Property, Tourism & Transportation

PRESIDENT Macapagal-Arroyo has offered to suspend the issuance of new mining permits to try to appease Roman Catholic bishops strongly opposed to the country's new Mining Act, a top Malacanang official said yesterday. Read More

Land conflicts involving indigenous people have multiplied in Brazil over the last few months, generating greater tension and showing once again that the country's roughly 400,000 indigenous people still have a long way to go to win respect for their rights. Read More

Indigenous protesters from northwestern Venezuela marched Friday through the streets of Caracas, which is hosting the sixth World Social Forum (WSF), to protest plans for mining coal on their land. Read More

A bill for busing evacuees from New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was $32 million more than it should have been, and the government paid it without question, the Transportation Department inspector general said Friday. Read More

The fed is looking into contracts for evacuation of New Orleans awarded to the FAA and a transportation company with ties to Bush. Did the agency and the company do anything at all post-Katrina? Read More

In 1996, Darius Mehri, a wide-eyed young American engineer, went to Japan to work for Toyota's production system. What he found was an abusive environment where the company controlled every movement - inside and outside work - of its employees. Read More

Less than two weeks after the Ford Motor Company said it would all but eliminate its advertising in publications that cater to gays, the company reversed itself Wednesday. Read More

Independent auditors confirmed Friday to Volkswagen's senior board many of the details published in news reports in recent months about corrupt dealings by managers in the car company's personnel department. Read More

Topping the federal government's list of costs related to Hurricane Katrina is the $568 million in contracts for debris removal landed by a Florida company with ties to Mississippi's Republican governor. Near the bottom is an $89.95 bill for a pair of brown steel-toe shoes bought by an Environmental Protection Agency worker in Baton Rouge, La. Read More

Government auditors are questioning whether several multimillion-dollar Katrina contracts" including one involving a subsidiary of Houston-based Halliburton Co." invite abuse because they are open-ended and not clearly defined. Read More