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Residents and environmental activists are in a bitter dispute with large U.S. energy corporations and the federal government over the safety of nuclear power, as more than a dozen corporations plan to, or have filed, paperwork to open new nuclear power plants, primarily in the U.S. South.

According to global forecasts, the price of copper, Chile's main export, will remain high in 2008 thanks to strong demand from China. But just who will benefit from this bonanza is up for debate.

Some of the largest multinational oil companies in the world -- including the U.K. and Dutch owned Shell, the French company Total, and the American companies Mobil and Chevron -- are responsible for the bulk of the scores of gas flares burning in Nigeria.

In May 2005, a Blackwater helicopter dropped CS gas onto a crowded area near the Green Zone in Baghdad. The previously undisclosed incident has raised significant new questions about the role of private security contractors in Iraq.

In 2005 Blackwater accidentally dropped teargas on US soldiers, which has raised significant new questions about the role of private security contractors in Iraq, and whether they operate under the same rules of engagement and international treaty obligations that the American military observes.

Thai environmentalists are banking on the country's courts to overturn a decision by the military-appointed government to allow field trials of genetically modified (GM) crops.

Defense contractor Yamada Corp. provided a total of 400,000 dollars in consultant fees to an executive director of a Japan-U.S. exchange organization between 2003 and 2005.

The debris left over from previous attempts to extract some of Afghanistan's colossal mineral wealth can be found just 35km south-east of Kabul. But in five years, the landscape in the Aynak exploration area may be changed into one of the world's largest opencast mines, thanks to a $3bn (£1.5bn) investment by the China Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC).

Nearly a decade after some of the most powerful companies in the world - often under considerable criticism and consumer pressure - began an effort to eliminate sweatshop labor conditions in Asia, worker abuse is still commonplace in many of the Chinese factories that supply Western companies, according to labor rights groups.

A new ski complex is being constructed in the environmentally sensitive Seven Lakes region of the snow-capped Rila mountains of south-western Bulgaria. Yet authorities have not been able to produce any planning permits nor have the investors produced any documentation of who is funding the construction.