BUSINESS BRIEFS
Dubai new home for Halliburton
Advertiser News Services
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Oil services giant Halliburton Co. will soon shift its corporate headquarters from Houston to the Middle East financial powerhouse of Dubai, chief executive Dave Lesar announced yesterday.
"Halliburton is opening its corporate headquarters in Dubai while maintaining a corporate office in Houston," spokeswoman Cathy Mann said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. "The chairman, president and CEO will office from and be based in Dubai to run the company from the UAE."
Lesar, speaking at an energy conference in nearby Bahrain, said he will relocate to Dubai from Texas to oversee Halliburton's intensified focus on business in the Middle East and energy-hungry Asia, home to some of the world's most important oil and gas markets.
OCEAN FARMING IN BUSH PLAN
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration wants to allow ocean farming for shellfish, salmon and saltwater species in federal waters for the first time, hoping to grab a greater share of the $70 billion aquaculture market.
A plan that was to be announced today by Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez would let companies operate fish farms three miles to 200 miles offshore, but without some of the rules on size, season and harvest methods that apply to other commercial fishermen.
MORE TROUBLE FOR CHINA STARBUCKS
BEIJING — A Chinese lawmaker revived calls for the removal of a Starbucks coffee shop from Beijing's famed Forbidden City, saying its presence was a smear on China's historical legacy, the official Xinhua News Agency reported yesterday.
Jiang Hongbin, a deputy from the northeastern pro-vince of Heilongjiang, said he submitted a motion to the National People's Congress, the country's legislature, to close the outlet immediately, Xinhua said. The outlet has stirred controversy among Chinese nationalists ever since it opened in 2000 in a side hall of the 587-year-old former home of China's Ming and Qing dynasty emperors, now a museum visited by 7 million people each year.
