MIDLAND, Texas (Reuters) – Only a few hours after blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng left his sanctuary in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and the United States’ declared it had won concessions over his future from the Chinese government, a soft-spoken 44-year-old West Texas pastor was questioning the official version of events.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that Chen, who had escaped house arrest in a village in Shandong province before making his way to the Chinese capital last week, had “a number of understandings with the Chinese government about his future, including the opportunity to pursue higher education in a safe environment” inside China. Chinese state media said he had left the embassy “of his own volition.”

Pastor Bob Fu, though, issued a statement quickly challenging the official story. It said “relevant reports show unfortunately the US side ‘has abandoned Mr Chen,’” and that he had reluctantly left the embassy because of threats to his family by the Chinese government.

Soon, Chen was confirming Fu’s concerns in a number of interviews with Western media organizations. Chen told Reuters in a phone interview from a Beijing hospital that he wants to leave for the United States rather than stay in China because his safety cannot be assured under the deal.

For Fu, who said he knew about the deal 15 hours in advance, it wasn’t the first time in the past week that he has been one of the few sources of information on what has been happening to Chen, whose case has threatened to badly damage relations between the United States and China.

Operating in the Bible-belt oil town of Midland from a modest white-washed house perched along a non-descript roadway, just down the road from a firearms shop, Fu and his religious and human rights group ChinaAid Association Inc has campaigned for years on behalf of Chen and other Chinese dissidents.

Funded by philanthropists from the oil and gas industry and by churches in Midland, which is best-known as former President George W. Bush’s childhood hometown, Fu has traveled the world to human rights conferences to advocate for Chen’s release from prison and then from house arrest.

BEIJING/MIDLAND, Texas, May 1 (Reuters) – Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was set on Wednesday to begin a high-stakes trip to Beijing, where a blind dissident is reportedly holed up in the U.S. embassy as China and the United States try to work out a solution before high-level talks.

Legal activist Chen Guangcheng, according to one of his helpers, appeared to soften his initial insistence on staying in China to press on with his campaign for reform – a stance that would have complicated U.S.-Chinese negotiations on his fate.

“The movement is headed in the direction that Cheng’s family will be allowed to come to the U.S. for non-asylum issues,” said Bob Fu, whose religious and political rights advocacy group ChinaAid has been the chief source of information about Chen.

“Chen insists he does not want to seek asylum per se. I think he will agree to come for medical treatment and live a safer life after seven years of torture and misery in China,” Fu told Reuters at ChinaAid’s office in Midland, Texas.

Fu, who himself fled religious persecution in China in the 1990s, predicted that “the deal could come soon, at least not (in) months. It should be resolved in a few weeks at the most.”

Both governments have avoided official comment on the Chen case and neither has confirmed that he is under U.S. protection in Beijing.

Chen’s audacious escape from house arrest, under the watch of the world’s largest domestic security apparatus, was a “miracle” of planning and endurance, said Guo Yushan, a Beijing-based researcher and rights advocate who has campaigned for Chen and helped bring him to the Chinese capital after his escape.

WASHINGTON/MIDLAND, Texas (Reuters) – President Barack Obama nudged China on Monday to improve its human rights record and his top diplomat said she will raise the issue in Beijing this week, but both stayed mum about a Chinese dissident said to be under U.S. protection.

At a news conference, Obama appeared to be walking a fine line between not saying anything that would make it harder to resolve Chen Guangcheng’s case while conveying U.S. concern for human rights and appreciation for wider cooperation with China.

Chen’s case arose as the U.S. secretaries of state and treasury prepared to travel to China for talks on Thursday and Friday with senior Chinese officials, an annual meeting likely to be overshadowed by the fate of the blind dissident.

Chen, who has opposed forced abortions in China, escaped house arrest in rural China and is under U.S. protection in Beijing, according to a U.S.-based rights group, creating a diplomatic dilemma for the world’s top economic powers.

Analysts said the dissident appears to have two options: going into exile, which he has told associates he does not want to do, or getting the Chinese authorities to allow him to live in freedom within China, a challenge at best.

Bob Fu, whose religious and political rights advocacy group ChinaAid is the chief source of information on Chen, suggested the most plausible solution would be for him to leave China for the United States with his family, ostensibly for medical care.

“Another option that is more realistic is for him and his family to come to the U.S., face-savingly for the Chinese government, to receive medical treatment,” Fu told Reuters in an interview in Midland, Texas, where his group is based.

HOUSTON (Reuters) – Amid shouts and chanting at a raucous shareholder meeting, El Paso Corp (EP.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) investors approved the natural gas pipeline company’s $23 billion takeover by rival Kinder Morgan Inc (KMI.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).

The vast majority of the company’s shareholders disregarded charges that El Paso’s chief executive, Douglas Foshee, and the company’s adviser, Goldman Sachs, had conflicts of interest that kept El Paso from getting the highest possible price.

More than 95 percent of the shares voted endorsed the deal to combine the two largest natural gas pipeline operators in North America, El Paso said. Shareholders holding about 79 percent of El Paso’s outstanding shares voted on the matter.

The shareholder meeting at a downtown Houston hotel was disrupted several times by protesters shouting objections to the deal. The meeting was originally scheduled for March 6 but was pushed back to give investors time to consider a recent ruling by a Delaware judge criticizing some of the deal’s participants.

“This bad deal was brokered by Goldman Sachs and the winners are Goldman Sachs and Doug Foshee,” chanted one group of shareholders. “The losers are shareholders and pension funds.” The group was later removed from the meeting by security.

The deal became controversial after some El Paso shareholders sued to stop the it, arguing that Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Foshee had interests in holding down the price for the company.

Goldman advised El Paso on the deal, even though it owns a sizable stake in Kinder Morgan through its private equity arm.

HOUSTON (Reuters) – The former chief executive of KBR Inc was sentenced to 30 months in prison on Thursday for his role in a massive, decade-long scheme to bribe Nigerian government officials to win $6 billion in contracts for a liquefied natural gas facility.

Albert “Jack” Stanley, 69, pleaded guilty in September 2008 in a scheme to route $182 million in bribes to Nigerian government officials. Stanley, who served at one point under former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney at Halliburton, has been awaiting sentencing after this date was reset 16 times.

“The misconduct here was serious, ongoing and deeply hurtful,” U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison said before handing down Stanley’s sentence, which also includes 3 years of probation.

Earlier Thursday, Ellison gave a former KBR consultant a 21-month prison sentence for acting as a middle-man to channel bribes to Nigerian officials on behalf of KBR and three other members of a Portugal-based consortium called TSKJ.

Jeffrey Tesler, 63, a consultant and lawyer, pleaded guilty almost a year ago to one count of conspiracy to violate and one count of violating the bribery law known as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).

Despite fighting extradition from Britain, Tesler was sent to the United States in March 2011, where he entered a guilty plea. He faced up to five years in prison on each count and had already agreed to forfeit almost $150 million as part of his plea agreement.

On Wednesday, Judge Ellison sentenced another Briton, Wojciech Chodan, to probation for taking part in the bribery scheme when he worked at a unit of KBR. He had cooperated with the investigation.

HOUSTON (Reuters) – Big energy companies like Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and commodity merchants like Cargill CARG.UL have a simple argument in pushing back against looming new swap market rules: We’re not a bank, so don’t regulate us like one.

But their efforts to avoid being branded a “swap dealer,” a designation that brings with it greater scrutiny and onerous new rules, tend to sidestep the fact that, in one small but important way, most of them trade exactly like a bank.

For much of the past decade, companies including BP Plc (BP.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), U.S. conglomerate Koch and Swiss-based trader Vitol have quietly offered their hedging strategies and risk management savvy to other firms, often going head to head with banks like Goldman Sachs (GS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Morgan Stanley (MS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) to pitch airlines, utilities or producers on ways to hedge prices.

Now, a pivotal rule in the financial overhaul of the $700 trillion derivatives market may force them into a stark choice: retain their third-party swap-dealing desks and shoulder the mantle of extra regulation; or cede the hard-won and potentially lucrative prize back to the big banks.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is expected to vote on definitions for “major swap participant” and “swap dealer” on February 23, designations that will determine which companies will face heightened regulations. The new rules will be made jointly with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Commodity companies argue that although they may trade billions of dollars a year in swaps, they should be spared the CFTC regulations because they use the market principally to shield themselves from risks associated with the physical assets they own — be it an oil well, refinery, or power plant.

While few dispute that the bulk of such trades are made on behalf of the company’s own risks, these firms are also a visible presence in the world of third-party sales, said Chris Thorpe, executive director of energy derivatives at INTL FC Stone, a broker that also offers risk management services.

LA MARQUE, Texas, Oct 25 (Reuters) – With only 10 weeks to go before the first vote of the 2012 elections, Republican presidential contender Herman Cain on Tuesday took the stump in an unlikely place: a dog-racing track south of Houston.

The former Godfather’s Pizza CEO has rocketed to the head of Republican polls with a non-traditional campaign centered on his “9-9-9″ plan to overhaul the U.S. tax code.

“The thing about rising to the top of the polls is you get shot at a lot,” Cain told a Tea Party rally at Gulf Greyhound Park. “But the pain never felt so good.”

Cain, a straight-talking Tea Party favorite, has touted a “50-state” strategy to win national attention through public events throughout the country and media appearances.

His top contenders have focused on the early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida that likely will pick the Republican nominee.

“We have a national strategy,” said Cain spokesman J.D. Gordon. “It’s not focused on one or two states, but rather it’s a national strategy.”

Cain’s plan risks losing key states and leaving him behind his main rivals Texas Governor Rick Perry and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) – Texas governor and top Republican U.S. presidential candidate Rick Perry tried to sideline a state commissioner who opposed expanding the scope of a nuclear-waste landfill owned by one of the governor’s biggest political donors, Reuters has learned.

Bobby Gregory, owner of a wildlife ranch and landfill company south of Austin, had opposed a plan to let 36 states send nuclear waste to a 1,338-acre site in Andrews County.

On the other side of the issue was billionaire Harold Simmons and his company Waste Control Specialists LLC, which stood to gain millions of dollars from accepting out-of-state shipments. Simmons had donated over $1 million to Perry’s gubernatorial campaigns.

A report in the Los Angeles Times in August examined the case of the Texas waste site and Perry’s ties to Simmons, a conservative who funded the Swift Boat campaign that helped torpedo John Kerry’s presidential bid. (here)

Perry maintains his appointments are based on merit, and Simmons is inclined to help any conservative Republican, spokespeople for the two said.

In any case, the January vote by the eight-member Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission was key to the future profitability of the nuclear landfill.

Reuters has learned that late last year, after it became clear that the commission might block Waste Control’s request to truck in waste from around the country, Perry’s appointments chief, Teresa Spears, offered commissioner Gregory an alternative job — a prestigious appointment as a regent of a state university.

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) – Texas governor Rick Perry tried to sideline a state commissioner who opposed expanding the scope of a nuclear-waste landfill owned by one of the governor’s biggest political donors, Reuters has learned.

Bobby Gregory, owner of a wildlife ranch and landfill company south of Austin, had opposed a plan to let 36 states send nuclear waste to a 1,338-acre site in Andrews County.

On the other side of the issue was billionaire Harold Simmons and his company Waste Control Specialists LLC, which stood to gain millions of dollars from accepting out-of-state shipments. Simmons had donated over $1 million to Perry’s gubernatorial campaigns.

A report in the Los Angeles Times in August examined the case of the Texas waste site and Perry’s ties to Simmons, a conservative who funded the Swift Boat campaign that helped torpedo John Kerry’s presidential bid.

Perry maintains his appointments are based on merit, and Simmons is inclined to help any conservative Republican, spokespeople for the two said.

In any case, the January vote by the eight-member Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission was key to the future profitability of the nuclear landfill.

Reuters has learned that late last year, after it became clear that the commission might block Waste Control’s request to truck in waste from around the country, Perry’s appointments chief, Teresa Spears, offered commissioner Gregory an alternative job — a prestigious appointment as a regent of a state university.