from The Huffington Post -
Apple Inc. said it found more than a dozen serious violations of labor laws or Apple’s own rules at its suppliers that needed immediate correction.
The findings were outlined in a company report on audits of 102 supplier facilities conducted in 2009. That was a year in which questions about the practices of one of Apple’s suppliers came into focus after the suicide of a Chinese worker who held a sensitive job handling iPhones.
Along with many other technology companies, Apple, based in Cupertino, Calif., relies heavily on …

By Amanda Kloer at change.org –
The Texas Rangers baseball team are celebrating finally getting two new pitchers from the Dominican Republic just in time for spring training. The team hired Omar Beltre and Alexi Ogando five years ago, but they were banned from traveling to the U.S. at the time because they had been convicted of being involved in a human trafficking ring in the DR.
But the two new pitchers have served their time and even performed voluntary community service. The ban has been lifted, and they are now …

From Southwestern University’s Newsroom -
Southwestern University has signed an agreement with the City of Georgetown that will enable it to meet all its electric needs for the next 18 years from wind power.
The agreement makes Southwestern the first university in Texas to have all of its electricity supplied by wind power and one of fewer than 20 universities in the country to have a totally “green” source of power, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
“In recent weeks, much attention has been focused on how the world can reduce greenhouse …

Reposted from – environment360
by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger
Last month, the Pew Research Center released its latest poll of public attitudes on global warming. On its face, the news was not good: Belief that global warming is occurring had declined from 71 percent in April of 2008 to 56 percent in October — an astonishing drop in just 18 months. The belief that global warming is human-caused declined from 47 percent to 36 percent.
While some pollsters questioned these numbers, the Pew statistics are consistent with the findings by Gallup in …

from The Nation –
Over the years, The Nation and I have closely tracked the heroic work of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) as they have fought to protect agriculture workers in the fields of Florida from exploitation. CIW has exposed cases of slavery and worked with the Department of Justice to successfully prosecute them. It has carried out a Campaign for Fair Food to raise wages and improve working conditions. In short, it has led a movement that recognizes the dignity of the people who harvest the food …

from BBC World News –
An oil trading firm has agreed to pay more than $46m (£28m) compensation to people in Ivory Coast who say they were made ill by dumped waste in 2006.
Trafigura, with offices in London, Amsterdam and Geneva, said 30,000 people will each receive $1,546 (£950).
The money is in addition to the nearly $200m that the company paid the Ivorian government in 2007.
Trafigura and the plaintiffs’ lawyers agreed that a link between the dumped waste and deaths had not been proved.
A joint statement by the company and …

from the BBC -
Havana is hosting the biggest open-air concert since the 1959 revolution, featuring some 15 top Latin American, Spanish and Cuban performers.
Hundreds of thousands of people – many wearing white – are attending the free event in Revolution Square, Havana.
Colombian singer Juanes, who organised the “Peace without Borders” concert, has received death threats from Miami-based critics of the Cuban regime.
But he has won support from 20 high-profile jailed dissidents inside Cuba.
The BBC’s Michael Voss at the concert says there is a mood of excitement, as many residents of …

From CNN.com
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) — In Pakistan’s combustible Swat Valley, some girls refuse to wear uniforms so they can make it to school without being harmed.
Other girls hide textbooks in their shawls to escape harassment.
School-age girls are among the victims in the fierce fighting between government soldiers and Taliban militants in the Swat Valley. The Pakistani government said it has flushed much of the Taliban out of the area, but some fighting persists.
Many girls remain banned from schools. Dozens of their schools have been bombed, and militants have burned …

From National Geographic News -
August 5, 2009—Talk about a sea change.
From 2006 through 2009, Central Asia’s vast Aral Sea dramatically retreated, with its eastern section losing about 80 percent of its water in just four years (above, newly released NASA satellite images are animated to show the regression).
The immense body of water, which straddles Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan (see map), was once the world’s fourth largest freshwater lake.
But in the past 30 years, 60 percent of the lake has disintegrated, according to NASA’s Earth Observatory.
In the 1960s farmers in this arid …

From WTTE-TV
Ohio panel begins look at human trafficking
July 30, 2009 08:51 EDT
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A special task force has begun its investigation of human trafficking in Ohio that steers child and adult victims into prostitution and forced labor.
Wednesday’s first meeting of the Trafficking in Persons Study Commission came almost seven months after Gov. Ted Strickland signed a law to increase sentences for crimes if human trafficking is involved.
Kathleen Davis, of the Washington-based Polaris Project, gave the panel an estimate that up to 17,500 trafficking victims come through Ohio every …