Construction & Megaprojects

Two of the biggest U.S. energy utilities - NextEra and Southern Company – have been using Matrix LLC, a secretive political consulting firm in Montgomery, Alabama, to fight regulators and progressive politicians in states like Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Virginia, according to a slew of leaked internal memos. Read More

Activists are calling on the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) to stop funding the $3 billion Mandalika project on the island of Lombok in Indonesia - which is led by the Vinci Group - after the United Nations released a damning report on human rights abuses at the site. Read More

Billions of euros in bank loans and investments are flowing into companies operating in Israel’s settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. They include construction contractors like HeidelbergCement and Volvo, travel operators like Airbnb, Booking, and Expedia, as well as military and surveillance contractors like Cisco, Elbit Systems and Motorola. Read More

Indigenous communities in South Africa have taken to the streets in Cape Town, South Africa, to protest retail behemoth Amazon’s plans to build a sprawling new headquarters at the foot of Table Mountain, at the confluence of Liesbeek and Black Rivers. Read More

Roberto David Castillo, former CEO of Desarrollos Energéticos Sociedad Anónima (DESA) in the Honduras, has been convicted of the murder of Berta Cáceres, an activist who was fighting the Agua Zarca dam on the territory of the indigenous Lenca people, five years after she was killed in March 2016. Read More

Denka, the owners of the factory believed to be the major cause of cancer in a Louisiana neighborhood with the highest cancer rates in the United States, has been challenged over its failed efforts to weaken environmental standards and its claim that the factory has reduced toxic airborne emissions. Read More

South African prosecutors seized luxury property and vehicles worth some 1.4 billion South African rand ($96.8 million) in early May from contractors and former officials at Eskom, South Africa's state-owned power utility, as they ramped up criminal proceedings over alleged corruption in construction orders for the Kusile Power Station. Read More

One megaship - the Ever Given operated by Evergreen Marine of Taiwan - single-handedly blocked as much as 12 percent of global shipping last week when it got stuck in the Suez canal en route from the port of Ningbo in China to the port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Read More

Cricket – easily India’s favorite sport with over 760 million viewers tuning into televised matches every year – is always a major event across the subcontinent. So after the coronavirus pandemic shut down major sporting events, the Indian national team’s first international match in Sydney, Australia, was a momentous occasion. Read More

The companies that designed, manufactured, and installed cladding - a material used to wrap a building under construction - that caught fire at Grenfell Tower in London in June 2017, killing 72 people, have asked a UK public inquiry to award them immunity from prosecution, before they provide evidence. Read More