If you are wondering whether Wikipedia is down – and you find yourself wondering this on January 18, 2012, then Wikipedia may indeed be down, but it is a planned Wikipedia blackout, to protest SOPA (even though it has been killed) and PIPA (which will hopefully suffer the same fate).

Wal-Mart, Gap, Nike – when you think of companies known to use labor where the work enviroment is dangerous to the workers, these are names that come to mind. But Apple? Nokia?? It’s true – the odds are good that the screen on one or more of your computers or cell phones was manufactured in a plant where workers are routinely exposed to toxic chemicals – where, in fact, workers have died due to exposure to chemicals like n-hexane. This week Chinese workers employed by Taiwanese screen manufacturer Wintek, in Wintek’s east China factory in Jiangsu province, staged a protest over, in part, their allegations that several workers have become paralyzed – and died – due to exposure to n-hexane, a toxic chemical that has been banned, but which Wintek is still using.