Latest Articles

In addition to being the largest natural disaster in U.S. history, Hurricane Katrina was a boon for companies that specialize in recovering from such devastation. It opened the spigot to billions of dollars in federal contracts to haul debris, make emergency repairs to damaged homes and buildings, and provide temporary housing and other structures.

Huge mines here turning tarry sand into cash for Canada and oil for the United States are taking an unexpectedly high environmental toll, sucking water from rivers and natural gas from wells and producing large amounts of gases linked to global warming.

This preliminary investigation by ECOS documents the socio-economic and environmental impact of oil exploitation in the Melut Basin in Upper Nile State, Sudan, as told by inhabitants of the area and photo graphed from satellites. It focuses on the Melut and Maban Counties, Renk District, which fall into concession blocks 3 and 7, held by the Petrodar Operating Company Ltd. under a Production Sharing Agreement with the Sudanese Government.

Four former employees of Polo Ralph Lauren filed a lawsuit today in San Francisco Superior Court against the Polo Ralph Lauren Corporation, alleging that the company repeatedly violated the rights of its employees, according to Patrick Kitchin, a lawyer for the plaintiffs.

The Bush administration sought agreement from U.S. farm groups for a 70 percent cut in their most trade-distorting subsidies as a way to save world trade talks but was rejected, industry sources said on Tuesday.

What was once a farming village of indigenous peoples is now a vast coffee plantation that straddles six towns in three provinces. The plantation prevents the T'boli villagers from expanding their own farmland.

The development of a potentially rare and lucrative platinum mine near a reserve in Northern Ontario has prompted a First Nation to sue the provincial government while it faces a $10 billion lawsuit from a Canadian exploration company.

North Carolina health officials urged closer communication between the state's agriculture, labor and health departments and stricter enforcement of pesticide laws after three severely deformed children were born to migrant farmworkers.

A Defense Department investigation of Pentagon-financed propaganda efforts in Iraq warns that paying Iraqi journalists to produce positive stories could damage American credibility and calls for an end to military payments to a group of Iraqi journalists in Baghdad, according to a summary of the investigation.

Every October, some 50 former Home Depot managers, calling themselves the Former Orange-Blooded Executives, after the home-improvement chain's trademark bright orange color, gather in Atlanta to reminisce, chat about new jobs and pass around pictures of their children.