Labor

President Obama will almost certainly touch down in Baghdad and Kabul in Air Force One sometime in the coming year to meet his counterparts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he will just as certainly pay a visit to a U.S. military base or two. Should he stay to eat with the troops, he will no less certainly choose from a menu prepared by migrant Asian workers under contract to Houston-based KBR, the former subsidiary of Halliburton. Read More

For the past eight years, the oil giant formerly known as British Petroleum has tried to convince the world that its initials stand for "Beyond Petroleum." An announcement just issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency may suggest that the real meaning of BP is Brazen Polluter. Read More

The McArthur River winds through Australia's remote Northern Territory, home to four main Aboriginal linguistic groups: the Gurdanji, Yanyuwa, Garawa and Mara. Earlier this month Australian Minister for Environment Peter Garrett announced conditional approval for a bid by Swiss mining giant Xstrata to expand its zinc mining operations in the sacred McArthur River floodplain. Read More

Interview with CorpWatch managing editor Pratap Chatterjee, on his forthcoming book, "Halliburton's Army," published by Nation Books and available in books stores on February 2, 2009. Read More

As Bank of America's board meets next week, shareholders have turned up the pressure on CEO Kenneth D. Lewis. Their scrutiny has also turned an unusual spotlight on the oversight role played by the bank's board members. Read More

Robert Rubin will resign from the beleaguered Citigroup. As Treasury secretary during the Clinton administration, Mr. Rubin helped loosen Depression-era banking regulations that made Citigroup's creation possible. He also helped beat back tighter oversight of exotic financial products during that time. Read More

As regulators and shareholders sift through the rubble of the financial crisis, questions are being asked about what role lavish bonuses played in the debacle. Scrutiny over pay is intensifying as banks like Merrill prepare to dole out bonuses even after they have had to be propped up with billions of dollars of taxpayers' money. Read More

In a glimpse at how the nation's loss of more than 600,000 manufacturing jobs this year is boiling over, workers laid off from Republic Windows and Doors, said they would not leave, after company officials announced that the factory was closing. The workers were owed vacation and severance pay and were not given the 60 days of notice generally required by federal law in lay-offs. Read More

Sixteen Indiana national guardsmen filed a lawsuit yesterday against military contractor KBR. The complaint alleges that several reservists contracted respiratory system tumors and skin rashes after guarding reconstruction work at the Qarmat Ali treatment plant, strewn with the toxin chromium dichromate. Read More

Royal Dutch Shell last year suffered more workforce deaths than any other large western oil company. Two employees and 28 contractors were killed working for Shell in 2007. Nine of last year's deaths were in Nigeria, with two people killed in attacks on Shell facilities, and 10 in Russia. Read More