CHINA

Lonely this Christmas? Spare a thought for Beijing's billionaires.

Glencore issued $2.2 billion of convertible bonds, bringing the secretive employee-owned Swiss commodities trader closer to a public listing and valuing it at about $35 billion.

Research In Motion's Blackberry users in North America suffered another outage with their e-mail service, just a week after another outage hit the company. Late Tuesday night, RIM confirmed that its BlackBerry service had suffered its second e-mail outage in five days.

Russia has agreed to sell Myanmar 20 MiG-29 jets for 400 million euro ($572.2 million), the Vedomosti daily reported on Wednesday, citing unidentified sources in Russia's defence industry.

The grouping of China, India, Brazil and South Africa has emerged as a significant force in Copenhagen and they could lead the way in future negotiations, the head of the U.N. climate panel said on Wednesday.

A self sustaining recovery?; Elderly care with doubts; China's Swedish auto push;

One of China's most prominent dissidents, Liu Xiaobo, fought subversion charges at a trial on Wednesday that drew an outcry from local activists and foreign governments angered by Beijing's crackdown on political dissent.

On December 14, 2009, an inauguration took place that deserves more attention than it received because it marks an economic power shift to the benefit of three Central Asian countries and China and to the detriment of Russia.

China's automakers Geely and BAIC pushed ahead with plans to harness the technology of Ford's and General Motors' ailing Swedish brands Volvo and Saab in a bid to be global industry players.

U.S. carmaker Ford said it expected to close a deal to sell Volvo Cars to China's Zhejiang Geely in the second quarter of 2010, in the latest in a string of deals between Asian and Western carmakers.

Ford Motor Co and China's Geely are set to report progress as soon as Wednesday in talks to sell Ford's Volvo unit to the Chinese automaker, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said.

Just days after countries agreed to a last minute agreement at the UN climate talks in Copenhagen, accusations are beginning to fly over who was responsible for what many consider a poor agreement.

Next year will be crucial for global nuclear non-proliferation efforts and all eyes will be on the United States and Russia to see if the two top atomic powers can reach a deal to reduce their arsenals.

Commercial Metals Co (CMC.N) posted a first-quarter loss, hurt by lower steel demand and prices at its Americas fabrication and distribution segment, and expects the second quarter to be in line with the current quarter's results.

China CNR Corp (601299.SS), one of the country's two big train makers, has priced its A-share initial public offering at 5.56 yuan a share, the top of an indicated range, raising 13.9 billion yuan ($2.04 billion).

Fiat may offer to raise car production in Italy 50 percent when it holds preliminary talks with the government on Tuesday, in return for tax breaks on some car sales and possible help in reducing labour costs.

China condemned claims ascribed to Britain's climate change minister that it had hijacked negotiations in Copenhagen, saying on Tuesday the accusations were an attempt to sow discord among poor countries.

When A-Power Energy Generation Systems secured a deal to supply turbines for a U.S. wind farm project in October, the little-known Chinese firm had an ace up its sleeve to help it clinch the deal.

China has issued new Internet regulations, including what appears to be an effort to create a whitelist of approved websites that could potentially place much of the Internet off-limits to Chinese readers.

France will continue to use data stolen from a Geneva private bank in its drive against tax evasion, its budget minister said on Tuesday, a day after French officials agreed to return the client lists to Switzerland.

U.S. stock index futures pointed to a higher open on Wall Street on Tuesday, with futures for the S&P 500 up 0.28 percent, Dow Jones futures up 0.27 percent and Nasdaq 100 futures up 0.51 percent at 3:40 a.m. EST.