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Public-health officials and legislators hope that reports like this one, which can put a dollar figure on the pain and suffering caused by foodborne illness, may help prompt change. Late last year, the Committee on Health, Education Labor and Pensions unanimously approved the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, which is currently in front of the Senate. "It's our job to go to war against foodborne illness," says DeLauro. "We can't afford to wait." At $152 billion a year, the meter is running...
...Labor unrest and economic anxiety may not be among the headlines coming out of Iran since the controversial presidential election of June 2009, but they could turn out to be critical factors in the fate of the Islamic Republic. Indeed, the regime is so sensitive about the country's well-being that it has been obfuscating economic statistics - or simply not reporting them...
Every week, unofficial sources of information in Iran (that is, blogs and social media) report labor problems. This week, there was a report about a privately owned industrial-parts company in Isfahan, Iran's third largest city, that has failed to pay 200 of its employees for the past seven months. About 80 angry workers forced their way into a board meeting, compelling company managers to hastily promise an initial payment within days and a settling of all debts by the end of the Iranian year in mid-March - with New Year bonuses as an added sweetener. (See pictures...
Such stories remain mostly confined to the media outlets of human rights and labor organizations, whose members operate under perpetual fear of arrest and intimidation. Iran's official media continue to portray Iran as a success story. Indeed, so does President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. However, at Ahmadinejad's most recent press conference, in mid-February, a reporter asked the President about the omission of third-quarter GDP growth figures from the latest report by Iran's Central Bank. Ahmadinejad simply dismissed the importance of interim figures as "mere estimates" and claimed that current growth stood at 6.9%. Significantly, the newspaper World...
...Overall unemployment stood at 11.3%, while the out-of-work figure for those between the ages of 15 and 24 was estimated to be just over 24%. Real unemployment figures, however, are suspected to be significantly higher, given that large numbers of the unemployed do not register with the Labor Ministry. Says an Iranian journalist, who asked for anonymity: "They have manipulated the definition of who is jobless so they can keep the figure close to 10%. But now every family has one jobless person in their home." (See pictures of the global financial crisis...