India: Driven to compete

Steve Eder of The Toledo Blade reports that the embattled U.S. auto industry is facing yet another threat — India. In a three-part series, The Blade shows how India's automakers are ramping up plans to sell their cars globally. The project, which included interviews with auto executives, parts suppliers, engineers, politicians and peasants in India's five biggest cities — Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore, and Chennai — examined how automakers such as Ford, GM, and Hyundai are expanding their operations in India in hopes of selling  cars to members of the nation's growing middle class. The series also explored how the influx of automotive plants in India is causing strife between farmers and industrialists, while creating hundreds of thousands of jobs.

A six-part investigative series by The Center for Public Integrity's International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) details the booming global trade in illegal cigarettes. Since 1999, the ICIJ has tracked the illegal tobacco trade, and found corporate collusion with the criminal networks diverting tobacco shipments to black markets around the world.  Crackdowns starting in 2004 have resulted in over $2.75 billion in penalties and pledges by international tobacco companies to help fight trafficking.  Despite these efforts "the massive trade in contraband tobacco continues unabated. Indeed, with profits rivaling those of narcotics, and relatively light penalties, the business is fast reinventing itself...The stakes are formidable. Experts estimate that contraband accounts for 11 percent of all cigarette sales, or about 600 billion sticks annually. The cost to governments worldwide is massive: a whopping $40 billion to $50 billion in lost tax revenue during 2006."

The Boston Globe's Farah Stockman reports that small Iraqi businesses in Dubai and across the United Arab Emirates are suffering as the UAE refuses to register Iranian work visas or open bank accounts for Iranian businesses. Although these measures are designed to place pressure on the Iranian government, many Iranian small-business owners in Dubai are being forced to file for bankruptcy or abandon their businesses.

A report by Eric Schmitt and Mark Mazzetti of The New York Times reveals that President Bush "secretly approved orders in July that for the first time allow American Special Operations forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani government, according to senior American officials."

In China in Africa and China in Peru, parallel investigations for Bloomberg Markets, Simon Clark, Michael Smith and Franz Wild report on the exploitation of indigenous peoples by Chinese-owned mining companies in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The authors report that "hundreds of workers have been injured or killed since 2005 working for Chinese companies." The investigations take a careful look at the companies' lack of health and safety standards and abuse of child labor, as well as providing insight into Chinese business practices in commodity-rich countries across the globe.

"Many American hospitals are taking it upon themselves to repatriate seriously injured or ill immigrants because they cannot find nursing homes willing to accept them without insurance," reports Deborah Sontag of The New York Times. Hospitals are deporting these patients without any government assistance or oversight. While immigration rights advocates see this as international patient dumping, hospital administrators feels they're being saddled with the problems of dysfunctional immigration and health-care systems.

Peter Spiegel of The Los Angeles Times reported that a U.S. auditor has called for an end to American funding of reconstruction in Iraq. Citing record oil profits and unspent funds from previous budgets, the special inspector general claimed Iraq has the means to fund its reconstruction needs, and American responsibility should be to help them carry out the reconstruction with their own funds.

Chinese officials are offering "hush money" to families who lost children in the May 12 earthquake, reports Edward Wong of The New York Times. "Local governments in southwest China’s quake-ravaged Sichuan Province have begun a coordinated campaign to buy the silence of angry parents whose children died during the earthquake, according to interviews with more than a dozen parents from four collapsed schools." More than 240 children died when schools collapsed during the earthquake. Many parents had raised concerns that the high death toll was due to corruption and negligent construction.

An investigation by The (Toronto) Star explores the state of crime and punishment in Canada. A new law increasing mandatory minimum sentencing was passed even though Canada's crime rate has dropped over 25 percent in the last 15 years. The series looks at the monetary and social costs of the a tougher approach to crime, including how U.S. mandatory minimums have failed to have the desired impact on curbing crime. Three never-before released data sets formed the foundation for this investigation.

A series by The Washington Post explores the causes and implications of the current global food crisis, the likes of which have not been seen since the 1970s. "A complex combination of poor harvests, competition with biofuels, higher energy prices, surging demand in China and India, and a blockage in global trade is driving food prices up worldwide." The impact is not limited to impoverished countries; consumers in the U.S. and other countries are feeling the impact of rising food costs.