Explore Publications

Americans seek international database to carry iris, palm and finger prints

A Pentagon office that was reprimanded by the U.S. Congress for spying on antiwar activists, has just awarded a multi-million dollar contract to QinetiQ, a British company that employs Stephen Cambone. Cambone, a former aide to Donald Rumsfeld, helped create the very office that issued the contract.

Residents and environmental activists are in a bitter dispute with large U.S. energy corporations and the federal government over the safety of nuclear power, as more than a dozen corporations plan to, or have filed, paperwork to open new nuclear power plants, primarily in the U.S. South.

According to global forecasts, the price of copper, Chile's main export, will remain high in 2008 thanks to strong demand from China. But just who will benefit from this bonanza is up for debate.

Some of the largest multinational oil companies in the world -- including the U.K. and Dutch owned Shell, the French company Total, and the American companies Mobil and Chevron -- are responsible for the bulk of the scores of gas flares burning in Nigeria.

In May 2005, a Blackwater helicopter dropped CS gas onto a crowded area near the Green Zone in Baghdad. The previously undisclosed incident has raised significant new questions about the role of private security contractors in Iraq.

In 2005 Blackwater accidentally dropped teargas on US soldiers, which has raised significant new questions about the role of private security contractors in Iraq, and whether they operate under the same rules of engagement and international treaty obligations that the American military observes.

Thai environmentalists are banking on the country's courts to overturn a decision by the military-appointed government to allow field trials of genetically modified (GM) crops.

Defense contractor Yamada Corp. provided a total of 400,000 dollars in consultant fees to an executive director of a Japan-U.S. exchange organization between 2003 and 2005.

The debris left over from previous attempts to extract some of Afghanistan's colossal mineral wealth can be found just 35km south-east of Kabul. But in five years, the landscape in the Aynak exploration area may be changed into one of the world's largest opencast mines, thanks to a $3bn (£1.5bn) investment by the China Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC).