Morning roundup: Rio Tinto accused of widespread bribery in China

Legal news from today's papers . . .

* Rio Tinto, the miner, has been accused of bribing 16 Chinese steel companies by one of the country's leading newspapers, escalating an international row that began with the arrest of four Rio employees (Financial Times).

* Sir Ian Blair, the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, has been cleared of misconduct over the award of force contracts worth £3 million to a friend (The Telegraph).

* A French court will examine whether Liliane Bettencourt, the elderly heiress to the L'Oreal fortune and Europe's richest woman, was in her right mind when she lavished gifts worth close to $1.4 billion on a younger male friend (The Telegraph).

* Sonia Sotomayor, Barack Obama's nominee to the Supreme Court, was not knocked off her stride during confirmation hearings despite Republicans launching a barrage of difficult questions about abortion and gun rights, The New York Times reports.