Global Trade

Ingolf Rossberg is the mayor of this majestic eastern German city. But watching him stride around his ballroom-size office, wreathed in smoke from his cigarillo, one could mistake him for a European real estate tycoon.Yet he is that after a fashion. Mr. Rossberg reached a deal in March to sell Dresden's entire stock of 48,000 city-owned apartments to an American private equity firm, the Fortress Investment Group, for $1.2 billion. In a single stroke, Dresden wiped out its burdensome public debt. Read More

Workers from Bangladesh said they paid $1,000 to $3,000 to work in Jordan, but when they arrived, their passports were confiscated, restricting their ability to leave and tying them to jobs that often pay far less than promised and far less than the country's minimum wage. Read More

The environment group Greenpeace launched a campaign against McDonald's, accusing the US restaurant chain of abetting the destruction of the Brazilian rainforest by buying meat raised from Amazonian soya. Read More

THE Ministerial investigation committee into alleged dumping of toxic waste by the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) at Igbeku and Ejekimoni communities of Sapele local government area of Delta State has come up with recommendations for the company to remove and treat in situ the "alleged buried waste" to acceptable statutory levels. Read More

Venezuela has taken control of two oil fields operated by French firm Total and Italy's Eni. Read More

Two patents granted in the United States between 2000 and 2002 and another for which an application has been filed have put "maca", a high altitude Andean plant that is used by indigenous people in Peru, at the centre of a new battle against biopiracy, which involves the construction of an international network against the misappropriation of traditional knowledge. Read More

The mining industry has a worldwide image problem. In developing and developed countries alike, the public tends to regard mines as dirty, dangerous and disruptive - and those who stand to profit from them as greedy despoilers. Read More

Vietnamese workers earn less than $2 a day making stuffed animals and Happy Meal toys for U.S. consumers. An ongoing series of wildcat strikes this winter has forced the government to raise wages to prevent factories from moving to other countries. Listen to an interview about this article with Aaron Glantz on CorpWatch Radio. Read More

A pipeline crossing the Peruvian Amazon has spilled natural gas liquids four times since it opened 15 months ago because it was shoddily built by unqualified welders using corroded pipes left from other jobs, according to a new technical report by the nonprofit environmental consultancy E-Tech International based in San Diego. Read More

The market in India for outsourced clinical drug trials will hit $1.5 billion by 2010. Enticed by numbers like these, developing countries have been scrambling to catch Big Pharma's eye - India most aggressively of all. Read More