Global Trade

A bauxite mine and a proposed refinery in northern Queensland, Australia, to be developed by a Chinese mineral company, has divided local and traditional landowners. Part of a major industrialization scheme, it has also sparked worries among environmentalists. Read More

The new virus is spreading, but it has primarily affected the fish of Marine Harvest, a Norwegian company that is the world's biggest producer of farm-raised salmon and exports about 20 percent of the salmon that come from Chile. Read More

Indonesia's economy is riding the recent wave of high global commodity prices. But local pressure is arising towards steel makers and power producers in China and India who have diverted coal supplies abroad by locking in 20-year supply contracts with Indonesian miners. Read More

Last week, Ms. Julin, who has remarried, and the widows of the four other men filed a lawsuit against Chiquita Brands International Inc., saying the company contributed to their husbands' deaths by financing the leftist group. Read More

Erai Maggi's company Bom Futuro produces more than 600,000 tonnes of soya a year, most of it to feed livestock ending up as meat in China and Europe, and generating £175m in revenue. Critics decry the link between increasing soya production and Amazon deforestation. Read More

A company controlled by the Persian Gulf state of Bahrain accused Alcoa Corp. of a 15-year conspiracy involving overcharging, fraud and bribery. Read More

The Ugandan parliament will soon have a hearing on the draft Plant Variety Protection Bill, approved by the cabinet early last year. According to an inside government source, seeds companies including Monsanto have been lobbying for such intellectual property protection. Read More

A Chinese facility that hasn't been inspected by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration made the active ingredient in much of the widely used Baxter International Inc. blood-thinner that is under investigation after reports of hundreds of allergic reactions and four deaths among the drug's users, the agency said yesterday. Read More

Dueling reports released yesterday -- one by a consortium largely funded by the biotech industry and the other by a pair of environmental and consumer groups -- came to those diametrically different conclusions. Read More

Staples Inc, the largest U.S. office supplies retailer, said on Friday it ceased doing business with Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) late last month because of environmental concerns. Read More