Law & Regulation

Royal Dutch Shell launched an extraordinary preemptive legal strike Wednesday against opponents of offshore oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean, filing suit against more than a dozen environmental organizations likely to challenge its plan for drilling exploratory wells in the Chukchi Sea this summer. Read More

Ten of the world's most powerful oil, gas and mining companies own a staggering 6,038 subsidiaries with over a third located in 'secrecy jurisdictions'. Read More

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 encouraged the Securities and Exchange Commission to fine corporate executives if they certified financial results that turned out to be bogus. The record suggests a bark decidedly worse than its bite. The SEC has filed cases against 31 executives at only 20 companies so far and recovered a total of $12.2 million from nine former executives to date. Read More

Tar sands from Alberta have enabled Canada to become the largest supplier of crude oil to the U.S. Tom Corcoran, a Washington lobbyist, is paid to promote this rapidly growing industry that produces some of the most emissions-heavy gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel on the planet. Read More

In a settlement for bribery allegations related to the construction and expansion of its Bonny Island natural-gas liquefaction facility, Halliburton Co. agreed to pay $35 million to the Nigerian government. Read More

The midterm elections are days away, but the winners are virtually certain: the corporations and conservative operatives like Karl Rove who have taken advantage of the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling to establish a well-heeled "shadow party" of networked trade associations and G.O.P. front groups. Read More

BYD Co., the Chinese carmaker part- owned by billionaire Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc., was fined and ordered to surrender seven factories in central China after the government said it used land illegally. Read More

A growing group of chain-store corporations that cater to America's poor with cheap goods are classifying workers as managers. By categorizing employees as salaried managers these dollar stores avoid paying overtime wages that the Fair Labor Standards Act mandates for hourly workers. Read More

Prosecutors in Italy said Monday that former Parmalat Chief Executive Officer Calisto Tanzi was a flight risk and requested he be arrested. Tanzi has already been sentenced to a 10-year prison sentence on market-rigging charges and filing false reports with regulators in the wake of the collapse of Parmalat, the ANSA news agency reported Read More

Mordechai Orian, president of Global Horizons, a Los Angeles-based labor recruiter, was indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice for "engaging in a conspiracy to commit forced labor and document servitude" of some 400 Thai citizens who were brought to work on farms in the U.S. Read More