Although Apple claims to be a socially responsible company, some of its suspected Chinese suppliers, such as Foxconn, Dafu and Lian Jian Technology, routinely violate China’s “Law on the Prevention and Control of Occupational Diseases.” A report from China’s Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, “The Other Side of Apple,” criticized the company for harmful environmental [...]

Lethal superbugs that do not respond to any known drugs are emerging. The World Health Organization states that the New Delhi, or NDM-1, superbug was recently found in UK patients who had traveled to countries such as India or Pakistan and has reached a critical point. These superbugs are resistant to carbapenem antibiotics, a major [...]

In May 2010, six months after an earthquake destroyed Haiti, the American multinational corporation Monsanto donated to the country 60 tons of corn and vegetable hybrid seed. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) took charge of the seed distribution. A month later, on 4 June 2010, around 10,000 Haitian farmers demonstrated against Monsanto’s [...]

In a new report entitled “Whose Aid is it Anyway?”, Oxfam has found that “billions of dollars in international aid, which could have transformed the lives of many people in some of the poorest countries in the world, was spent on unsustainable, expensive and dangerous aid projects that international donor governments used to support their [...]

Concern is growing over the health impact of growing and eating genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The World Health Organization has identified allergenicity, antibiotic resistance, gene transfer, outcrossing, GM genes introduced into the wild population, gene stability, susceptibility of non-target organisms (insects) and loss of biodiversity as potential issues of using GM seeds. Currently, most health [...]

Lyme disease is one of the most political and controversial epidemics of our time. The disease originates from a bacteria transmitted through the bite of a tick and can remain hidden,  mimicking other diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis, ALS, ADHD and other neurological conditions, thus it is often called “the great imitator”.  And it is [...]

“Participatory Budgeting” (PB) is a process that allows citizens to decide directly how to allocate all or part of a public budget, typically through a series of meetings, work by community “delegates” or representatives and ultimately, a final vote. It was first implemented in the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1990, and has since [...]

Shoppers worldwide are using 500 billion to one trillion single-use plastic bags per year. The average use time of a plastic bag is 12 minutes. Plastic bags pollute our waters, smother wetlands and entangle and kill animals. This eventually affects our health because larger animals eat small, plastic-laden creatures and plastics work their way up [...]

South Dakota is taking extreme action against any person who performs an abortion within the state’s borders. The South Dakota House is taking up a bill to redefine “justifiable homicide” that may “make it legal to kill doctors who perform abortions,” Mother Jones reports. A bill backed by the GOP could, in theory, allow a [...]

President Obama’s undeclared and congressionally unauthorized war against Libya may be compounded by the crime of spreading toxic uranium oxide in populated areas of that country. Concern is being voiced by groups such as the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons, which monitors the military use of so-called depleted uranium (DU) anti-tank and bunker-penetrating shells. [...]