News headlines in March 2012, page 8

Malaysia plans to introduce a national minimum wage for its workers against stiff opposition from employers and manufacturers who warn that such a policy would shut down nearly 200,000 small and medium enterprise (SME) units.

It’s 10 am on Saturday morning and a group of migrants is clustered round the entrance to the Migrant Clothes Association in the Calais city centre, eating breakfast provided by the association. Inside, the warehouse is stacked with blankets, tents, trainers and clothes. Some of these will be distributed later by the association’s workers.

The latest Work Bank report on the Palestinian economy fuels the row on institutional viability precisely as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas considers renewing his statehood bid.

An influential Pakistani journalist appealed this week for Washington to stick to its 2014 timetable for withdrawing its combat forces, instead of accelerating its pullout, as a growing number of voices here are urging.

Enough calls to reason. It is time for collective action. That was the message Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu sent Thursday to his European Union (EU) colleagues, whom he will be meeting later this week in Brussels.

'We want to hear each others’ stories on how we have coped with changes, how we have got to where we are now and thus how we can be an inspiration to others,' says Anna Loa Olafsdottir, one of the people behind a group of women in southwest Iceland who call themselves SKASS.

Martha Borete Angela’s gaze sinks to the ground as she admits neither of her two children was delivered by a midwife or doctor. The 28-year-old South Sudanese woman shared this fact in front of her classmates: first-year students in a programme for midwives at the Catholic Health Training Institute in Wau, a city in the western part of the country.

Trade envoys of India, Brazil, and South Africa have warned industrialised countries not to hijack the Doha multilateral trade negotiations by adopting the controversial plurilateral approach to liberalise trade in services.

Trade envoys of India, Brazil, and South Africa have warned industrialised countries not to hijack the Doha multilateral trade negotiations by adopting the controversial plurilateral approach to liberalise trade in services.

The share of organic cotton is increasing in an unstable cotton market, thanks to big European retailers like H&M and C&A who've jumped on the bandwagon of offering organic clothing at a low price. But whether this benefits the farmer is another matter.