By Andrew Hudson

PRESIDENT OBAMA and President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia will hold their first official meeting next week in Washington. While a pending free trade agreement will probably claim the media attention, Obama has the opportunity to address Uribe’s troubling human rights record directly and make clear that any agreement between the two nations will hinge on a shared commitment to upholding human rights. Will he take this opportunity?

A lawyer representing a Baltimore County label manufacturing company is warning congressional candidate Andrew Duck to stop alleging the business is involved in sweatshops.

The Baltimore law firm Blades and Rosenfeld sent a letter dated June 18 to Duck, a Democrat running for the 6th District congressional seat.

The letter states Duck, during the course of campaigning against a candidate with ties to the company, has made comments alleging The Three Amigos Inc. is manufacturing its products in "sweatshops." ...

The International Labor Organization (ILO) will send a team to the Philippines to investigate the killing of trade union leaders, ILO director Linda Wirth said Monday.

The mission will be sent "soon," said Wirth, the ILO director for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, without giving a date or saying how many killings would be investigated.

Addressing a forum on child labor, Wirth said that the ILO would also send a team to the Philippines to examine the extent of child labor in the country, and its compliance with UN conventions against the practice.

By Aries Rufo

In the last four years, the government’s counter-insurgency drive had 70 collateral victims in the labor sector

Three years after her husband Rogelio Concepcion disappeared in their hometown of San Ildefonso in Bulacan, Marissa is still hoping he’s alive and will be back for good. Their four-year-old daughter has been asking when her father would join them for dinner again.