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83 of the US's 100 corporations hide fortunes in tax havens, even as many of those corporations were receiving federal dollars from the government's TARP bailout. Why were these corporations receiving taxpayer money when they weren't even paying their own taxes?

"Floods and drought highlight summer of climate truth Published: 31/07/2012 at 01:46 AMNewspaper section: News For years, climate scientists have been warning the world that the heavy use of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) threatens the world with human-induced climate change. The rising atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, a byproduct of burning fossil fuels, would warm the planet and change rainfall and storm patterns and raise sea levels. Now those changes are hitting in every direction, even as powerful corporate lobbies and media propagandists like Rupert Murdoch try to deny the truth. In recent weeks, the United States has entered its worst drought in modern times. The Midwest and the Plains states, the country's breadbasket, are baking under a massive heat wave, with more than half of the country under a drought emergency and little relief in sight. Halfway around the world, Beijing has been hit by the worst rains on record, with floods killing many people. Japan is similarly facing record-breaking torrential rains. Two of Africa's impoverished drylands _ the Horn of Africa in the East and the Sahel in the West _ have experienced devastating droughts and famines in the past two years: the rains never came, causing many thousands to perish, while millions face life-threatening hunger. Scientists have given a name to our era, the Anthropocene, a term built on ancient Greek roots to mean "the Human-dominated epoch" _ a new period of earth's history in which humanity has become the cause of global-scale environmental change. Humanity affects not only the earth's climate, but also ocean chemistry, the land and marine habitats of millions of species, the quality of air and water, and the cycles of water, nitrogen, phosphorus, and other essential components that underpin life on the planet. For many years, the risk of climate change was widely regarded as something far in the future, a risk perhaps facing our children or their children. That

"With one-third of the world's food now grown in areas of high or extremely high water stress, companies are waking up to water risks. But most are doing far too little to respond to these risks, according to a new study by Ceres, a Boston-based non-profit that aims to mobilize corporate and investor leadership on environmental sustainability. With water stress spreading across the globe, diversifying geographic locations is often no longer the most sensible or cost-effective response, Ceres concludes."

"Middle-earth effect The impact of Sir Peter Jackson's The Lord of The Rings and The Hobbit Trilogies on tourism in New Zealand cannot be dismissed.  The International Visitor Survey from 2004, completed following the release of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, found that six percent of visitors to New Zealand (around 120,000 - 150,000 people) cited The Lord of the Rings as being one of the main reasons for visiting New Zealand. One per cent of visitors said that the Lord of the Rings was their main or only reason for visiting. This one per cent related to approximately NZ$32.8m in spend. In 2004, 63,200 visitors participated in a Lord of the Rings activity while here and since 2004, an average 47,000 visitors each year have visited a film location. In 2014 research completed by the New Zealand Institue of Economic Research found that the marketing of New Zealand as Middle-earth has had a significant and quantifiable impact on growth in visitor arrivals from Western markets.  International Visitor Arrivals data for year ending August 2014 show holiday arrivals into New Zealand are up 7.2 per cent on last year. Holiday arrivals from the United States, a key target market for the Middle-earth campaign, are up 14.2 per cent on the same period last year. The International Visitor Survey shows that 13 per cent of all international visitors surveyed July 2013 - June 2014, say The Hobbit was a factor in stimulating their interest in New Zealand as a destination. Source: Tourism New Zealand Corporate Website / Statistics New Zealand"

As the phone hacking investigation that ripped through UK politics and media moves to the US, what next for Murdoch? We are beginning the new year with an in-depth look at what was the biggest media story of last year - the tabloid phone hacking scandal that shook the world's most powerful media corporation and is sure to cause more tremors in the year to come.