"BP’s board is expected on Monday to name an American, Robert Dudley, as its chief executive, replacing Tony Hayward, whose repeated stumbles during the company’s three-month oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico alienated federal and state officials as well as residents of the Gulf Coast."

The Firestone company, the second largest employer in Liberia, is so powerful in that country that the people there have little recourse when they complain that it is poisoning their water. Firestone's massive rubber plantation there was set up with help from the U.S. government in the 1920s. Firestone is now owned by the giant Bridgestone Americas, a Japanese company.

While federal rules have drastically cut use of asbestos in the U.S., the legacy of decades of use is still killing Americans. As many as 10,000 die of asbestos-related illness each year. Are scientists being paid to bring fraudulent science into court by companies who hope to limit their liability?

"The U.N.'s climate agency has for the first time detailed contingency options if the world cannot agree a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, whose present round expires in 2012 with no new deal in sight."

"The Obama administration has asked the governments of Scotland and Britain to review the decision last summer to release the Libyan convicted in the Lockerbie airliner bombing." Four U.S. Senators have asked whether BP lobbied for the release in order to get Libyan oil and gas leases.

"Stephen H. Schneider, a Stanford University climate scientist who for decades built the case that global warming, while laden with complexity, justified an aggressive response, has died."

"Curry spices  could hold the key to reducing the enormous greenhouse gas emissions given off by grazing animals such as sheep, cows and goats, scientists have claimed."

"The world is enduring the hottest year on record, according to a U.S. national weather analysis, causing droughts worldwide and a concern for U.S. farmers counting on another bumper year."

"Ruling in a case in which six Nicaraguan men said they were sterilized by a pesticide while working on American-run banana farms, the court finds that the trial had been tainted by 'massive fraud.'"

"Beleaguered BP will find its reputation further tarnished tomorrow when a British criminal court passes sentence on a company it half owns over safety breaches connected with the worst explosion and fire since the second world war."