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| U.S.: Is MF Global Getting a Free Pass?
by Joe Nocera, New York Times
March 12th, 2012
During the final, desperate days before it entered bankruptcy proceedings, MF Global executives took money from segregated customer accounts — money that belonged not to MF Global but to the farmers and commodities traders that were its clients — and used it to prop up its rapidly collapsing business. Nor was this petty cash: of the $6.9 billion in customer assets that MF Global held, a stunning $1.6 billion is missing. There is virtually no chance that the full amount will ever be recovered. |
| U.S.-E.U.: WTO rules Boeing got $5B in illegal US subsidies
by John Heilprin, Associated Press
March 12th, 2012
The World Trade Organization ruled that U.S. planemaker Boeing received $5.3 billion in illegal government subsidies over a quarter-century. Airbus and Boeing have both complained to the WTO that the other is receiving state aid. They are locked in a long-running trade dispute over a market believed to be worth more than $3 trillion over the next decade. |
| INDIA: Supreme Court to Hear Dispute on Drug Patents
by Vikas Bajaj and Andrew Pollack, New York Times
March 6th, 2012
A Swiss drug company, Novartis, will go before the Indian Supreme Court this monnth to fight patent laws that protect the global supply of inexpensive medicines to treat AIDS, cancer and other diseases. The lawsuit - which involves a drug called Gleevec - is being opposed by international aid groups. |
| INDIA: Camera Obscura and the manufacture of happiness
by Aman Sethi & Priscilla Jebaraj, The Hindu
March 6th, 2012
An advertisement flooding airwaves across India would have you believe that a company called Vedanta is a creating a product called happiness. But London-based Vedanta Resources has attracted the ire of environmental activists and human rights groups like Amnesty International who have accused the company of exploiting indigenous communities — such as the Dongria Kondhs of Niyamgiri in Odisha — without due process. |
| U.S.: MF Global Criminal Probe Said to Slow After Quick Start
by Patricia Hurtado, Bloomberg News
March 2nd, 2012
U.S. investigators of bankrupt MF Global Holdings Ltd. have yet to determine after four months of probing whether enough evidence exists to pursue a criminal case. The company collapsed after a $6.3 billion bet on the bonds of some of Europe's most indebted nations went sour.
When the |
| U.S.: Will Wall Street Ever Face Justice?
by Phil Angelides, New York Times
March 1st, 2012
Four years after the disintegration of the financial system, 24 million people jobless or underemployed. Yet claims of financial fraud against companies like Citigroup and Bank of America have been settled for pennies on the dollar, with no admission of wrongdoing. Executives who ran companies that made, packaged and sold trillions of dollars in toxic mortgages and mortgage-backed securities remain largely unscathed. |
| WORLD: Top Hedge Fund Managers Took Home $13 billion In 2011
by Sam Forgione, Reuters
March 1st, 2012
The top 40 highest-earning hedge fund managers took home a combined $13.2 billion, according to a Forbes magazine survey. The top 10 hedge fund managers made more than $200 million each, while the lowest earning managers made $40 million each. |
| ARCTIC: Shell Launches Preemptive Legal Strike For Ocean Drilling
by Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times
February 29th, 2012
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. |
| SERBIA: One-Dollar Steel Mill Exposes Cracks In Privatisation
by Vesna Peric Zimonjic, Inter Press Service
February 16th, 2012
In 2003, U.S. Steel bought up the bankrupt Sartid steel mill in the eastern Serbian town of Smederevo for $33 million, the first private enterprise to enter the country after the downfall of former leader Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. On Feb. 1, U.S. Steel sold the mill back for a dollar.
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| SYRIA: US technology used to censor the Internet in Syria
by Pratap Chatterjee, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism
October 23rd, 2011
Technology from a major Silicon Valley company, Blue Coat, is being used by the Syrian government to censor the Internet and monitor dissidents, according to activists. The equipment can be used to monitor users and block access to certain websites, such as social networking applications like Facebook and internet phone sites like Skype, which were key to the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia |
| U.S.: TransCanada Pipeline Foes See U.S. Bias in E-Mails
by Elisabeth Rosenthal, New York Times
October 3rd, 2011
E-mails obtained by Friends of the Earth paint a picture of a collaborative relationship between lobbyists for TransCanada and the U.S. State department, the agency that has final say over a 1,661 mile pipeline that will transport tar sands crude from Alberta to Texas. Embassy officials in Ottawa procured invitations to Fourth of July parties for TransCanada officials and shared information with the company about Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s meetings. |
| U.S.: Clawbacks Without Claws
by Gretchen Morgenson, New York Times
September 10th, 2011
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. |
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