Property, Tourism & Transportation

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has been accused of bribing doctors in China in order to boost sales. Chinese government officials say they have uncovered evidence of a bribery scheme involving 700 travel agencies who were used to funnel as much as three billion yuan ($480 million) in payments. Read More

Spain will inject emergency capital into the country's biggest ailing bank, Bankia, as it puts into place reforms to allow loss-making banks to receive eurozone bailout money. Read More

Serengeti national park is under threat from Ortello Business Corporation in a deal that could displace 48,000 indigenous Maasai and open it up for hunting of lions and leopards. An urgent action by Avaaz, an international campaigning group, has gathered close to a million signatures to protest the scheme. Read More

Two global institutions - the United Nations and the Olympic Games - face charges that they are using "unaccountable and out of control" private security contractors. One of the companies at the heart of both controversies is G4S, a private security company in the UK. Read More

Rio Tinto has been named as early front-runner for the Greenwash Gold award for the worst Olympic sponsor, with BP in second place and Dow Chemical third. The three corporations have paid millions to stick their names all over Olympic promotional material and activities. Read More

The United Nations Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development in Brazil concluded this past weekend with no new government pledges. On the other hand, multinationals scored a public relations victory by claiming that they will implement $50 billion of sustainable changes to help save the environment. Read More

G4S and Serco - two private security contractors - have just been awarded multi-million pound contracts by the UK Borders Authority to provide housing to asylum seekers, edging out charities for the work. Activists are protesting, saying that G4S has a history of abusing immigrants and providing poor quality housing. Read More

Carnival Cruise staff on UK ships are paid $1.20 an hour or $400 a month in basic wages, according to the Guardian newspaper. These workers lose their tips, ie roughly 15 percent of wages, unless they get at least a 92 percent favorable rating from customers. Read More

About 1,700 locomotive engineers with the Canadian National Railway went on strike early Saturday. The walkout followed a decision by Canadian National to impose a new contract on its workers, including a 500-mile increase in the distance engineers are required to cover each month. The union said that the increased distance would sometimes make engineers work seven-day weeks without overtime. Read More

AMP Section Name:Globalization 180 Media & Entertainment 188 Consumerism & Commercialism 191 Tourism & Real Estate 209 Construction Read More