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which plans to locate in the Lowndes County industrial park. State Sen. Terry Brown, R-Columbus, told The Associated Press that the new jobs could pay between $40,000 and $50,000 per year.

An additional $100 million package is being considered for HCL CleanTech, a bio-technology company, which plans to build its headquarters in Olive Branch and construct a research and development center in Grenada. Three additional plants would be located in Booneville, Hattiesburg and Natchez. That project would create 800 jobs with an average salary of $67,000 plus benefits.

east of Industrial Park Road, directly behind Mitchell Beer Distributing, on 250-260 acres, said Joe Higgins, CEO of the Columbus-Lowndes Development Link

Chinese mining company

China National Offshore Oil Cor

Relicensing is a complex process in which private dams are re-evaluated every 30 to 50 years. The Federal Energy Regulatory Committee "considers anew whether it is appropriate to commit the public's river resources for private power generation FERC is now required, when deciding whether to issue a license, to consider not only the power generation potential of a river, but also to give equal consideration to energy conservation, protection of fish and wildlife, protection of recreational opportunities, and preservation of other aspects of environmental quality." Relicensing was infrequent until 1993, when hundreds of licenses began to expire. "The Hydropower Reform Coalition formed in 1992 to take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to restore river ecosystems through the relicensing process." To the Coalition's dismay, a new bill is being considered called the Hydroelectric Licensing Process Improvement Act, which if passed, "would limit the abilities of federal agencies to protect natural resources," making relicensing easier for dam operators.

Beijing will use its foreign exchange reserves, the largest in the world, to support and accelerate overseas expansion and acquisitions by Chinese companies, Wen Jiabao, the country’s premier, said in comments published on Tuesday.

“Everyone is saying we should go to the western markets to scoop up [underpriced assets],” said Chen Yuan. “I think we should not go to America’s Wall Street, but should look more to places with natural and energy resources.”

As cheap as many American assets may look right now, it's difficult to argue with the Chinese strategy.

 In recent years, the "go-out" process of central government-owned enterprises has been accelerated, and CHINALCO has been a star in the "go-out" drama of the central government-owned enterprises. Following is an interview with CHINALCO Party Secretary and President Xiong Weiping ——

This marks another major step forward for CHINALCO down the road of developing resources overseas.

We tried to get aligned to the leading international companies, and also approached the best private companies in China to learn from them. We reformed our management system and management structure. We changed our practices in selecting leaders

They reproduced a letter from one such hedge fund, Jana Holdings, which read: "Given Alcoa's long history of failing to generate shareholder value through acquisitions, we believe that its greatest value can be realised through a sale or break-up of the company." "Marketplace valuations on reserves and resources are ridiculously cheap across the mining commodity spectrum," says Renken. "Hence the pressure on Alcoa's board to 'make things happen' corporately to get a better valuation on their own shares."

Yet this new strategy is taking the shape of a formula of “loans-for-energy,” which involves a mix of state-owned and private actors.

Put more of China’s $2 trillion foreign reserves into hard assets -- Zhang Guobao, vice minister of the National Development and Reform Commission and head of the NEA, had pointed out in a signed article published in December 2008 in the People’s Daily (a strong indication of being authoritative statements of government policy) that China should seize the timing of the oil price slump on the  international market to increase imports and Chinese enterprises are encouraged by the government to expand overseas (China Daily, March 9).

Alcoa has taken what were high-tech, good-paying auto parts manufacturing jobs and reduced them to the lowest rung sweatshop production, replete with gross human rights violations, starvation wages and total lack of respect for workers' legal rights.  At least this is the case at Alcoa's four wire harness manufacturing plants in the El Porvenir Free Trade Zone in Honduras.

We were told that when companies like Alcoa, with their higher tech jobs, enter the developing world, wages, benefits and working conditions would all improve, notching up standards across the country.   Certainly this has not been the case with Alcoa's auto parts production in Honduras, which is actually lowering standards and even undercutting low-end garment sweatshops.

If Alcoa-a Fortune 500 company-can step on Honduran law and treat the government like a Banana Republic, then the race to the bottom in the global sweatshop economy will have reached new lows.  If Alcoa can so blatantly ignore the U.S.-Central America Free Trade Agreement and ignore the treaty's worker rights provisions as just so many words on useless pieces of paper-then we need to revisit and renegotiate CAFTA, for something is seriously wrong.

“In Durban, I expect governments to find a way forward for the Kyoto Protocol so we can make a broader comprehensive climate agreement possible,” said Mr. Ban in remarks prepared for delivery to an event on climate change organized by the mission of the United Kingdom to the UN.

Mr. Ban urged governments to launch the Green Climate Fund, which was established last year in Cancun, Mexico. “But it must not be an empty shell – a fund in name only. Governments must provide the $100 billion that was pledged. This would be a welcome concrete outcome at Durban.”