AIG’s bailout permitted the company’s use of $25 billion in government money to buy back toxic securities from Wall Street’s big banks. AIG was the world’s top player in the trade of credit default swaps - exotic instruments blamed for fueling the cascade of financial disasters in 2007 and 2008. The company ultimately received four separate federal bailouts [...]
The 4,370-berth Independence of the Seas, owned by Royal Caribbean International, disembarked at the heavily guarded resort of Labadee on week after some 300,000 Haitians died in the massive earthquake The Florida cruise company leases a picturesque wooded peninsula and its five pristine beaches from the government for passengers to “cut loose” with watersports, barbecues, and shopping for trinkets [...]
Workplace privacy is dead and buried. Employers can and do read e-mail, eavesdrop on telephone calls, monitor Internet access and watch workers with hidden cameras. Company phones and laptops are often tracked and searched by the employer. Some companies have even installed cameras in the bathrooms. Bosses are now spying on workers’ home lives. Millions of workers [...]
James Neal Blue, who helped devise the Predator unmanned aircraft that are in use in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, is the director of a company that bought the Four Mile uranium mine in Australia. Blue is the chairman of Quasar Resources, which is affiliated with General Atomics, a major United States weapons and nuclear [...]
Several individuals residing in the province of Samaná in the Dominican Republic blame a U.S. power company for an increase in birth defects throughout the small town. Six years ago a contractor from Delray Beach brought over 50,000 tons of coal ash from a Virginia-based Applied Energy Services Corporation to a port near the town [...]
Clinton promised $6 million of investment in Angolan agriculture through a partnership with USAID and Chevron, the second-largest US oil company. Despite billions of dollars in oil wealth, Angola ranks among the worlds lowest in terms of development indicators. The corruption watchdog group Global Witness revealed Angolan state oil company had given permission to bid for oil and gas licenses to [...]
A US mining company is threatening the sacred lands of Aboriginal peoples in Australia. In the outback of the Southern Australian Adelaide and Flinders Ranges, the United States weapons and energy producing giant: Quasar Resources is venturing with Alliance Resources to mine over 3.9 million tons of U308, also known as yellowcake or depleted uranium [...]
