CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez will discuss plans with Dominica for a $80 million oil refinery on the island during his upcoming Caribbean trip, the government said.

The proposed facility would be able to process up to 10,000 barrels a day and have enough capacity for Dominica to also export refined oil, the government said in a statement Thursday.

‘The refinery will satisfy internal demand and produce a surplus for exportation from the island,’ Rodolfo Sanz, foreign vice minister for the Latin America and the Caribbean, was quoted as saying.

Venezuela, responding to recent environmental concerns that have cropped up in Dominica about the refinery, said its state oil company has conducted studies showing that there will be no environmental impact.

Chavez travels to Dominica on Friday and St. Vincent and the Grenadines on Saturday.

Chavez will also review some $150 million in cooperative projects with Dominica, including a protective marine barrier and $8 million in financing to build homes, Sanz said.

Dominican Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit and his counterpart from St. Vincent, Ralph Gonsalves, will also sign agreements with Chavez pledging to propose closer cooperation between the Caribbean Community and a left-leaning bloc, known as ALBA, founded by Chavez and his Cuban ally, Fidel Castro.

Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Securities and Exchange Commission has completed an investigation of Gradient Analytics Inc. and is taking no action against the research firm in a case that created a furor last year over the SEC’s subpoenaing of journalists.

Gradient and an SEC official said Wednesday that the investigation has been closed. The agency began its probe in late 2005 after online discount retailer Overstock.com Inc. accused Gradient in a lawsuit of issuing negative research reports on the company in exchange for payments from a hedge fund seeking to profit from a drop in its stock price.

Overstock Chairman and Chief Executive Patrick Byrne publicly accused Gradient and the hedge fund, Rocker Partners, of contributing to the decline of Overstock shares through biased reports as the fund was short-selling the stock.

In the course of its inquiry, the SEC subpoenaed three online financial columnists last February for telephone records, e-mails and other material related to Salt Lake City-based Overstock.

The SEC also investigated allegations by Biovail Corp., Canada’s biggest drug maker, that Gradient conspired with short sellers — using biased research reports — to drive down the price of Biovail’s stock.

Gradient made public Wednesday a letter from SEC enforcement official Marc Fagel informing Gradient’s attorneys that the investigation had been terminated without any enforcement action being recommended by the agency staff.

Fagel confirmed in a telephone interview that the inquiry had been closed. He declined to comment further.

‘We are not surprised by the SEC decision,’ Gradient’s president and CEO, Brad Forst, said in a statement. ‘We believe our business conduct has always been conducted with integrity. We cooperated fully with the SEC to demonstrate that we have nothing to hide.’

Said Byrne, the Overstock CEO: ‘We look forward to conducting our own investigation once we get discovery.’ He was referring to the process preceding trials in which the parties can obtain relevant information and documents that are potentially helpful to making their case.

Biovail, in a statement, said the SEC’s move does not affect its lawsuit in New Jersey state court against Gradient and other defendants, from whom it is seeking $4.6 billion in damages. ‘Based on the facts already known to Biovail, it remains confident in the merit of its allegations and of the ultimate success of its claims,’ the company said.

The SEC subpoenas — to Herb Greenberg of MarketWatch, Carol Remond of Dow Jones Newswires and James Cramer, writer of a column for TheStreet.com — came at a time of acute sensitivity over press freedom and government action against journalists, and from a regulatory agency with only civil powers that rarely subpoenas journalists or news organizations.

The SEC’s second subpoena to Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Gradient demanded records related to its contacts with journalists.

The journalists’ employers objected to the subpoenas, and First Amendment advocates publicly criticized the SEC move.

In late February, SEC Chairman Christopher Cox took the unusual step of halting the agency’s pursuit of the subpoenas. He said SEC enforcement attorneys should have consulted him because of the sensitivity of ordering journalists to hand over records.

In April, the SEC announced a new policy on subpoenaing journalists, calling for the agency to avoid issuing subpoenas ‘that might impair the news gathering and reporting functions.’ Under the new guidelines, any subpoena issued to a journalist must be approved by the SEC’s enforcement director.

Rocker Partners wasn’t the only big investor taking a bearish short position in Overstock’s shares, but Overstock filed affidavits from three former Gradient employees alleging that Rocker asked the researchers to include ‘more negative information’ in reports on Overstock and to ‘downplay any positive facts.’ One of them also contended that some reports were withheld for a time so Rocker could make trades in the stock.

In short selling, which is legal, traders sell stock they have borrowed. They then wait for the share price to fall, buy back the shares and return the loan, pocketing the difference.

But Byrne, the Overstock CEO, alleged that his company was a victim of illegal ‘naked shorting,’ in which traders sell stock they haven’t actually borrowed in a bid to damage public companies.

—-

Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) – Americans’ love of chocolate has become a dark and bittersweet affair, and it took a former vintner to make it so.

John Scharffenberger and Robert Steinberg launched the first U.S. chocolate manufacturing company in half a century, drawing heavily on Scharffenberger’s refined palate and his past as a maker of sparkling wines.

Together, they set out to do for dark chocolate what fellow Californian Robert Mondavi had done for wine — demystify, democratize and domesticate it.

Call it kismet, uncanny timing or creative chemistry, but in the 11 years since co-founding Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker they have watched the public’s appetite for gourmet chocolate expand from a Valentine’s Day extravagance to an everyday indulgence.

‘We have gone through a food revolution in this country,’ said Scharffenberger. Just as Americans have become more sophisticated about wine, whole-bean coffee, artisan cheeses and other products that once were the luxury of certified foodies have been mainstreamed to the masses.

‘The one thing that remained to be done was chocolate, and that’s what we hit on,’ Scharffenberger said.

Like the label of a fine wine, the wrapper on a Scharffen Berger chocolate tells you exactly what’s inside. It was the first U.S. chocolatier to feature the cacao count prominently on its wrappers — the higher the number, the darker and more bitter the chocolate. And the source of the beans is also noted, for those who like knowing whether their chocolate got its start in Madagascar, Ecuador, Ghana or Peru.

Scharffen Berger bars now are prominently displayed in the checkout lines of grocers like Trader Joe’s, Andronico’s and Whole Foods.

Yet venerable players like Reading, Pa.-based Godiva Chocolatier Inc., part of The Campbell Soup Co., and San Francisco’s Ghirardelli Chocolate Co. jump-started the trend, said Marcia Mogelonsky, an analyst with the market research firm Mintel International. They popularized fancy chocolates with upscale, single-serving packaging, wider distribution and savvy marketing, she said.

Even The Hershey Co., the name synonymous with American chocolate, has invested heavily in premium chocolate, showing it is more than a fad, she said. Besides buying Scharffen Berger 1 1/2 years ago, the company has introduced its own line of premium chocolate bars and late last year purchased Ashland, Ore.-based Dagoba Organic Chocolate.

Between 2003 and 2005, U.S. sales of premium chocolates went from $1.4 billion to $1.79 billion, according to Mogelonsky. While it still represents only a fraction of the overall $15.7 billion chocolate market, the growth rate for the good stuff has been much faster — 28 percent over the three-year period compared to annual rates of 2 to 3 percent for the industry as a whole.

‘People were ready for a change,’ said Mogelonsky. She relates the trend to Americans’ growing self-indulgence.

‘I can’t afford a mink and a diamond, but I can afford a piece of really good chocolate,’ she said.

As with wine and coffee, the origin of premium chocolate has increasingly become a selling point. And consumers have also responded to manufacturers’ efforts to tout their relationships with growers in the developing countries where cacao typically comes from, she said.

The quality and quantity of cacao in a bar or bonbon is what distinguishes fine chocolate from the coating on a Snicker’s, according to Scharffenberger, who personally oversees the blending of 30 varieties of beans that go into the company’s products and visits the ranches in Guatemala, Madagascar and other countries where it secures supplies.

‘We aren’t creating flavors that are earth-shattering, just delicious,’ he said.

The Food and Drug Administration requires milk chocolate to contain at least 10 percent cacao, but Scharffen Berger’s milk chocolate contains a whopping 41 percent. Its darkest dark chocolate, 82 percent.

Before Scharffenberger and Steinberg set up shop, California already was home to plenty of chocolate makers — both high-end and pedestrian. Besides Ghirardelli, they include Glendale-based Nestle USA, Guittard Chocolate Co. in Burlingame, Joseph Schmidt Confections, which also was bought out by Hershey’s last year, and See’s Candies in Carson.

The growth has been steady enough that by 2000 California had edged out Pennsylvania, home of Hershey’s, to become the nation’s chocolate capital. In 2004, the last year for which figures were available, California had 136 companies churning out chocolate and cocoa products compared to Pennsylvania’s 122, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Besides its reputation as a food snob’s paradise, there is a practical reason the San Francisco Bay area, in particular, has emerged as the heart of chocolate activity: the consistent, moist climate, according to Scharffenberger.

‘It’s a pain to make chocolate when it’s hot,’ he said.

Like a winery, the company offers tours of its Berkeley factory where participants — about 40,000 of them a year — receive morsels of chocolate trivia along with free samples. On a recent morning, a tour group learned, for example, that cacao beans are technically a fruit, that dark chocolate tastes better melted on the tongue instead of chewed, and that the actual cacao content of white chocolate is zero.

Adrienne Newman, an aspiring chocolatier from Austin, Texas, was taking the tour for the third time after making chocolate ‘a full-time hobby.’ Over the holidays, she took her boyfriend to Switzerland so she could taste the local wares, and she mail orders chocolate from new companies whose products she wants to try.

For a long time, she could still enjoy a Hershey’s bar, Newman said, but no more.

‘I’m beyond that,’ she said. ‘After three years of tasting exquisite stuff, there is no going back.’

Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

CHARLESTON, S,C. (AP) – A lawsuit challenging a book’s account of the 1989 turret explosion that killed 47 sailors aboard the USS Iowa was settled out of court though neither side would discuss the details.

The agreement ends a six-year legal fight over the book ‘A Glimpse of Hell: The Explosion on the USS Iowa and Its Cover-Up.’ Several of the ship’s former officers sued, claiming the account defamed them and was filled with factual errors.

Both sides refused to discuss the settlement terms reached Monday. The book’s publisher, W.W. Norton & Co., issued a letter to the ship’s former officers.

‘To the extent you believe the book implies that any of you were engaged in a cover-up, were incompetent, committed criminal acts, violated Naval regulations or exhibited faulty seamanship or professional ineptitude, Norton regrets the emotional distress experienced by you or your family,’ Norton President W. Drake McFeely said in the letter.

The 1999 book by Charles C. Thompson II, a former producer for CBS’ ’60 Minutes,’ contends the ship was an ‘accident looking for a place to happen.’
The turret explosion occurred during a live firing drill in the Caribbean. The cause has never been determined.

Stephen F. DeAntonio, an attorney representing the ship’s officers, said they ‘feel totally vindicated.’

‘Throughout all the investigations and media coverage of the explosion, no mainstream media came close to reporting the defamatory allegations contained in the book,’ he said.

The case was pursued in Charleston because DeAntonio practices locally and successfully argued to have the lawsuit heard in South Carolina.

The Navy initially said that one of the dead sailors intentionally set a charge to explode in the turret because he was upset over a failed homosexual relationship with another sailor.

Four-star Adm. Frank Kelso later retracted the story and apologized to the sailor’s family.

Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

ROME – Italian police arrested five people Monday, including a local British Gas manager, in a corruption probe into the construction in southern Italy of a gas plant by BG Group PLC.

The five were arrested at dawn by police across Italy, and include the current chairman of BG Italia, the group’s Italian arm, and two former managers, according to financial police in the southern port town of Brindisi.

Prosecutors believe chairman Franco Fassio, former chairman Yvonne Barton and former CEO Fabio Fontana paid bribes to local administrators to speed up the go-ahead for the construction of the liquefied natural gas terminal in Brindisi, police Maj. Massimiliano Tibollo said.

Barton, who is British, and Fontana were placed under house arrest, while Fassio was jailed along with a former Brindisi mayor and a local businessman. Police also conducted 52 searches across Italy and seized the terminal’s construction site, Tibollo said.

The Italian government authorized the project in 2003 and the British gas company had previously said it planned to start up the terminal in 2009.

‘As far as we are concerned we had the full and valid authorization,’ BG spokesman Neil Burrows said.

He said Barton left the company in 2002 and Fontana in 1999, but had no details on the circumstances of their departure.

BG had cooperated with the Italian probe and would continue to do so, Burrows said, adding that the company had received a document relating to the investigation from Italian authorities which it was reviewing.

Burrows said it was too early to comment on Fassio’s future with the company.

Local authorities have fiercely opposed the Brindisi terminal, which the government insists is needed to reduce Italy’s dependence on oil and boost its capacity to import gas.

Italy suffered a gas shortage last winter after a Russian price dispute with Ukraine led to a cut in supplies to some European countries. Terminals like the one planned in Brindisi increase supply by converting back into gaseous form liquid gas that is brought in by ships.

‘If we want to go ahead with gas we need the infrastructure, and a reasonable number of these plants must be built in Italy,’ Industry Minister Pier Luigi Bersani said.

Italian energy analyst Davide Tabarelli said the case is likely to scare away foreign companies wishing to invest in Italian infrastructure, particularly in the underdeveloped south, he said.

‘British Gas was ready for this investment and it was an investment that would have benefited Italy,’ he said. ‘It just doesn’t work. It will be another terrible example of an attempted investment in Italy.’

___

Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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jfr

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ALBUQUERQUE (AFX) – The Navajo Nation believes a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ruling that a 160-acre parcel near Church Rock is ‘Indian Country’ gives the tribe a stronger position to fight uranium mining in the area.

The tribe banned uranium mining and processing on its land in 2005, but companies have been trying to revive it, particularly on the eastern side of the reservation and in the Church Rock area, commonly referred to as the checkerboard of Indian and non-Indian land.

New Mexico-based Hydro Resources Inc., which owns the surface and mineral rights, wants to inject chemicals into the ground to release uranium and pump the solution to the surface in a process called in situ leaching.

The EPA’s decision, released Wednesday, means Hydro Resources would have to apply for an underground injection control permit from the EPA, not the state of New Mexico as it previously had done.

‘This is a wonderful decision for the Church Rock community in particular and the Navajo Nation in general in support of efforts to stop any future mining on the Navajo Nation,’ said David Taylor, senior attorney with the Navajo Department of Justice’s Natural Resources Unit.

‘The EPA decision is a first step in what may very well be a long and drawn out legal fight, but it’s always good to win the first battle,’ he said.

The EPA’s decision doesn’t specifically state it will consider the ban when receiving applications for mining-related permits, but Taylor said, ‘We are certainly hoping they will.’

The tribe wants the EPA to make the determination, rather than the state, because under laws and court decisions, ‘the United States has a much higher obligation to protect the interests of Native Americans than the states,’ Taylor said.

Hydro Resources argued in comments to the EPA last year that no part of the land, known as Section 8, is reservation, tribal trust or allotted land, nor has it ever been set aside by the federal government for use as Indian land.

‘Each and every acre of the Section 8 land in question is fee land, the surface and locatable mineral estates of which are owned by HRI as a result of a patent from the United States. There is no dispute on these matters,’ Hydro Resources officials wrote.

A woman who answered the phone at Hydro Resources president Craig Bartels’ home phone Thursday night said he would be unavailable for comment until Saturday.

In the late 1980s, the state Environment Department granted Hydro Resources an underground injection control permit for the property 10 miles northeast of the Church Rock Chapter house.

After considering materials submitted by the Navajo Nation and the state, the EPA determined that the land’s status was in dispute, and said it would be the appropriate agency to issue the permit.

The state and Hydro Resources challenged that decision in 1997 and petitioned for judicial review.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver upheld the EPA in 2000 and said the agency must rule on the status of the land. The EPA did not immediately respond, thinking Hydro Resources no longer planned to pursue a permit.

The company, however, sought a permit from New Mexico in 2005 to operate a uranium in situ leach mine. The state asked the EPA to make a decision on the status of the land.
Chris Shuey, director of uranium impact assessment for the Albuquerque-based Southwest Research and Information Center, said the implications of the EPA’s decision ‘can go a long, long way.’

For example, Hydro Resources has a 320-acre parcel near Crownpoint on which it plans to place its main uranium processing plant and conduct in situ leach mining, Shuey said. Some 95 percent of the population there is Navajo and receives services from the Crownpoint Chapter.

The EPA considered the makeup of the population and the services the community receives from the Navajo Nation in its decision.

‘If those facts are the same for those other parcels in the middle of Indian communities, those areas should also be Indian Country,’ Shuey said.

Navajo President Joe Shirley Jr. said Thursday mining companies’ lack of respect in the past has caused many Navajos to become ill and die from exposure to uranium ore.

‘I hope this means that there will be no more uranium mining on Navajo land and in what we regard as Navajo country,’ he said. ‘I’m happy for my people residing in the eastern portion of Navajo land and very happy for my government.’

Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

LONDON (AFX) – Frank Chapman, chief executive of BG Group PLC, said the long-delayed Brindisi liquefied natural gas terminal project in Italy is progressing and is likely to come on stream in 2010.

‘The project is proceeding,’ he told reporters at a briefing after the group’s annual results.

He added BG has already are claimed 80 pct of the land’ it needs for the terminal, located at the Brindisi port on the south-east coast of the country.

The facility is likely to be operational ‘at around 2010’ at an increased budget of about 500 mln eur, he told AFX News after the briefing.

BG originally thought the terminal — the first of its kind in Italy — would only require 390 mln eur to build and would be operational by 2007.

Construction work was delayed by environmental issues raised by the local authorities. Enel SpA, BG’s partner in the project, withdrew in 2005, leaving BG the sole owner of the 6-mln-tonne-a-year plant.

Chapman said the terminal has secured all the required ecological permits and BG has not been informed of the Italian government’s decision to re-open the permitting process for the project.

Even if it turns out to be true, he said the government’s action will have ‘no effect whatsoever on the validity of our existing authorisation.’

‘The project continues to enjoy strong support form the EU,’ he added.

Late last year, the Italian government decided to review the permits after the European Commission, it claimed, found BG’s environmental impact assessment report inadequate.

Turning to Kazakhstan, Chapman said the third phase of the Karachaganak gas project has been expanded and will cost around 8 bln usd in total.

BG and Italian partner ENI are joint operators of the field, each with a 32.5 pct stake, while Chevron Corp holds 20 pct and LukOil 15 pct.

The Karachaganak field is believed to be holding over 2.3 bln barrels of oil equivalent, making it one of the world’s largest gas reservoirs.

The third phase, which will start production in 2012, is targeting gas sales of up to 16 bln cubic metres per annum, added Chapman.

Construction of the fourth train in Karachaganak has been sanctioned by the consortium. The train will need 1 bln usd to build and will be operational in 2009, he said.

The gas from the Karachaganak field will be supplied to Russian gas monopoly Gazprom.

monicca.egoy@thomson.com

mbe/slm

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Copyright AFX News Limited 2006. All rights reserved.

The copying, republication or redistribution of AFX News Content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of AFX News.

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