For as far as the eye can see, stalks of sugar cane march across the hillsides here like giant praying mantises. This is ground zero for ethanol production in Brazil -- "the Saudi Arabia of biofuels," as some have already labeled this vast South American country.

But even as Brazil's booming economy is powered by fuel processed from the cane, labor officials are confronting what some call the country's dirty little ethanol secret: the mostly primitive conditions endured by the multitudes of workers who cut the cane.

By Gulnoza Saidazimova

As World Day Against Child Labor is marked as part of continuing efforts to stamp out the practice around the globe, there are hundreds of thousands of underage children in Central Asia skipping school to work as unskilled laborers in cities or on farms.

While some children toil out of necessity for their families, in some countries the use of child labor is a state policy.

The biofuels boom has contributed to the recent spike in food prices that threatens the world's poor. In Brazil, home of ethanol made from sugar cane, it's had another unintended consequence: slavery. The use of forced labor to work in sugar cane plantations is "a growing trend," according to the U.S. State Department's latest report on human trafficking.

The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) would like to express its appreciation over efforts made by its counterpart, the Confederation of South Africa Trade Unions (COSATU) to stage a demonstration and a boarder blockade over the deteriorating political situation in Zimbabwe.

We would like to salute hundreds of COSATU members from the Polokwane Province who besieged the Beitbridge boarder post on Saturday 6 June 2008 to protest against Zimbabwe's stolen elections among a host of numerous challenges facing the Southern African State.