Articles by Pratap Chatterjee

Source: Corpwatch

The World Bank has agreed to investigate Amalgamated Plantations Private Limited (APPL) in India for abusive working conditions on tea plantations in the north-eastern Indian state of Assam, following a formal complaint by workers. A Columbia Law School team has confirmed the workers allegations.

In 2009, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), an arm of the World Bank, invested $6.7 million into the newly created APPL to take over 25 plantations from the Tata Group, a major Indian multinational. In return, the IFC got a 19.9 percent in the new entity while Tata kept 41 percent ownership. The 31,000 workers on the plantations were allowed to buy shares in the new company at Rs 10 ($0.20) per share. read more

Source: Corpwatch

Eight years after they sued Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Cargill and Nestlé for allegedly forcing them to work as child labor on a Côte d’Ivoire cocoa plantation, three young men from Mali have won a small victory – the ability to be heard in a California court.

The lawsuit was first filed as a class action to represent thousands of former plantation workers in July 2005 by the Washington-based International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF) and Global Exchange, which is based in San Francisco. The non-profit organizations recorded videotape testimony from the three specific individuals who stated that they had been lured across the border between 1994 and 2000 with the promise of easy work and good wages. read more

Source: Corpwatch

AquaBounty, a U.S. biotechnology company based in Maryland, has secured approval from the Canadian government to export 100,000 AquAdvantage salmon eggs from Prince Edward Island in eastern Canada to Chiriquí province in western Panama.

AquAdvantage salmon – AquaBounty’s lead product – was created by taking genetic material from Chinook salmon and a seal eel to modify an Atlantic salmon to enable it to grow twice as fast as conventional fish. The eggs exported from Canada will be allowed to hatch into fish in Panama but must ultimately be destroyed since the company does not yet have approval to sell AquAdvantage for human consumption. read more

Source: CorpWatch.org

How do U.S. intelligence agencies eavesdrop on the whole world? The ideal place to tap trans-border telecommunications is undersea cables that carry an estimated 90 percent of international voice traffic.

These cables date back in history to 1858 when they were first installed to support the international telegraph system, with the British taking the lead to wire the far reaches of its empire. Today a multi-billion dollar shipping industry continues to lay and maintain hundreds of such cables that crisscross the planet – over half a million miles of such cables are draped along the ocean floor and snaked around coastlines – to make landfall at special locations to be connected to national telecommunications systems. read more