MEXICO CITY, Mar 5 (IPS) - When Paulina was interviewed for a job at a local Wal-Mart in the Mexican capital, the first thing she was asked was whether she was pregnant – a question she did not know at the time was illegal.

"I had to present a certificate of my state of health to get the job," Paulina tells IPS in the parking lot of one of the U.S. retail giant’s stores in Mexico City.

Activists of the Human Rights Alliance of Uzbekistan have submitted their suit to Tashkent’s Mirzo-Ulugbek district to demand the Education Ministry pay 100 million sums for damage inflicted on thousands of schoolchildren and teachers who were forced to pick cotton last autumn despite government pledged not to use child labour.

Activist Yelena Urlayeva believes that this lawsuit will shake up the authorities and prevent them from sending children to cotton fields this autumn.

The University of Michigan announced on Monday that it was ending its apparel licensing agreement with the Russell Corporation, becoming the 12th university to do so in response to the company’s decision to close a unionized factory in Honduras.

University of Michigan officials said an agreement under which Russell made T-shirts, sweatshirts and fleeces with university logos would end as of March 31 because Russell had violated the university’s code of conduct calling on licensees to guarantee the basic rights of workers.

By Frontera NorteSur

The death of Ismael de los Santos Barrea followed an accident last month near Culiacan, Sinaloa, in which 10-year-old Angela Barraza Lopez lost left her arm to a machine while cleaning green beans.

Two tragic accidents highlight the human toll of child labor in northern Mexico’s agricultural export industry. On Feb. 7, a 20-month-old child, Ismael de los Santos Barrea, was reported crushed to death by truck tires at a farm in Sinaloa where his parents, teenage migrant laborers from the state of Guerrero, were working to support the family.