UN, NGO and General News Round-Up

Rio Tinto Group will probably maintain investment in African mining exploration in anticipation of a recovery in global economies after increasing spending in the first half, a senior manager in the region told Bloomberg news. Rio Tinto is active in 10 African countries and continues to search for deposits in a further nine including Mozambique, the DRC (Congo), Tanzania, Mauritania and Guinea. Rio boosted expenditure on African exploration by 31 percent to USD 101 million in the first half from a year earlier, Beswick said at the company's Palabora copper mine in South Africa.