Kong after a spat over censorship and hacking added to the unease.
China has chronic problems with corruption so the Rio case "is not as simple as China sending a warning message to a particular country or company" said Jin Linbo, a senior research fellow with the China Institute of International Studies. "It's time China should deal with this problem or more serious cases will emerge," Jin said.
Beijing is constantly staging anticorruption crackdowns as the ruling Communists strive to clean up an image tainted by graft scandal after graft scandal. But big foreign companies are rarely if ever targeted, making it difficult to know how widespread graft is among international business operating in China.
The stiff sentences were meant "to protect market order and the normal management of business," said the judge, Liu Xin, accusing the Rio employees of causing major losses to the Chinese steel industry.
The four defendants stood impassively as their sentences were read aloud in a hearing that foreign media were allowed to watch by closed-circuit television.
Rio Tinto, which is increasingly dependent on its business with China, issued a statement saying a probe it ordered found no wrongdoing by the company itself.
"I am determined that the unacceptable conduct of these four employees will not prevent Rio Tinto from continuing to build its important relationship with China," Chief Executive Tom Albanese said.
The court accused Hu and the others of using commercial secrets obtained by "improper means" as a bargaining chip in the ore price negotiations. As a result, more than 20 steel mills paid an extra 1.02 billion yuan ($150 million) for iron ore in 2009, the court said.
Hu was sentenced to seven years on the bribery charges and five years on the commercial secrets charges but will serve 10 years. He was fined 1 million yuan ($146,000).
The longest term of 14 years was given to Wang Yong, of which 13 years was for accepting bribes. The court's charges against Wang said he received $9 million from Du Shuanghua, a steel tycoon whose company, Rizhao, has chafed at the state-dominated pricing arrangements, setting his own agreements with overseas suppliers. Wang was fined 5.2 million yuan ($761,000).
The other two defendants, Ge Minqiang and Liu Caikui, were sentenced to jail terms of eight and seven years, respectively.
Australian officials who attended the bribery hearings believed there was substantial evidence bribery had occurred, said Smith.
Industry analysts say Chinese steel mills often seek to line up shipments from suppliers at preferential prices. The Rio Tinto case could herald a crackdown on that and other practices as the government seeks to reinforce a united front in price negotiations.
But Smith reiterated Australia's objections to the court's decision to hold closed hearings on the commercial secrets charges during the three-day trial last week, a move he said "leaves serious unanswered questions."
"Clearly the international business community has been watching and transparency and clarity on this point would have been of assistance," Smith said.
Professor Donald Rothwell of the Australian National University's College of Law said the secrecy of the trial would likely make international companies wary.
"It just reconfirms the fact that the Chinese legal system is very different to those which exist in other parts of the world," Rothwell said.
The Rio Tinto verdict mentioned several Chinese companies whose employees allegedly gave bribes to the defendants. But the choice to hold a high profile trial of the Rio Tinto employees without equally focusing on the Chinese businesses said to be involved in giving bribes undermines the authorities' message, said Alexandra Wrage, president of the nonprofit association TRACE International, which helps companies combat bribery.
"Add to this the suspicious timing of Hu's arrest, the secrecy around the trial and the limited access to the defendants and the whole thing is best characterized as a step backward for transparency, not a step forward," Wrage said.
David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
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Mexico Drug War

When black SUVs trail school buses around here, no one dismisses it as routine traffic. And when three tough-looking Mexican men pace around the high school gym during a basketball game, no one assumes they're just fans.
Fear has settled over this border town of 1,700, about 50 miles southeast of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, epicenter of that country's bloody drug war. Mexican families fleeing the violence have moved here or just sent their children, and authorities and residents say gangsters have followed them across the Rio Grande to apply terrifying, though so far subtle, intimidation.
The message: We know where you are.
At schools in Fort Hancock and nearby Texas towns, new security measures and counseling for young children of murdered parents have become a troubling part of the day.
"I have friends with fathers who've been annihilated," said Israel Morales, a junior at Fort Hancock High School. "They just hug you and start crying. It just traumatizes you."
He said school doesn't always feel safe.
"I try to be stoic," Morales said. "But it still worries the heck out of me."
Mexican drug gangs have not fired a single shot in Fort Hancock, and no one has disappeared. But as drug violence continues unabated in and around Ciudad Juarez, residents of Texas border towns fear it will spread their way.
"There's been incidents of school buses followed, and threats to some of the students and threats to some of the staff," Hudspeth County Sheriff's Lt. Robert Wilson said. "It's caused us to really go on high alert."
Three mysterious men walked into the Fort Hancock High School gymnasium last month during a basketball game, setting off worries that they were drug cartel members sent to deliver a message. Parent Maria Aguilar said "a panic" swept through the gym and only subsided when they left.
"They walked in and they were laughing," Aguilar said. "They were probably like, 'We'll just scare everybody.'"
Wilson said a suspicious car was noticed following a packed school bus earlier this year. Rumors that the car belonged to cartel members were never validated, but after other suspicious cars were spotted, the department began following buses as a precaution.
"We don't know if it was to find out where a student of a certain person he was looking for gets off, or to find out where he was living," Wilson said. "We're not sure what the motivation was. But the rumor and concern was great enough."
Schools have installed security cameras and hired an armed off-duty sheriff's deputy to patrol its three campuses for the first time.
Fort Hancock is an impoverished town of rundown homes and a single diner. Fathers of many students work as farmhands in the surrounding alfalfa and cotton fields, but most are jobless.
Aguilar said her fourth-grade daughter shares playground stories of "how so-and-so got killed in Mexico this weekend," and once asked whether a classmate's mother would be next.
One Fort Hancock High student picked up for truancy told a judge he was too scared to go to class after witnessing a murder in Mexico. Police say his mother and grandfather were tortured with ice picks last week in El Pornevir, Mexico, just across the Rio Grande from Fort Hancock. They were in critical condition in an El Paso, Texas, hospital.
The student has resumed attending classes. School administrators say dozens of fellow students also have relatives who were killed or tortured in drug violence.
"A lot of time your family is involved," said Modesta Morales, Israel's mother. "Some of the killings that happen, it's not because of the people that were killed, it's because they're trying to reach someone. If they can't find that someone, they're going to get their brothers, their sisters, their nephews, their fathers — whoever they can to try and bring that person out."
Ten miles down the road in Fabens, fliers in the teacher's lounges ask faculty to watch for a gunman wanted for four killings in Ciudad Juarez. He's the father of two boys at the middle school.
Paul Vranish, superintendent of the Tornillo school district outside El Paso, estimates that about 10 percent of his 300 students have lost a close family member in Mexico's drug war. One Tornillo High School student was gunned down in Mexico at the start of the school year while racing back to the border, Vranish said.
Tragedy becomes so routine that students shrug off counseling.
"This is like Iraq. This is part of the landscape," Vranish said. "I'm not in any way trying to put our kids down. It's not like they don't have feelings. But like a soldier, you have to develop a certain amount of callous to continue to function."
U.S. authorities say they have seen a recent uptick in asylum claims at the port of entry in Fort Hancock, and schools here are enrolling more students. At least seven new students enrolled in Fort Hancock schools in one week in March, an increase that would normally take a year or two. Texas public schools educate children regardless of immigration status.
"They told us themselves, there's more coming," said Hudspeth County Constable J.R. Sierra, who now doubles as Fort Hancock's school officer. "They're being threatened to either leave now or suffer the consequences."
Drug-related violence in Mexico has claimed 17,900 lives since President Felipe Calderon declared war on the drug gangs in December 2006. In Ciudad Juarez, more than 2,300 were killed last year alone. Powerful drug cartels have been battling not only authorities but each other for turf and drug routes.
Schools in northern Mexico have long had to figure out how to educate their children amid daily shootouts that have traumatized students and endangered staff. But American schools close to the border have been relatively serene.
Schools in metropolitan border areas like El Paso and San Diego have their own police forces, backed up by local law enforcement, as well as counselors on hand to help students. Impoverished towns including Fort Hancock and Tornillo have similar problems but fewer resources.
No U.S. schools have reported any violence tied to the drug war, and the vast majority of border districts feel safe. Even in San Ysidro, Calif., — right across the border from Tijuana — superintendent Manuel Paul said security isn't an issue despite being able to see clear into the violent city from any San Ysidro school.
Paul said he thinks Tijuana families are running further north from the violence.
But back in Fort Hancock, Modesta Morales said the violence has already come to them.
"Sometimes you feel helpless. They saw their dad shot, in the head," Morales said. "What do you tell a 10-year-old that sees that?"

David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
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"You hit ours" - NoKor

A naval mine dispatched from North Korea may have struck the South Korean warship that exploded and sank near the Koreas' disputed sea border, the defense minister told lawmakers Monday, laying out several scenarios for the maritime disaster.
Defense Minister Kim Tae-young said there was no sign of a direct attack from rival North Korea, but military authorities have not ruled out North Korean involvement in the sinking of the Cheonan late Friday night.
An explosion ripped the 1,200-ton ship apart during a routine patrol mission near Baengnyeong Island west of the peninsula. Fifty-eight crew members, including the captain, were plucked to safety; 46 remain missing.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff said the exact cause would remain unclear until the ship is salvaged after the rescue operation is over. On Monday, mothers beat their chests with grief as divers went down to search for survivors, returning to report hearing no sounds inside the underwater wreckage.
Kim, grilled by lawmakers on what happened Friday night, said the ship may have struck a mine left over from the war or deliberately dispatched from the North.
The two Koreas remain in a state of war because their three-year conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, in 1953. North Korea disputes the sea border drawn by the United Nations in 1953, and the western waters near the spot where the Cheonan went down have been the site of three bloody skirmishes between North and South.
Many of the 3,000 Soviet-made naval mines North Korea planted in the waters off both coasts during the war were removed, but not all. Kim noted a North Korean mine was discovered as recently as 1984.
North Korea may also have sent a mine floating south with the current, he said.
"North Korea may have intentionally floated underwater mines to inflict damage on us," Kim told lawmakers.
He insisted there were no South Korean mines off the west coast, and ruled out a torpedo attack from North Korea, which would have been spotted by radar.
Officials have also said an internal malfunction may be to blame. The 1,200-ton Cheonan is designed to carry weapons, and was involved in a previous skirmish with North Korea.
U.S. and South Korea military officials said there was no outward indication that North Korea was involved in the sinking of the Cheonan.
However, "neither the government nor the defense ministry has ever said there was no possibility of North Korea's involvement," Kim said.
The North Korean military was keeping a close watch on the search operation, the Joint Chiefs of Staffs said in a defense committee report cited by the Yonhap news agency.
But Pyongyang's state media have made no mention of the ship.
Earlier Friday, North Korea's military warned of "unpredictable strikes" if the U.S. and South Korea attempted to topple the regime. On Monday, a military spokesman accused the countries of engaging in "psychological warfare" by letting journalists into the Demilitarized Zone.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak urged rescuers not to give up hope.
But the prospect of pulling anyone out alive seemed dim Monday. Any navy crewmen who managed to seal themselves inside their watertight cabins would have run out of air by Monday night since the supply of oxygen in the cabins was estimated to last up to 69 hours, military officials said.
Rough waves prevented divers from gaining access to the wreckage. Divers finally reached the ship's rear segment, where most of the missing were believed trapped, on Monday. They hammered on the hull but got no response, Rear Adm. Lee Ki-sik of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told reporters.
The U.S. Navy sent four ships and a team of divers to join the search, said Lt. Anthony Falvo, a spokesman for the 7th Fleet in Japan.
Anguished relatives waited for news at a naval base in Pyeongtaek, south of Seoul, some pounding their chests with grief, others shouting their displeasure at the slow pace of the rescue.
"My baby, my baby," one mother murmured, briefly losing consciousness.
"The navy is rotten to the core!" a man yelled, lunging at soldiers standing arm in arm to block angry family members from barging into the command center.

David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
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Obama support in Building Homes

The Obama administration unveiled Monday $600 million in financial aid for five more states with high unemployment that have been slammed by the housing bust.
The funding is for North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina and Rhode Island.
It comes on top of the $1.5 billion in funding announced last month by the Obama administration for Arizona, California, Florida, Michigan and Nevada, which all have deeply depressed home prices.
After that announcement, lawmakers in other states pressed Obama officials for additional aid. Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., who was among those pushing for more help, called the funding "a smart investment that will help Rhode Island and other states that have been hit hardest by the recession."
The new money is going to housing finance agencies in states with the most people in counties with unemployment rates above 12 percent. The agencies will design programs that need to be approved by the Treasury Department.
Ohio got the largest share of funding, at $172 million, followed by North Carolina at $159 million and South Carolina at $138 million.
Oregon and Rhode Island are due to receive $88 million and $43 million respectively.
Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, called the announcement "a victory for Ohio communities."
It's the latest tactical chance for the Obama administration, which has been under pressure to do more to tackle the foreclosure crisis after its original plan fell flat. On Friday, the administration launched a plan to reduce the amount some troubled borrowers owe on their home loans and give jobless homeowners a temporary break.
Administration officials cautioned that the plan won't stop all foreclosures or help all troubled homeowners. Instead, officials said their goal is to meet their original target, announced last year, of helping 3 million to 4 million borrowers avoid foreclosure.

David Mikael Taclino
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Christian Militia in US?

Nine suspects tied to a Midwest Christian militia that was preparing for the Antichrist were charged with conspiring to kill police officers, then attack a funeral using homemade bombs in the hopes of killing more law enforcement personnel, federal prosecutors said Monday.
The Michigan-based group, called Hutaree, planned to use the attack on police as a catalyst for a larger uprising against the government, according to newly unsealed court papers. U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade said agents moved on the group because its members were planning a violent mission sometime in April.
Members of the group, including its leader, David Brian Stone, also known as "Captain Hutaree," were charged following FBI raids over the weekend on locations in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana.
The idea of attacking a police funeral was one of numerous scenarios discussed as ways to go after law enforcement officers, the indictment said. Other scenarios included a fake 911 call to lure an officer to his or her death, or an attack on the family of a police officer.
Once other officers gathered for a slain officer's funeral, the group planned to detonate homemade bombs at the funeral, killing more, according to the indictment.
After such attacks, the group allegedly planned to retreat to "rally points" protected by trip-wired improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, for what they expected would become a violent standoff with law enforcement personnel.
"It is believed by the Hutaree that this engagement would then serve as a catalyst for a more wide-spread uprising against the government," the indictment charges.
According to investigators, the Hutaree view local, state, and federal law enforcement personnel as a "brotherhood" and an enemy, and planned to attack them as part of an armed struggle against the U.S. government.
The indictment charges members of the group conspired "to levy war against the United States, (and) to oppose by force the authority of the government of the United States."
Eight suspects have been arrested by the FBI, and one more is being sought. Of the eight captured, seven were arraigned Monday in Detroit and ordered held pending a bond hearing Wednesday.
The charges against the eight include seditious conspiracy, possessing a firearm during a crime of violence, teaching the use of explosives, and attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction — homemade bombs. All seven defendants in court on Monday requested to be represented by the federal defender's office.
The arrests have dealt "a severe blow to a dangerous organization that today stands accused of conspiring to levy war against the United States," U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Monday.
Stone's ex-wife, Donna Stone, told The Associated Press before the arraignments that her former husband was to blame for pulling her son into the Hutaree movement. She said David Brian Stone legally adopted her son, David Brian Stone Jr., who is among those indicted. She said the marriage lasted about 10 years.
"It started out as a Christian thing," said Donna Stone, 44. "You go to church. You pray. You take care of your family. I think David started to take it a little too far. He dragged a lot of people with him."
Another son of David Brian Stone, Joshua Matthew Stone, also was indicted and is a fugitive, said Detroit FBI spokeswoman Sandra Berchtold.
On its Web site, Hutaree quotes several Bible passages and states: "We believe that one day, as prophecy says, there will be an Anti-Christ. ... Jesus wanted us to be ready to defend ourselves using the sword and stay alive using equipment." There's also a picture on the site of 17 camouflaged men, all holding large guns.
The group didn't return an e-mail sent by The Associated Press, and attempts by telephone to reach the Stones went unanswered.
FBI agents in Michigan swarmed a rural, wooded property Saturday evening in Adrian, about 70 miles southwest of Detroit. The same night in Hammond, Ind., law enforcement agents flooded a neighborhood, startling workers at a nearby pizzeria. And in Ohio authorities blocked off streets and raided two homes.
Outside Adrian, two ramshackle trailers sat side-by-side on Stone's property. A long gun leaned against a washing machine that sat in the yard, and on top of a nearby canister was another long gun.
Heidi Wood, who lives near the property, said Monday morning she hears gunshots "all the time."
Her mother, Phyllis Brugger, who has lived in the area for more than 30 years, said Stone and his family were known as having ties to militia. They would shoot guns and often wore camouflage, the women said.
"Everybody knew they were militia," Brugger said. "You don't mess with them."
In Hammond, 18-year-old George Ponce, who works at a pizzeria next door to a home that was raided, said he and a few co-workers stepped outside for a break Saturday night and saw a swarm of law enforcement.
"I heard a yell, 'Get back inside!' and saw a squad member pointing a rifle at us," Ponce said. "They told us the bomb squad was going in, sweeping the house looking for bombs."
He said another agent was in the bushes near the house, and law enforcement vehicles were "all over." He estimated that agents took more than two dozen guns from the house.
In Ohio, one of the raids occurred at Bayshore Estates, a well-kept trailer park in Sandusky, a small city on Lake Erie between Toledo and Cleveland. Neighbors said the man taken into custody lived in a trailer on a cul-de-sac with his wife and two young children.

David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
Creative Writer

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