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Jordan is selling its stake in the flagship Arab Potash Company to the Canadian potash giant PCS as part of privatization efforts spearheaded by USAID.

Fed up with poor water quality, rate hikes and a lack of investment in expanding infrastructure, residents, union members and environmentalists in the Argentine province of Córdoba have forced a multinational corporation to withdraw from the business, and are now demanding that the state play a part in a new public water company.

The highly publicized killing of Carlo Giuliani during the protests in Genoa on Friday, July 19th may mark a milestone for the anti-corporate globalization movement as significant as the Battle in Seattle.

The residents of Mecosta County and the surrounding areas in central Michigan regard water as central to their identity. They fish for trout and watch ospreys and eagles feeding in the streams. They spend warm days by the ponds and small lakes that dot the woodlands. And of course the Great Lakes, which hold a fifth of the world's fresh water, are a constant presence. So when a huge multinational bottled water company decided to move in and start pumping over half a million gallons of water a day out of the springs that feed their lakes and streams, the residents took it personally.

The EU Water Fund, to be presented at the G8 summit in Evian, seems more about corporate welfare than helping the world's poorest. The EU plan builds on controversial proposals by former IMF director Michel Camdessus, to use aid money to subsidise the expansion of private water corporations. Confidential documents obtained by CEO show how the European Commission has worked in tandem with Suez and other giant water corporations in developing its international water initiatives.