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Three former top officers of Buca Inc., an operator of Italian restaurants, have agreed to plead guilty to federal fraud charges in connection with a scheme to create false profits for Buca and allow executives to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for a wide range of expenses including the use of an Italian villa and visits to strip clubs.

The European Patent Office is currently considering an application by crop science giant Syngenta to control the DNA that regulates the way flowers grow in rice plants.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (now known as WWF) continues its career as the thinking corporation's greenwasher with a recent initative designed to extend the cultivation of genetically modified (GM) soya across much of Latin America.

Monsanto's announcement of their plans to purchase Seminis, the largest fruit and vegetable seed producer in the world, was quickly followed by a statement that Monsanto does not intend to apply biotech to develop these seeds - at least not yet. This is a curious assertion from a dominant biotech company.

Activists in India have held nationwide protests against multinational soft drink companies Coca-Cola and Pepsi.

PORTO ALEGRE -- With UN Secretary General Kofi Annan preparing to renew his call for a 'Global Compact' between the UN and big business at the World Economic Forum in Davos, a global alliance of human rights and environmental organizations is calling for a suspension of this messy entaglement between the UN and big business.

Human Rights Watch has issued a report that harshly criticizes a single industry in the United States, concluding that the nation's meat packing industry has such bad working conditions that it violates basic human and worker rights.

In 1984 the world's largest industrial disaster killed 8,000 people over night in Bhopal, India. Two decades later, some sort of closure might seem called for. But today survivors groups continue to struggle for justice, while the chemical industry promotes volunteer initiatives.

The United States is one of the few countries in the world that still permits
agricultural uses of the pesticide lindane. More than 50 countries--including
all of Europe, Canada, and most recently Mexico--have phased out lindane use in
agriculture. Ninety-nine percent of remaining lindane use in the U.S. is for
seed treatment of a handful of grain crops.

The United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations, which tried to help weak nations to protect themselves from predatory companies, had recommended that businesses should be internationally regulated. The UN refused to circulate its suggestions.