Human Rights

When claims were first published on the front pages of Indian newspapers this month that Coca-Cola and PepsiCo beverages were contaminated with pesticides, executives at the two companies were breezily confident that they could handle the issue. Three weeks later, though, they are still struggling to win back Indian consumers. One-quarter of India's component states have imposed partial bans on their products, and a complex legal battle to overturn those bans is only just beginning. Read More

As the World Health Organisation's top man in Thailand, William Aldis knew Thai officials were hosting their US counterparts in the northern city of Chiang Mai to negotiate what to many outsiders might seem an entirely worthy objective: a bi­lateral free-trade deal. But he saw dangers - and decided to make his views public. Read More

Ottawa may have the reputation of a government town, but it's also home to Canada's military-industrial complex. Read More

Welcome to the Coke side of life. Africa's planned legal action is just the latest in a litany of alleged human rights and environmental abuses in developing markets that has made Coca-Cola a cause celebre. Read More

Arankartuktaram! This Achuar cry sums up what indigenous communities in the heart of Peru's Amazon jungle region are demanding from the State and multinational oil companies -- a little respect. Read More

TOXIC mud still spurting from a gas drilling well part-owned by Australian mining giant Santos is threatening to mire East Java in a full-scale disaster. Read More

Goran Habbeb was shot and left for dead by gunmen in Iraq for helping troops in counter-intelligence tasks. He worked for Titan, a military contractor, who supply translators to the military under a profitable multi-billion dollar contract. Almost 200 of their workers have been killed, the highest by far of any contractor in Iraq. Read More

L-3 Communications, a little-known but gigantic military contractor, provides 300 contract intelligence experts to the Pentagon in Iraq to support operations ranging from interrogation to media analysis. The secretive $426.5 million operation, which is run out of Virginia, may be a recipe for disaster, say critics. Also see related story, A Translator's Tale, by Pratap Chatterjee. Read More

One of the worst polluters in the Maputo region, the Portuguese-owned cement company, Cimentos de Mocambique, has tried to blame the electricity company, EDM, for the clouds of cement dust that frequently belch out of its factory in the southern city of Matola. Read More

Pharmaceutical multinationals, seeking to ramp up profits through cheap drug trials, are increasingly turning to India with its combination of a vast pool of poor, ignorant patients on the one hand and skilled medical personnel and fine research infrastructure on the other. Read More