News bites: Chinese company to buy Obama-backed A123 Systems, climate talks wrap 'near despair'

The U.S. arm of China’s Wanxiang Group will purchase most assets of A123 Systems, the stimulus-backed maker of electric car batteries that went bankrupt earlier this year.

The Associated Press reports on the bankruptcy auction here; The Washington Post has more here.

The deal will trigger review by the Treasury Department-led Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.

The possibility of a sale to a Chinese company has triggered criticism on Capitol Hill.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, wrote in The Hill Friday that the Obama administration should reject the deal.

The New York Times reports on the end of the latest United Nations climate talks in Doha, Qatar, which wrapped up over the weekend.

While the talks didn’t collapse, they ended with “recriminations over who must bear the costs and burdens of a warming planet,” the paper reports, and kicked several cans down the road.

The Times's John Broder reports from Doha:

Delegates from more than 190 nations agreed to extend the increasingly ineffective Kyoto Protocol a few years and to commit to more ambitious — but unspecified — actions to reduce emissions of climate-altering gases.

Wealthy nations put off for a year resolution of the dispute over providing billions of dollars in aid to countries most heavily affected by climate change.

Reuters captured the pessimism over the ability of nations to agree on a path that can avert some of the most dangerous effects of climate change.

“At the end of another lavishly-funded U.N. conference that yielded no progress on curbing greenhouse emissions, many of those most concerned about climate change are close to despair,” their story states.

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