Gender & Health

Health Minister K.K. Ramachandran on Monday said the Government "would not allow the bottling plant of Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages Pvt. Ltd. at Plachimada to reopen against the will of the people." (Mr. Ramachandran is the first Minister to have visited Plachimada where the local people have been waging an agitation for the last three years demanding the closure of the company for allegedly exploiting the groundwater, leading to shortage of water for drinking and irrigation purposes.) Read More

About 50 Cofan Indians, some holding handkerchiefs over their faces to fend off an acrid chemical stench, gathered around two contaminated open pits they say were left behind and never adequately cleaned up by the former Texaco Corp. Read More

For nearly five years George Bush has infuriated much of the world by refusing to take action on global warming. Instead, he has called for more study. In a way, he got what he wanted with Hurricane Katrina. Read More

After fighting mad cow safeguards, the US beef industry complains about the consequences - a multi-billion dollar decline in exports - and a shortage of imported beef because of inadequate domestic testing and labeling. Read More

When individuals sue major corporations, the odds are stacked against them. One woman's fight against an insurance giant details those odds and what it takes to beat them. Read More

Several congressional Democrats introduced a bill that would force states to report the names of companies that have 50 or more employees who receive government-funded health care, an effort to pressure Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in particular to improve employee health coverage. Read More

Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. won't push new drugs in that way for at least a year. The change comes amid criticism of the industrywide practice. Read More

Julia Guarniz, a street vendor in the Peruvian highland village of Choropampa, watches blankly as a seven-vehicle convoy thunders past. "They scare me," she says, pointing at the "hazardous materials" signs on the sides of the juggernauts. "When I see them, I worry that it might happen again."Similar convoys carry toxic material through the village several times a day on the degraded highway that runs 600km from Yanacocha, the world's most productive gold mine, to the port of Callao in Lima. Read More

In the '70s and '80s, the banana companies Dole, Del Monte and Chiquita used a carcinogenic pesticide, Nemagon, to protect their crops in Nicaragua. Today, the men and women who worked on those plantations suffer from incurable illnesses. Their children are deformed. The companies feign innocence. Read More

In the last two years, at least two dozen leading nutrition scientists and experts have started working for large food companies, either as consultants or as members of health advisory boards. Most do not directly promote products, though Dr. Arthur Agatston, a practicing cardiologist and author of "The South Beach Diet," has a licensing deal with Kraft Foods to sell a line of South Beach foods, which are appearing on supermarket shelves this month. Read More