Problems with toys made in China are once again getting attention from lawmakers in Washington. At a hearing Thursday they learned the defective toys are the end product from an assembly line of misery.

Long hours, little pay, abusive bosses -- the conditions are deplorable at Chinese toy factories, according to workers rights advocates...

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By Mica Rosenberg

MORALES, Guatemala, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Masked gunmen dumped a Guatemalan banana picker's bullet-ridden corpse yards from fields of fruit bound for the United States, a grim reminder of the risks of organizing labor in the Central American country.

Marco Tulio Ramirez, killed last month, was the fifth Guatemalan labor leader murdered this year.

In just over two weeks, Tulane University will release the results of a long-awaited, Labor Department-commissioned study of labor practices in the African cocoa industry. Plagued by allegations that it used abusive child labor and even slavery, the industry vowed to clean up its act six years ago as part of a landmark protocol spearheaded by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.).

The deadline for the industry’s compliance with the Harkin-Engel protocol comes in July. How far the industry has moved toward meeting its goals is still a subject of some debate.

MYAWADDY, Myanmar -- Shortly after dawn six days a week, scores of young women scramble down a muddy track north of this border town and clamber aboard metal boats for a short trip across the Moei River, the narrow, cocoa-brown boundary between Myanmar and Thailand.

The women, victims of the economic ruin visited on this country by the world's most enduring military dictatorship, are on their way to work in a factory on the opposite riverbank in Thailand. In the late afternoon, they cross back to Myanmar...