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Tourist visits to the ruins of Machu Picchu, a historic Inca city in the Andes, are a major source of income for Peru. After the government turned over sales of entrance tickets to the site to Joinnus, a private company, an indefinite general strike was declared by local business owners, residents and travel unions. After a week long blockade, the government canceled the privatization.
Online retail behemoth Amazon actively lobbies European political institutions to help increase its profits. However, the company twice refused to testify on labor concerns in the last two years and denied official delegations access to warehouses. After Members of the European Parliament and NGOs complained, the company’s access to European Parliament buildings was revoked in February 2024.
Three new diabetes drugs have recently taken the world by storm: Ozempic, Mounjaro and Wegovy – because they also help users lose weight. But in recent months over 50 lawsuits have been filed against Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, the drug makers, for alleged side effects such as stomach paralysis.
Empresa de Energía del Pacífico (EPSA) dumped over 30 years of accumulated sediment from the Anchicayá dam in western Colombia in July 2001, polluting the river, killing fish, destroying farmlands and mangroves. The Afro-Caribbean community downstream sued EPSA and finally won Col$203,962 million (US$52 million) in compensation in February 2024, after 20 years of court battles.
Glencore was given a permit to build a dredging waste dump site to serve the McArthur River Mine lead and zinc extraction operation in Australia’s Northern Territories. The regional government was sued by members of the Yanyuwa and Yanyuwa-Mara community (who hold Aboriginal title to the site) for failing to consult them. The High Court of Australia ruled in the community’s favor in February 2024.
Engenia, Tavium and Xtendimax — three weedkillers sold by Bayer, Syngenta and BASF respectively — share a common toxic ingredient: dicamba. First approved for use in the U.S. in 2016 on certain crops, the three weedkillers were outlawed in 2020 after they were found to kill other crops.
Climate activist Mike Smith, a Māori elder in Aotearoa (New Zealand), sued seven of the biggest greenhouse gas emitters in the country to publicly admit that they caused a public nuisance and dramatically scale back emissions to reach net zero by 2050. In February 2024, New Zealand’s Supreme Court ruled that his lawsuit should b
A new BBC documentary charges Spear Operations Group, a company previously incorporated in the U.S. state of Delaware, with training Yemeni forces to conduct assassinations on behalf of the government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). These forces allegedly later recruited members of Al Qaeda to work for them.
Investigations by Greenpeace and Repórter Brasil found that close to half of mechanized diggers used for illegal gold mining in the Amazon are manufactured by HD Hyundai Construction Equipment. After extensive pressure from Indigenous and environ
Transparentem, a human rights NGO, published accounts of abuses among migrant workers at garment factories on the island of Mauritius. Fashion brands Barbour and PVH (makers of Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger clothes) agreed to pay US$420,593 in compensation to workers at a factory operated by R.E.A.L Garments, who say they were charged illegal recruitment fees to get their jobs.
Twenty workers were killed in an explosion at Indonesia Tsingshan Stainless Steel smelter in Morowali Industrial Park on Sulawesi island in Indonesia last December, shining a spotlight on the safety problems that are rife in the production of one of the key raw materials for electric car batteries.
After the Netherlands implemented a sweeping ban on the use of coal in electricity generation by 2030, energy giant RWE took the country to arbitration court to demand €1.4 billion in compensation for the impact on its massive new coal plant in Eemshaven. RWE decided to drop the litigation in October 2023 when it was dealt a series of legal defeats in
Elbit Systems, a major arms manufacturer which supplies Israel’s military, has multiple factories in the UK. Palestine Action, an activist group, has targeted these facilities together with affiliated businesses such as the recruitment agency iO Associates, to protest Israel’s war on Gaza. After multiple protests against iO, the recruiter announced it would cut ties with Elbit Systems in December 2023.
Nigeria has defeated an attempt to extract over US$11 billion in compensation for a canceled natural gas processing plant in Calabar, Cross River state, Nigeria, by Process & Industrial Developments (P&ID), a shell company based in the the tax haven of British Virgin Islands.
Tax auditor Raphaël Halet leaked over 28,000 documents outlining schemes created by the Luxembourg offices of global accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to help companies like Apple, Heinz and Pepsi avoid paying taxes. In 2016, local courts found Halet guilty of stealing documents. In 2023, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Halet was a whistleblower rather than a criminal.
Blue Carbon, a carbon trading company based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has emerged as a major winner at the global climate change conference (COP28) just concluded in Dubai. It has struck deals across Africa that give it the right to control forestry activities by local communities.
Three workers at Starbucks Japan formed the company’s first labor union in the country on November 1. This came after the company refused to accept demands for higher wages during a collective bargaining session in August. Starbucks Union Japan has invited employees at other Starbucks stores across Japan to join them.