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Shoes labeled "Made in Europe" are often assembled in poor East European countries for 'starvation wages' according to a new research report from the Change Your Shoes campaign. The companies whose labor practices were examined include Ara, Bata, Deichmann, Geox, Leder & Schuh AG, Lowa and Zara.

PHILADELPHIA -- Among the myriad corporate sponsors of the Republican Convention this year is Dale Carnegie and Associates, Inc., the self-described ''global leader in business training.''

Seven activists in Guangdong province, a key manufacturing hub in China, have been detained in a major crackdown on labor rights organizers. The arrests follow a steep rise in protests and strikes at factories that have long exploited migrant workers from rural areas with low pay and working conditions.

A music video asking Unilever, an Anglo-Dutch consumer goods giant, to clean up mercury waste from their former Indian factory notched up two million views in less than a week, prompting a reply from the company CEO. 'Kodaikanal Won't,' the video by Sonia Ashraf, parodied Nicki Minaj's song 'Anaconda.'

Volkswagen's subsidiary in Brazil has been accused of providing material support for torture conducted by the military dictatorship during its 21 year reign from 1964 to 1985. Details of the role of the German car manufacturer emerged in the final report of a national Truth Commission issued last month.

A lawsuit against Victor Dahdaleh, a Canadian-British billionaire, for allegedly paying £39 million ($65 million) in bribes to win supply contracts worth £2 billion ($3.2 billion) from Aluminium Bahrain (Alba) has collapsed.

A South Korean court has found "considerable causal relationship" between leukemia that killed a Samsung worker and her job dipping wafers in chemicals at a memory chip factory in Gi-heung, South Korea. This is the third time courts have supported alleged victims of workplace hazards in Samsung facilities.

ArcelorMittal, the global steel giant, has been ordered to hand over documents about the environmental impact of two South African facilities to community activists. The Luxembourg-based company, the largest steel producer in Africa, has been accused of polluting the air and water as well as dumping hazardous waste.

Samsung, the South Korean electronics giant, faces a 250 million real ($109) million fine for working condition violations at a plant in the free trade zone of Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state in Brazil.

Hundreds of workers at a Haryana factory for India's biggest carmaker - Maruti Suzuki - are being rounded up by police after a violent clash left a manager dead. The incident has become a symbol of the clash between winners and losers in the country's economic boom.

Farmers in Odisha are challenging POSCO, a South Korean steel giant. The confrontation is yet another David versus Goliath battle pitting "progress" against traditional agriculturists in a struggle to define development in India.

Monday is the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, where thousands of environmental, human rights, labor and campaign finance reform advocates will gather both in the streets and at the Shadow Convention hosted by Arianna Huffington. We of Rainforest are not gathering to show our support for the Democratic Party.

For nearly six years Ramatex Textile and Garment Factory barred government regulators from entering industrial premises leased from the City of Windhoek. Ramatex came to Namibia in 2001, lured by the newly implemented African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). Evidence of environmental violations finally emerged after the company absconded.

In a glimpse at how the nation's loss of more than 600,000 manufacturing jobs this year is boiling over, workers laid off from Republic Windows and Doors, said they would not leave, after company officials announced that the factory was closing. The workers were owed vacation and severance pay and were not given the 60 days of notice generally required by federal law in lay-offs.

Being a trade union organiser in bottling plants used by Coca-Cola in Colombia is a dangerous business - they are prime targets for death squads. Can Coke be held responsible? Mark Thomas follows the trail from Bogotá to New York

After six years of battling, the plaintiffs must prove whether certain multinationals enabled the apartheid government to commit acts of gross human rights violations. Among the 21 defendants are oil, vehicle and financial companies which continue to operate in South Africa -- the likes of BP, Shell, Chevron Texaco, Barclays, Daimler Chrysler and Rio Tinto. They stand accused of supporting the former regime with arms and ammunition, financing, fuel, transportation and military technology.

West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin III filed a friend-of-the-court brief in June, arguing the State Supreme Court should review a $382 million judgment against DuPont. The case involves thousands of residents in the area of a DuPont-operated zinc-smelting plant, and the largest civil penalty ever levied against the company, for the dumping of toxic arsenic, cadmium and lead at the plant.