Just out on Google’s official blog - They have had their systems attacked from sources in China with the apparent attempt to steal intellectual property and to seek e-mail addresses of human rights advocates in China. I believe Google when they swallowed hard the restrictions placed on Google.cn but as they say in their blog:
We […]

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Buried deep in a Thomas Friedman column, he picks up an concept from economics that will become, I hope, a greater part of public discussion.
Friedman was writing about a visit he made to Costa Rica.
These days, visitors can still see amazing biodiversity all over Costa Rica — more than 25 percent of the country is […]

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Reuters reports that South Korea is having to remove thousands of products from their grocery shelves because they contain tainted Chinese milk. This comes after South Korean authorities earlier this month found melamine, a plastic added to milk to fake boost its protein content, in other products received from China.
South Korea has ordered 23 tonnes […]

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Heading into the major trade show for toys, retailers are responding to  consumers’ pressure for safer toys for children. Target and Wal-mart are tightening the standards for lead allowed in toys. The US Federal standard is 600 parts per million. These retailers are imposing a standard of 90 parts per million for
You can read more […]

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Saturday January 12, 4:37 am ET
By William Foreman, Associated Press Writer
Safety Scares, Rip-Offs: China’s Rough Capitalism Daunts Foreign Buyers but Still They Come GUANGZHOU, China (AP) — Ron Rust and Beve Kozub were poking around the toy booths at China’s biggest trade fair two years ago when something caught their eye: pouty-faced baby […]

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Its to Gap Co. credit that they convened a meeting of their Indian suppliers but it was after a British newspaper reported violations of child labor laws by these suppliers making Gap clothes.
The Observer quoted the children as saying they had been sold to the sweatshop by their families in Indian states such as Bihar […]

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RC2 recalled 1,500,000 (yes that’s 1.5 million) of their Chinese made toys due to lead in the paint on the toys. To make it up to their customers, they gave away free replacement toys. Nice right? Not. It turns out that the replacements also contained lead paint. Honestly, we couldn’t make this up if we […]

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Wednesday September 5, 2:57 am ET
By Anne D’Innocenzio, AP Business Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — Mattel Inc.’s reputation took another hit after the world’s largest toy maker announced a third major recall of Chinese-made toys in little more than a month because of excessive amounts of lead paint.
The latest action, which involved about 800,000 toys and […]

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Now this is pro-active. Amazon, in their effort to provide a safe market place for Amazon customers, is implementing the Mattel recall on products that might be offered up through Amazon even if by non-Amazon sellers. They are pulling the products from everyone who sells through them. I’ve not seen other press on this but […]

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In our local paper today there were three more articles on the problems with products made in China and the opportunities for companies that make things locally. Two were AP wire feeds but one was purely local. See It’s only natural Local toymakers see opportunity after recalls
What jumps out at me is the quote:
Alexander said […]

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