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A U.S.-based company is planning a system of elevated highways in Chennai, India, that will despoil natural resources that humans and wildlife have shared for millennia, environmentalists and villagers claim. Wilbur Smith Associates has won approval for the projects, they further charge, through deceptive practices and corporate sleight of hand.

The CEOs of three-quarters of the world's 100 largest companies have just completed an uncomfortable weekend at the tiny Swiss ski resort of Davos, while their companies' share prices nosedived on global stock markets, amid concern that the U.S. economy is staggering towards recession.

Setting aside its home base in the Upper Midwest, Detroit has a blue state problem -- and it is about to get worse. Washington and Oregon plan to become the 9th and 10th states to adopt California's tough car emissions rules, forming an increasingly potent market for more fuel-efficient vehicles on the West Coast and in the Northeast.

This week, with a vote possible in the Senate on an energy plan, car companies retreated from their longstanding argument that any legislation to increase fuel economy standards would rob them of profits, force them to lay off workers and deprive consumers of the vehicles they wanted to buy. They are now lobbying for a modest increase in mileage standards, a position already adopted by Toyota, in the hopes of silencing calls for even tougher targets.

Lawyers will today begin preparing the ground for one of the largest class actions heard in the UK over 400 tonnes of allegedly highly toxic waste dumped in the Ivory Coast from a cargo ship chartered by a London-based company.

Authorities arrested and charged two executives of a Dutch commodities company whose dumped toxic waste has caused seven deaths and widespread sickness in the Ivory Coast's largest city, a government official said Monday.

The companies supplying the trains and carriages that run on Britain's railways are facing the threat of a competition inquiry today amid allegations they are ripping off passengers by charging the rail-operating firms too much.

Gordon Brown yesterday unveiled a "moral" alliance of leaders of governments and multinationals to tackle global poverty, telling the United Nations that globalisation could be a force for justice.

"It is absolute insanity to pay out seven-figure bonuses at a time when the company is suffering nine-figure losses, mired in eleven-figure debt, and seeking further help from its employees to survive for the long term."

A federal jury in Seattle on Wednesday cleared Boeing Co. in a lawsuit brought by 4,000 black salaried employees, who claimed they were passed over for promotions because of racial discrimination.

New targets to reduce the environmental impact of air travel - set to triple over the next 30 years - are being launched by the UK's aviation industry.

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