The following contains excerpts of a recent article published by Financial Times correspondent Joe Leahy, based in São Paulo: The Brazilian ministry of development, trade and industry is investigating claims by Brazilian cellphone producers that their Chinese counterparts are dumping cheap handsets on the market. The intense rate of importation of what the Ministry believes [...]

The following, penned in Arab Newsby Kazakhstan Foreign Minister Yerzhan Kazykhanov, is an intriguing recommendation that Muslims should address misperceptions in the world about the nature of their religion, in light of the nation taking on the role of chairing the 57-country Organization of Islamic Cooperation. “…We did so because we saw an important opportunity [...]

Rio Tinto may have been the victim of the costliest bounced cheque in history, US diplomatic cables have revealed. Documents obtained by WikiLeaks and examined by The Times indicate that the miner lost control of one of the world’s largest iron ore deposits after a rival paid a $US7 million ($6.4bn) bribe to officials in [...]

Free Democrats leader Irakli Alasania has called on Georgia’s government to loosen restrictions on broadcast media in the country and reverse the trend of controlling content on television stations with national reach. “We strongly support the recent statement of the Georgian Media Advocacy Coalition which asked the government to disclose more facts in the troubling [...]

Europe has led the world in the practice of democracy. It is therefore worrying that the dangers to democratic governance today, coming through the back door of financial priority, are not receiving the attention they should. There are profound issues to be faced about how Europe’s democratic governance could be undermined by the hugely heightened [...]

It was inevitable that as the prospect of shale gas extraction in Europe, and especially Poland, becomes more realistic, so the voices of protest would emerge. On Marek Matraszek’s FromtheFront.net, he writes that shale has the consequence of undermining Gazprom’s entire business model, which is indeed dependent on being the dominant supplier of natural gas [...]

The international human rights organization Human Rights Watch says Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), led by Morgan Tsvangirai, has no capacity to stop rampant human rights abuses in Zimbabwe as it “lacks real power to institute its political agenda.” According to the rights group report released on Monday—headlined “World Report 2011”— Tsvangirai’s MDC has failed [...]

Corruption charges against one of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s most loyal political advisers provided the latest evidence of deep rifts within the Iranian president’s own conservative political camp. The challenge by Ahmadinejad’s rivals — one of them the head of the judiciary — could set the tone for a bitter fight leading up to the next big [...]

Top secret dispatches by former United States ambassador to Zimbabwe Christopher Dell have been leaked by a website in a development which will undoubtedly further strain relations between the US and Zanu PF; what bodes ill in the long-term is that the dispatches further jeopardize ties with the MDC. In the dispatches sent before his [...]

Venezuela is a nation in corporate disarray and as such, it makes those who choose to invest look alarmingly arrogant. Despite the intentions of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his socialist ‘nationalization’ regime to all those who oppose, BusinessWeek has reported that Venezuela’s biggest private company says it will boost investment next year and is [...]