Human Rights

The Dutch Supreme Court recently upheld an arbitration tribunal judgment requiring the Ecuadorean government to pay Chevron $106 million for breach of contract. Ironically, activists say Ecuador is now free to hand this money to indigenous communities who have sued the oil giant for pollution in an unrelated case. Read More

Gay and transgendered performers have forced Facebook, the popular social network wesbite, to make changes to its "real names" policy to allow them to appear online under their stage names. The company has not, however, offered a way for people to keep their identities private Read More

Some 2,000 German employees of Amazon, the internet retail giant, walked off their jobs this week at four sites - Bad Hersfeld, Graben, Leipzig and Rheinberg. The strike action was coordinated by Vereinte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft (United Services Union), a Berlin trade union commonly known as Ver.di. Read More

Hundreds of low wage fast food workers were arrested at strikes and protests in some 100 cities around the U.S. on September 4. They were demanding that companies like Burger King, KFC, McDonald's and Wendy's pay workers a living wage of $15 an hour. Read More

As many as 10 people have been killed by police this year at African Barrick Gold's operations in Tanzania, according to a new report from two NGOs - MiningWatch Canada and Rights and Accountability in Development (RAID) in the UK. Read More

Malicious software from Hacking Team of Italy that can be used to spy on cell phones has been found by Citizen Lab activists to have been used to target people in Saudi Arabia. The software was bundled into a fake phone application for Qatif Today, a local news site. Read More

A Papua New Guinea (PNG) court revoked two 99 year land titles awarded to Kuala Lumpur Kepong (KLK) of Malaysia to develop palm oil plantations on 38,350 hectares of land in Collingwood Bay in Oro province following complaints of land grabbing by customary landowners. Read More

Children have become lucrative targets for data mining companies, according to a study by Politico magazine. Just weeks after Google settled a lawsuit for selling student data for advertising, the publication revealed an entire industry devoted to marketing data gathered from Internet applications offered to students and their teachers. Read More

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Some 40,000 workers in seven Yue Yuen shoe factories in Dongguan city, China, went on strike last month to successfully demand that their employer make pension payments required under the law. Read More