Law & Regulation

Gordon Brown has signalled he wants to see poor countries develop through trade rather than aid. Read More

European commissioners, the continent's regulators, have been criticised by their own watchdog for refusing to divulge details of meetings they and their staff have held with lobbyists. Read More

Amid a barrage of criticism, the Securities and Exchange Commission is temporarily suspending an online list intended to spotlight companies doing business in countries tied to terrorism. Read More

MPs called for legislation yesterday to make British retailers pay their garment workers overseas a living wage. Read More

An Oxford economist has a new and potentially powerful idea: setting up an voluntary international charter to guide transparency efforts in resource-rich developing countries, in order to stave of corruption. Read More

High levels of toxic lead turning up in cheap jewelry from China are prompting recalls in the U.S. But some of the lead used by these Chinese manufacturers comes from an unconventional source: computers and other electronic goods discarded in Western countries and dumped in China. Read More

The U.N.'s Global Compact with international big business "at the moment is so voluntary that it really is a happy-go-lucky club," says Ramesh Singh, chief executive of ActionAid, a non-governmental organisation. The controversy has come to a boiling point because of the Global Compact Leaders' Summit being held in Geneva on Thursday and Friday, at which over 1,000 representatives of multinational companies are taking part, in addition to well-known civil society figures like Irene Khan, the secretary general of AI; Mary Robinson, president of the Ethical Globalisation Initiative; Guy Ryder, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation; and Jeremy Hobbs, executive director of Oxfam International. Read More

The experience of São Tomé, a poor country that supports itself by selling cocoa and commemorative stamps featuring celebrities like Elvis Presley and Brigitte Bardot, shows how just the hint of oil can set off a scramble for riches. Read More

Anger is mounting over a new bonus scheme at Tesco that will reward chief executive Sir Terry Leahy with a £11.5m windfall if the supermarket group's US venture Fresh & Easy succeeds. Read More

The securities industry dodged a bullet on Monday when the Supreme Court threw out a private antitrust suit that accused 10 leading investment banks of conspiring to fix prices for the initial public offerings of hundreds of technology companies during the 1990s. Read More