Ecuador has been playing poker with the foreign oil companies, and has been bluffing a soft pair right through to the river. Oil has held aces all the time...total nuts...and knows it. Today, Ecuador blinked. Here's a great piece of journalism from Reuters' Alonso Soto. It starts like this...go read the rest.

"QUITO, June 12 (Reuters) - Ecuador is offering to cut windfall taxes for foreign oil companies for one year and keep the current contract models in exchange for them dropping lawsuits against the government, Oil Minister Galo Chiriboga told Reuters on Thursday. The new offer would mark a softer tone for leftist President Rafael Correa, who wants to boost state control over..............."

Meanwhile, Reuters is also reporting no less than a foiled plot to kill Studmuffin himself, and involving three Colombians! Oh man...this story surely has some legs!

"QUITO, June 12 (Reuters) - Ecuadorean police arrested four men accused of plotting to kill leftist President Rafael Correa, the country's attorney general said on Thursday.

Attorney Washington Pezantes said police were interrogating the suspects, three Colombian citizens and one Ecuadorean, caught in the hilly capital Quito................."

According to reports, at least one of the four arrested is a member of an extreme right wing Colombian paramilitary group. Correa tonight said that the four may be simple con artists. Meanwhile the equivalent of the Attorney General of Ecuador, Washington Pesántez, later added,