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Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics of the U.S. face divestment from major UK banks, for manufacturing cluster bombs. The Guardian newspaper has exclusively reported that Aviva, the UK's largest insurance company; Scottish Widows (part of the Lloyds Banking Group) and the Co-op Bank will sell shares in these companies, following a similar move by the Royal Bank of Scotland last year.

Two controversial multinational projects in Orissa, an eastern Indian state, face high level decisions in the next few weeks: a bauxite mine in the Niyamgiri hills planned by Vedanta of the UK and an iron and steel refinery in Jagatsinghpur being developed by POSCO of South Korea.

Johnson & Johnson has been fined $1.2 billion over sales of Risperdal, an antipsychotic drug. Tim Fox, a circuit judge in Arkansas, ruled that the company has to pay $5,000 for each of the 240,000 prescriptions that were paid for by the state's Medicaid program. (The program provides health care for low-income citizens, financed by the taxpayer)

Puerto Rican citizen groups are protesting two renewable energy projects: a 30 megawatt solar energy project in Yabucoa by Western Wind Energy corporation from Vancouver and a 75 megawatt windmill array in Santa Isabel by Pattern Energy of San Francisco. The reason: these projects will threaten scarce farm land on the food dependent island.

Ian Hannam, a senior JP Morgan banker and ex-soldier, who helped finance a number of flamboyant and controversial mineral extraction projects from India to Tanzania over the last couple of decade, has resigned, after being fined $720,000 for insider trading by the UK Financial Services Authority.

Chiquita, the global banana producer, was ordered to face a federal court over their role in paying off right wing death squads in Colombia that are alleged to have used "random and targeted violence" against villagers in exchange for financial assistance and access to Chiquita's private port.

The Karoo desert in the Western Cape region of South Africa is threatened by companies like Shell, the Anglo-Dutch oil company, Falcon Oil & Gas and Bundu Oil & Gas that want to frack for natural gas.

Big Brother is watching Iranians with a little help from Chinese and European companies. Reuters revealed that ZTE Corporation had sold Tehran surveillance technology. This comes in wake of revelations late last year by Bloomberg that Creativity Software in the UK had sold the Iranians "location tracking and text-message monitoring equipment."

Brazil has demanded that 17 Chevron and Transocean executives surrender their passports while they await the outcome of criminal charges brought against them for a spill that took place off the coast of Rio de Janeiro last November. Both companies have been in trouble for similar problems in the past.

Emerald Energy, a UK company owned by Sinochem of China, is exploring for oil in the eastern Colombian Andes in the high altitude tropical mountain tundra ecosystem known as páramo. Local communities say that the company's underground explosions have caused landslides and ground collapses that have destroyed homes, crops and contaminated the local water supply.