In the News

In Chinese factories, lost fingers & low pay

The New York Times
01/14/2008

In the Pearl River Delta region near Hong Kong, factory workers lose or break 40,000 fingers on the job annually

Nearly a decade after some of the most powerful companies in the world began an effort to eliminate sweatshop labour conditions in Asia, worker abuse is still commonplace in many of the Chinese factories that supply Western companies, according to labour rights groups.

The Dark Side of Chocolate

Marketplace
01/11/2008

Doug Krizner: A group of U.S. lawmakers are in West Africa this week. They're looking at child labor abuses at cocoa plantations.

Ivory Coast is the world's largest cocoa producing country and the lifeblood of the global chocolate industry, but as Gretchen Wilson reports, that industry depends on child slave labor.

US Lawmakers Discuss Child Labor, Cocoa Industry in Ivory Coast

VOA News
01/08/2008

 ...Some American lawmakers say the world needs to look closer at chocolate. They say child labor is giving the industry a bitter taste.

Iowa Senator Tom Harkin and New York Congressman Elliot Engel have proposed a plan to help consumers know when their sweet treats were produced without the worst forms of child labor.... 

Over the past decade, there has been increased attention to the cocoa industry, as reports emerged of children forced to work long hours doing hazardous jobs on cocoa plantations. There have been threats of consumer boycotts... 

A Rose Is [Not] a Rose

Audobon Magazine
01/01/2008

Long the symbol of love, irresistible desire, and ephemeral beauty, the prickliest of flowers has never been so popular, so lucrative–or so toxic for the environment. But enterprising growers and marketers are working to turn the red rose green.

Between rows of tall, pale pink roses, he came at me like Darth Vader in a billowing cloud of vapors, his identity cloaked beneath a black face mask, hood, and plastic clothes. But the material coming out of the worker’s hose was a fog of agricultural chemicals.

Liberia's Supreme Court Recognizes New Firestone Workers' Union Leadership

VOA News
12/24/2007

By James Butty

The Liberian Minister of Labor, Samuel Kofi Woods, has urged both the workers and management of the Firestone Rubber Plantation Company to continue to work together to ensure industrial peace and harmony on the plantation. This followed a Supreme Court ruling over the weekend recognizing as legitimate the recent elections by the workers’ union on the Plantation.

US Congress expected to boost military aid to Indonesia, Philippines

International Herald Tribune
12/18/2007

Lawmakers have agreed to boost military aid to Indonesia and the Philippines, but some of the money would be contingent on human rights improvements.

They also decided to bar all but a small amount of military aid to Sri Lanka until the Bush administration has certified that the Sri Lankan government had made certain improvements in its human rights practices.

City puts recyclers out on the curb

Baltimore Sun
12/18/2007

 

Well, that worked out well, didn't it?

I'm talking about those precious yellow recycling bins, which are probably selling on eBay for triple or quadruple their price even as we speak. Those now worth-their-weight-in-gold containers that thousands lined up to buy at this weekend's "Bin Kick-Off" events at several city schools, only to be turned away empty-handed when the city ran out of them.

Manila's dirty war

International Herald Tribune
12/18/2007

By John Hall

A Philippine court has sentenced 14 members of Abu Sayyaf - a militant Muslim organization with ties to Al Qaeda - to life imprisonment for a series of kidnappings in 2001 that resulted in the deaths of two American and several Filipino hostages.

The verdict - along with the deaths of several Abu Sayyaf leaders - seems to justify the U.S. decision to provide support to the Philippine military as part of its global "War on Terror."

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