Business in brief: China says Rio Tinto stole data

BEIJING – Four employees of miner Rio Tinto Ltd. detained on spying charges are accused of bribing Chinese steel company managers to obtain secret information on China’s position in talks on iron ore prices, state media said today.

The four employees were detained Sunday while Rio was negotiating on behalf of global iron ore suppliers in talks with Chinese mills. The government said Thursday they are accused of stealing state secrets. They include an Australian citizen, Stern Hu, the Shanghai-based manager of Rio’s Chinese iron ore business.

Australian diplomats were to meet with Hu today for the first time since his detention, according to Foreign Minister Stephen Smith. The other detainees are Chinese citizens.

Rio, the world’s third-largest mining company, is acting as lead negotiator for global iron ore producers in price talks with Chinese steel mills.

Madoff won’t appeal sentence

NEW YORK – Disgraced financier Bernard Madoff will not appeal his 150-year sentence for a fraud that unraveled overnight last December when Madoff confessed to his sons that nearly $65 billion he promised investors was safe was actually only worth a few hundred million dollars.

“We won’t be appealing the sentence,” Madoff’s lawyer, Ira Sorkin, said Thursday. He declined to say why the decision was made. The 71-year-old Madoff was sentenced last week after admitting he bilked thousands of investors out of billions of dollars – an epic scheme that spanned the globe, according to a report released Thursday by a court-appointed trustee.

The report by trustee Irving Picard – responsible for identifying Madoff assets that could be used to compensate victims – said the search “has unearthed a labyrinth of interrelated international funds, institutions and entities of almost unparalleled complexity and breadth.”

The report said the trustee has located assets and businesses “of interest” in 11 places: Great Britain, Ireland, France, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Spain, Gibraltar, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, and the Bahamas. It also said he has sent more than 230 subpoenas seeking overseas records.

More than 15,400 claims against Madoff were filed by a July 2 deadline, the trustee said. He noted there were multiple claims from several accounts.

Dough’s e. Coli strain differs

WASHINGTON – The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday the strain of E. coli found in a sample of raw cookie dough collected at a Nestle USA manufacturing plant does not match the strain that has been linked to a 30-state outbreak, and they aren’t sure how the dough was contaminated.

The FDA and the federal Centers for Disease Control have been investigating whether the cookie dough was the source of the E. coli outbreak which has sickened at least 69 people in about 30 states.

Last month, Nestle voluntarily recalled all Toll House refrigerated cookie dough products made at its Danville, Va., factory after the FDA told Nestle it suspected consumers may have been exposed to E. coli bacteria after eating the dough raw.

On June 29, the FDA confirmed evidence of E. coli O157:H7 in a retained production sample of 16.5 oz. Nestle Toll House refrigerated chocolate chip cookie dough bar. But on Thursday, FDA spokesman Mike Herndon said tests on the dough, which came from an unopened package, show the strains of E. coli don’t match the E. coli strain linked to the outbreak.

That could mean the dough may have been contaminated with multiple strains. But neither the FDA nor Nestle has discovered a probable source.