Manufacturing

Thursday marks the first anniversary of the collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory collapse in Bangladesh. More than a thousand workers lost their lives. We sent The World’s Jason Margolis down to Boston’s premiere shopping area to find out if consumers here have changed their clothes-buying habits because of the disaster in Bangladesh.

Positive earnings reports from UPS, Caterpillar and other companies helped rally the stock market yesterday. Economics reporter for the Wall Street Journal, Kelly Evans, looks at the markets and what this rallying means for consumers.

In the State of the Union, President Barack Obama insisted he would bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States. But, to some, the proposals he laid out barely begin to address the disadvantages American companies face in manufacturing at home.

No one had quantified how much carcinogens linger in people’s clothes after they get back from the dry cleaner’s, until a high school student started asking questions.

Now that Liberia’s 14 year civil war is over, a fair-trade clothing factory is growing in the country’s capital Monrovia.