Latest Articles

Is a traditional tribal leader a government official, and could giving money to him be considered bribery? These questions, which oil and gas company executives grappled with recently during a workshop in Equatorial Guinea, are more than an academic exercise.

Two patents granted in the United States between 2000 and 2002 and another for which an application has been filed have put "maca", a high altitude Andean plant that is used by indigenous people in Peru, at the centre of a new battle against biopiracy, which involves the construction of an international network against the misappropriation of traditional knowledge.

Grupo Mexico S.A. de C.V. could find itself at the center of the bankruptcy reorganization of Asarco, a century-old American mining and smelting company whose liabilities include the environmental cleanup of 94 Superfund sites in 21 states. Depending on what happens in the bankruptcy reorganization, U.S. taxpayers ultimately could be responsible for the tab.

On Thursday, the supreme administrative court ruled that the planned sale of the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT), to raise an estimated 892.5 million US dollars, was illegal.

Last month, the Bush administration confirmed that it expected the government to waive about $7 billion in royalties over the next five years, even though the industry incentive was expressly conceived of for times when energy prices were low. And that number could quadruple to more than $28 billion if a lawsuit filed last week challenging one of the program's remaining restrictions proves successful.

A top adviser to former House Whip Tom DeLay received more than a third of all the money collected by the U.S. Family Network, a nonprofit organization the adviser created to promote a pro-family political agenda in Congress, according to the group's accounting records.

Officials said they awarded the four contracts last October to speed recovery efforts that might have been slowed by competitive bidding. Some critics, however, suggested they were rewards for politically connected firms.

Military investigators will not file charges after completing a investigation into an incident in Iraq last May in which a group of Marines alleged they had been fired on by U.S. security contractors.

The United States attorney's office also unsealed charges against a former employee of Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary, who is accused of receiving the kickbacks, which the office said totaled $124,000.

Renewed political discord hit the presses this week from London about the San Bushmen of Botswana.