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The last time the European Union decided the future of its 50 billion euro agricultural aid program, in 2005, the deal was cut behind closed doors in a luxury suite at the five-star Conrad Brussels hotel. Now, 2013 is closer at hand and a new round of maneuvering has begun to reshape the richest system of agricultural handouts in the world.

Some of the greenest technologies of the age, from electric cars to efficient light bulbs to very large wind turbines, are made possible by an unusual group of elements called rare earths. Most of these come from China. "In many places, the mining is abused," said Wang Caifeng, the top rare-earths industry regulator at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in China.

Local translators are hidden casualties of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. military uses defense contractors to hire local residents to serve as translators for the troops. These local translators often live, sleep and eat with soldiers. And yet when they are wounded, they are often ignored by the U.S. system designed to provide them medical care and disability benefits, according to an investigation by the Los Angeles Times and ProPublica.

For Emad Hatabah, the war in Iraq became a business opportunity. As AIG's chief representative in Jordan, he was responsible for coordinating the care for hundreds of Iraqis who had been injured while working under contract for U.S. troops. He fulfilled his functions by sending business to himself, his friends and business associates, according to interviews and records.

Patrick Daniel, the CEO of Enbridge Inc, is bullish about the future of unconventional oil from Canada's massive tar sand deposits. His company not only operates North America's longest crude oil and liquid pipelines, but transports 12 percent of the oil that the U.S. imports daily. Canada's bitumen, or dirty crude, lies under a forest area the size of England and is arguably the world's last remaining giant oil field.

Patrick Daniel, the CEO of Enbridge Inc, is bullish about the future of unconventional oil from Canada's massive tar sand deposits. His company not only operates North America's longest crude oil and liquid pipelines, but transports 12 percent of the oil that the U.S. imports daily. Canada's bitumen, or dirty crude, lies under a forest area the size of England and is arguably the world's last remaining giant oil field.

On the night of December 2-3, 1984, the Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal, India leaked poisonous methyl iso cyanate into its densely populated neighborhood, killing 8,000 people in the immediate aftermath. 25 years later, Dow Chemical (which purchased Union Carbide in 2001) still refuses to clean up the site. But a new generation of Bhopal survivors is taking on the fight.

For plants designed in a lab a little more than a decade ago, they've come a long way: Today, the vast majority of the nation's two primary crops grow from seeds genetically altered according to Monsanto company patents. Now Monsanto -- like IBM and Google -- has drawn scrutiny from U.S. antitrust investigators.

About 1,700 locomotive engineers with the Canadian National Railway went on strike early Saturday. The walkout followed a decision by Canadian National to impose a new contract on its workers, including a 500-mile increase in the distance engineers are required to cover each month. The union said that the increased distance would sometimes make engineers work seven-day weeks without overtime.

Bradley C. Birkenfeld was sentenced to 40 months in prison for helping rich Americans dodge their taxes, his sentence reduced in turn for informing on Swiss banking giant UBS. Now, with the help of the National Whistleblower Center, he and his lawyers hope to use a new federal whistle-blower law to claim a multibillion-dollar reward from the American government.