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Blackwater has agreed to pay the U.S. government $7.5 million to settle 17 federal criminal charges that include supplying guns to the king of Jordan and offering private security and military training services to South Sudan without a license.

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has agreed to pay a total of $60.2 million in penalties to U.S. government regulators to settle documented charges of bribery in eight countries: Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Italy, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Serbia.

Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) - the world's largest operator of private clinics and hospitals - has come under the spotlight for performing unnecessary cardiac procedures, notably in Florida.

Chevron - the Northern California-based oil and gas company - has been quietly acquiring rights to drill for natural gas in Eastern Europe using "fracking" technology - a controversial technique. However, grassroots opposition in Bulgaria and Romania has thwarted the companies plans so far.

Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation has won a $101.5 million license to dig for copper in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The company has been questioned by Global Witness for possible links to corrupt Congolese officials.

Syabas, a private water company in Malaysia, has threatened to start water rationing in the state of Selangor after claiming that it had almost no water reserves left. Critics claim that the threat is a ploy to win more lucrative contracts and to favor a rival political party.

Hundreds of workers at a Haryana factory for India's biggest carmaker - Maruti Suzuki - are being rounded up by police after a violent clash left a manager dead. The incident has become a symbol of the clash between winners and losers in the country's economic boom.

Kenichi Watanabe and Takumi Shibata, the CEO and chief operating officer of Nomura, have resigned over several recent insider trading scandals at the Japanese multinational conglomerate. The revelations are the latest in a series of events that have shone a welcome spotlight on seamier side of the financial industry.

A mysterious fire and a missing activist have contributed to the concerns of Russian activists fighting a new highway between Moscow and St. Petersburg. The highway is being built by a consortium that involves Vinci, a French construction multinational, and individuals rumored to be close to prime minister Vladimir Putin.

Glencore corporation, the secretive Swiss commodities giant which has become one of the world's biggest trader of grain, oil and minerals, has hit an unlikely roadblock. The Bolivian government nationalized the Colquiri tin and zinc mine, the third Glencore asset to be seized by the state in five years.