TASHKENT, Uzbekistan – Uzbek migrants seeking to ply their trades in richer Central Asian neighbor Kazakhstan are in a high-stakes battle of wills with Kazakh authorities along the countries’ frontier, sparking clashes with border guards amid mounting concerns of an escalation in the political situation in this remote, oil-rich part of the world. Earlier this month, a group of some 60 Uzbek migrant laborers took a high-ranking border officer hostage after the bus carrying them into Kazakhstan was stopped. According to Interfax-Kazakhstan news agency, he was released without incident — a better fate than one of his colleagues, who drowned [...]
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia — Lust for oil can overpower a country’s democratic ideals and common sense, and the United States is not immune. Consider Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s rhetorical embrace of Equatorial Guinea’s president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, in April 2006. “You are a good friend and we welcome you,” she said. Two years earlier, the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations disclosed how Rice’s “good friend” and his family held multimillion dollar accounts, gleaned from government revenue, in Riggs Bank, which was eventually convicted of violating America’s Bank Secrecy Act. When not ripping off the state treasury, Obiang has [...]
WASHINGTON — In early August, Seattle-based Boeing, the nation’s second-largest weapons manufacturer, extended invitations to several East Coast-based online journalists to ride on a lavish Boeing corporate jet to Everett, Wash., to tour the company’s 767 airplane factory. Boeing’s aim: to win some good-will from a relatively neglected slice of the media as the company vies for one of the biggest and most important military contracts in decades. In coming months, perhaps as early as December, the U.S. Air Force will decide between Boeing and a partnership of Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman and the European firm EADS for a $40-billion [...]
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