'Oilfield services company Halliburton is in negotiations with the Nigerian government to keep its former CEO, Dick Cheney, out of prison, according to a news report.
Sources inside Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission told GlobalPost this week that a settlement keeping the charges against Cheney out of court could cost as much as $500 million.
Nigeria filed charges against Cheney this week in an investigation of alleged bribery estimated at $180 million. Prosecutors named both Halliburton and KBR in the charges, as well as three European oil and engineering companies -- Technip SA, EniSpa, and Saipem Construction.
The charges allege that engineering contractor KBR, until 2007 a subsidiary of Halliburton, was among companies that paid bribes to secure a $6 billion contract for a natural gas plant. KBR pleaded guilty to the same bribes in a US court in 2009, and agreed to pay a $382 million fine. The Nigerian charges appear to stem from the US case -- though, in that trial, Cheney was never directly charged.'
Read more: Halliburton May Pay $500 million to Keep Cheney out of Prison: Report
Saturday, 11 December 2010 07:48
'The deal worked out between President Obama and the Republicans to extend Bush-era tax cuts for the richest Americans is the latest demonstration of the dictatorship America’s financial aristocracy wields over the government and its policies.
The agreement will extend $150 billion in income tax savings to the wealthy over the next two years and hundreds of billions more in the form of cuts to taxes on corporate profits, capital gains, and the estates of multimillionaires.
Obama has capitulated to the demands of the financial elite, expressed openly in the solid Republican support for continuing the tax cut for the wealthy, despite large Democratic majorities in both houses of the outgoing "lame duck" Congress.'
Saturday, 11 December 2010 07:36
'Police attack on a 20-year-old student who was knocked unconscious with a police truncheon leaving him with bleeding on his brain has triggered an investigation.
The police attacked Alfie Meadows, a philosophy student at Middlesex University, during demonstrations against tuition fees rises outside Westminster Abbey when he tried to leave the scene of the protests where the police emerged to have erected cordons to prevent anyone from leaving, his mother said.
Meadows lost consciousness when being transferred to Chelsea and Westminster Hospital where he had to have a three-hour operation for brain bleeding.'
Saturday, 11 December 2010 07:27
'Criticizing the European Union's existing policy toward Israel, in a letter sent to European governments and EU institutions on Monday, former heads of states, ministers and heads of European organizations said Israel must be made to feel "the consequences" and face "a price tag" for breaking international law by expanding its Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.
They have also urged European countries to recognize a free and independent Palestinian state within the 1967 borders with East al-Quds (Jerusalem) as its capital.
"EU will not recognize any changes to the June 1967 boundaries, and clarify that a Palestinian state should be in sovereign control over territory equivalent to 100 percent of the territory occupied in 1967, including its capital in East Jerusalem (al-Quds)," the letter asked EU foreign ministers to declare to Israel.'
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