Should poor governments be allowed to break drug patents for humanitarian reasons? That question is front-and-center at a major public health conference sponsored by the World Health Organization that started on 28 April in Geneva. Top-notch policy experts from around the world have gathered to make formal policy recommendations about patents to Third World governments [...]

BHP Billiton has incurred the wrath of campaigners who are now planning a series of demonstrations against the company for its backing of the Beijing Olympics. The mining giant is one of a handful of major corporate sponsors of the Games being targeted by Dream for Darfur – the group led by actress Mia Farrow [...]

C’est un divorce retentissant, mais surtout aux conséquences insoupçonnées qui risque d’être prononcé dès ce début de semaine, entre le gouvernement congolais et le groupe britannique Tullow Oil Plc à la faveur de la réunion du conseil des ministres. A la base, l’évolution chaotique du partenariat pétrolier sur le Bloc 1 du Graben Albertine. Selon [...]

Most of us now understand that pollution from cars causes global warming. So, we also know that driving cleaner cars – like Toyota’s low-emission, 48 miles-per-gallon (mpg) Prius hybrid – means less global warming pollution. Unfortunately, the overall truth about Toyota is, well, inconvenient. The carbon footprint of Toyota’s overall car fleet remains dinosaur-esque, and [...]

PROTESTERS – some dressed as orang-utans – claimed success last night in a campaign to highlight the destruction of the rainforests after storming Unilever’s soap factory in Wirral. Around 60 members of Greenpeace had stormed into the Port Sunlight factory early yesterday, and some chained themselves to production lines of the soap and detergent factory. [...]

The United Methodist Church announced this week that it had achieved “positive results” in its negotiations with large construction manufacturer Caterpillar Inc. to review use of its equipment and examine its ties to Israeli military forces. The Protestant church body, which has a history of dedication to moral and social activism, notified the company that [...]

Geneva-based Covalence is publishing today its quarterly ethical reputation ranking, giving the best ranked companies as well as those companies which have made the most progress in the 1st Quarter of 2008. The main results across sectors are: > Unilever, Toyota and HSBC consolidate their leadership with Best EthicalQuote Score. > Wal-Mart, Toyota and Marks [...]

A SERIES of lawsuits is looming against Swiss mining giant Xstrata after blood tests around its Mount Isa operations revealed widespread lead poisoning among the children of the central Queensland town. The legal action over the alleged metal contamination in the Queensland mining capital comes ahead of the release next month of a Queensland Health [...]

What are student activists doing in Hong Kong? The students who were involved in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 became some of the most famous student protestors of all time. But what few people know is that Hong Kong students are following in the footsteps of their counterparts on the mainland and forming their [...]

Reporting leaders, including Tesco, Dell and Nestle, are being urged to find out what their suppliers’ carbon footprints are. The move is getting a mixed response. It is five years since the global climate change initiative, the Carbon Disclosure Project, first received backing from investors to ask the world’s largest companies to report annually on [...]