Today, Mongolia and Friedland's Ivanhoe Mines Ltd (TSX and NYSE: IVN) is back in the news.

The best run financial newspaper in Canada, the Globe and Mail (part of the ROBTV group), today has written an inflammatory story calling Mongolia's intention with respect to Ivanhoe Mines a "grab".

Briefing.com interjects, taking the Ivanhoe Mining perspective:

Co says that a story published in the Toronto-based Globe and Mail newspaper today fails again to provide readers with the whole story, in an accurate and balanced manner, arising from a two-day mining conference in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. The alarmist and misleading story headline claims that "Mongolia is ready to grab stake in Ivanhoe Mine," with the secondary headline: "New law could see state owning 34%." Even the seriously flawed story fails to support the obsessively negative headline. Neither the story, nor any representative of the Mongolian govt, has said that the govt is about to seize interests in any mining projects in the country. An implication of a grab, or seizure, is that such action could be taken without consent or fair compensation. But that is not the case. In fact, the newspaper story beneath the headline reports that the govt of Mongolia will not confiscate interests in any projects, including Ivanhoe's Oyu Tolgoi copper and gold mine development project, and will indeed ensure that any interest is acquired on a "commercial basis." The story also makes it clear that if the government actually does decide to acquire an interest in Oyu Tolgoi, for example, the interest could be anywhere from 1% up to a maximum of 34% - an important qualification ignored by the headline, which can only create confusion and concern among investors. Ivanhoe previously addressed the issue of potential state participation in a news release issued more than two months ago.

Ivanhoe Mines issued the following release on Sept 6.

At the end of the day, I have full confidence in Robert Friedland. As you know I called him a genius. I have also written about him a lot.

BTW, the Globe & Mail story makes use of the negative opinion of Raymond James Canada analyst Tom Meyer. Meyer seems to be a reasonably well informed mining analyst, but I don't know what his credentials are with respect to assessing country risk, or determining the full nature of Mongolia's intentions. The thing is that when I read about an analyst's comments in these stories, I typically will check them out. This is what I found.