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This week, with a vote possible in the Senate on an energy plan, car companies retreated from their longstanding argument that any legislation to increase fuel economy standards would rob them of profits, force them to lay off workers and deprive consumers of the vehicles they wanted to buy. They are now lobbying for a modest increase in mileage standards, a position already adopted by Toyota, in the hopes of silencing calls for even tougher targets.

An unfolding national scandal on the large-scale abuse of child labourers in the brick kiln industry raises questions on the adequacy of planned labour laws that are supposed to take on sweatshops and protect workers' rights.

TED Global 2007 is one small skirmish in a larger ideological conflict between those who believe that Africa needs more and better international aid, and those who think entrepreneurialism and technology will lift the continent out of poverty and thus reduce its miseries.

An Alaskan Inupiat Eskimo firm has been awarded a multi-million dollar no-bid contract to feed Bolivian soldiers and police in that country's continuing drug war, raising questions concerning the firms on-going relationship with former Halliburton subsidiary KBR and the US Senate's Alaskan Native Corporation privilege.

Private security companies, funded by billions of dollars in U.S. military and State Department contracts, are fighting insurgents on a widening scale in Iraq, enduring daily attacks, returning fire and taking hundreds of casualties that have been underreported and sometimes concealed, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials and company representatives.

U.S.-funded aerial spraying of coca plantations in Colombia near the Ecuador border has severely damaged the DNA of local residents, a new study has found.

A Filipino air conditioner repairman's life was turned upside down when promises of good pay and work in Kuwait were replaced with the harsh realities of corrupt recruiters, horrible living conditions and forced work in Iraq.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) expressed profound concern about the persistence of forced labour in Burma, while it is closely monitoring the implementation of a mechanism for victims to file complaints, which was recently agreed with the Southeast Asian country's governing junta.

The BBC's John James in Kinshasa says that since DR Congo's independence in 1960 its vast mineral wealth has been a key factor in the country's civil wars and instability.

Licensed goods being made for next year's Beijing Olympic Games are being manufactured by child labour and "sweatshops" in China, the Playfair Alliance says in a report published on Monday.