MOBERLY, Mo. (AP) — For residents in the rural Midwest, the governor's announcement was golden: A global company with Chinese ownership planned to hire 612 people at a new factory making artificial sweetener.

But a little over a year later, the deal has turned sour. The half-built facility sits idle, as quiet as the cemetery across the street. The city plans to default on $39 million of bonds issued on behalf of Mamtek U.S. Inc. And many of the thousands of people who picked up applications for jobs there still are looking for work.

"They said they were going to bring in all these jobs, they had all this stuff lined up," said Patrick Thieman, a 40-year-old laid off call-center employee who had applied for an office job at Mamtek. "They didn't fulfill."

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