 |
| WORLD: Disaster Plans Lacking at Deep Rigs
by Ben Casselman and Guy Chazen, Wall Street Journal
May 17th, 2010
Dealing with a deep-sea spill is a a problem that spans the industry, whose major players include Chevron Corp, Royal Dutch Shell and Petróleo Brasileiro SA. Without adequately planning for trouble, the oil business has focused on developing experimental equipment and techniques to drill in ever deeper waters, according to a Wall Street Journal examination. |
| US: U.S. Said to Allow Drilling Without Needed Permits
by Ian Urbina, New York Times
May 13th, 2010
The federal Minerals Management Service gave permission to BP and dozens of other oil companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico without first getting required permits from another agency that assesses threats to endangered species — and despite strong warnings from that agency about the impact the drilling was likely to have on the gulf. |
| US: BP touts itself as 'green,' but faces PR disaster with 'BP oil spill'
by Paul Farhi, Washington Post
May 6th, 2010
Ever careful of its public image, BP has been careful not to invoke its name in regard to the massive ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. "We refer to it as Gulf of Mexico response," said Andrew Gowers, the company's spokesman. The name of a disaster can be critical, both as a historic matter and the more immediate matters of image, public relations and legal liability. |
| US: FBI Probes Explosion in West Virginia Mine
by Kris Maher and Siobhan Hughes, Wall Street Journal
April 30th, 2010
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is conducting a criminal probe of the deadly explosion at a Massey Energy Co. mine in West Virginia in early April that killed 29 miners, according to people familiar with the matter. In a statement on Friday Massey Energy said, "Massey has no knowledge of criminal wrongdoing." |
| CANADA: Munk takes on mine protesters, defends capitalism
by John Spears, The Star
April 28th, 2010
Mark Ekepa journeyed from Papua New Guinea to tell the shareholders of Barrick Gold Corp. how police had burned down his house near the Barrick’s Porgera mine. Idolia Bornones travelled from Chile to say that Barrick operations are damaging local glaciers and rivers. But Barrick chairman Peter Munk was unrepentant as he faced the company’s annual meeting. |
| US: Deaths at West Virginia Mine Raise Issues About Safety
by Ian Urbina and Michael Cooper, New York Times
April 6th, 2010
Rescue workers began the precarious task Tuesday of removing explosive methane gas from the coal mine where at least 25 miners died the day before. The mine owner’s -- Massey Energy Company -- dismal safety record, along with several recent evacuations of the mine, left federal officials and miners suggesting that Monday’s explosion might have been preventable. |
| CHINA: Earth-Friendly Elements, Mined Destructively
by Keith Bradsher, New York Times
December 26th, 2009
Some of the greenest technologies of the age, from electric cars to efficient light bulbs to very large wind turbines, are made possible by an unusual group of elements called rare earths. Most of these come from China. “In many places, the mining is abused,” said Wang Caifeng, the top rare-earths industry regulator at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in China. |
| US/ECUADOR: New nonprofit uses Web to pressure Chevron
by David A. Baker, San Francisco Chronicle
November 16th, 2009
Retired retail executive Richard Goldman was astonished when he heard about the $27 billion pollution lawsuit against Chevron Corp. in Ecuador. SO he has created a nonprofit group, Ethos Alliance, that will use social-networking tools to spread word of the case and put pressure on Chevron. |
| UK: Friends of the Earth attacks carbon trading
by Ashley Seager, The Guardian (UK)
November 5th, 2009
The world's carbon trading markets growing complexity threatens another "sub-prime" style financial crisis that could again destabilise the global economy, campaigners warn. In a new report, Friends of the Earth says that to date "cap and trade" carbon markets have done little to reduce emissions but have been plagued by inefficiency and corruption. |
| IVORY COAST: Trafigura offers deal to 31,000 Africans over dumped waste
by Frances Gibb, The Times (London)
October 17th, 2009
British oil trader Trafigura has offered to settle a court case brought by 31,000 Africans who say that they were injured in the largest personal injuries class action mounted in an English court. The action resulted from the dumping of 400 tonnes of waste in the Ivory Coast by an oil tanker, the Probo Koala, in 2006 — one of the worst pollution disasters in recent history. |
| US: E. Coli Path Shows Flaws in Beef Inspection
by Michael Moss, New York Times
October 3rd, 2009
Tracing the chain of production of an E. Coli-contaminated hamburger made by Cargill, through interviews and government and corporate records obtained by The New York Times, shows why eating ground beef is still a gamble. Neither the system meant to make the meat safe, nor the meat itself, is what consumers have been led to believe. |
| US: Clean Water Laws Are Neglected, at a Cost in Suffering
by Charles Duhigg, New York Times
September 12th, 2009
Violations of the Clean Water Act have risen steadily across the nation, an extensive review of water pollution records by The New York Times found. Polluters include small companies, like gas stations, dry cleaners, and shopping malls. They also include large operations, like chemical factories, power plants, sewage treatment centers and one of the biggest zinc smelters, the Horsehead Corporation of Pennsylvania. |
| ECUADOR: Chevron Offers Evidence in Ecuador Bribery Case
by Reuters, New York Times
September 7th, 2009
On Monday Chevron said it gave Ecuadorean authorities evidence of a bribery scheme linked to a $27 billion environmental damages lawsuit against the oil company. Last week, the judge hearing the case, Juan Núñez, recused himself. The Amazon Defense Coalition said the recusal did not “change the overwhelming evidence against Chevron.” |
| FIJI: Fiji Water: Spin the Bottle
by Anna Lenzer, Mother Jones
August 17th, 2009
Obama sips it. Paris Hilton loves it. Mary J. Blige won't sing without it. How did a plastic water bottle, imported from a military dictatorship thousands of miles away, become the epitome of cool? |
| UK: Two men and a website mount vendetta against an oil giant
by Danny Fortson, Sunday Times (UK)
July 19th, 2009
In Colchester, Essex, John and Alfred Donovan are compiling perhaps the world's largest dossier on Royal Dutch Shell, at royaldutchshellplc.com. It's an awkward position for Shell, this month crowned by Fortune magazine as the world’s largest company, as trying to shut the website down would draw even more attention to it. |
| UK: Two men and a website mount vendetta against an oil giant
by Danny Fortson, The Sunday Times (UK)
July 19th, 2009
In Colchester, Essex, John and Alfred Donovan are compiling perhaps the world's largest dossier on Royal Dutch Shell, at royaldutchshellplc.com. It's an awkward position for Shell, this month crowned by Fortune magazine as the world’s largest company, as trying to shut the website down would draw even more attention to it. |
| ECUADOR: Chevron's Amazon 'fake cleanup' trial
United Press International
June 25th, 2009
A report submitted this week to a court in Ecuador finding dangerous levels of contamination at oil wells Chevron says it cleaned up in the 1990s is expected to reinforce a fraud indictment against two Chevron lawyers in a $27.3 billion environmental lawsuit against the oil company. |
| NIGERIA: Shell to Pay $15.5 Million to Settle Nigerian Case
by Jad Mouawad, New York Times
June 8th, 2009
Royal Dutch Shell agreed to pay $15.5 million to settle a case accusing it of taking part in human rights abuses in the Niger Delta, a striking sum given it has denied any wrongdoing. Ken Saro-Wiwa, Shell’s most prominent critic at the time in Nigeria, was hanged in 1995 by that country’s military regime after protesting Shell's environmental practices in the oil-rich delta, especially in his native Ogoni region. |
| INDONESIA: Scramble for coal assets in Indonesia
by Sundeep Tucker and John Aglionby, Financial Times
June 7th, 2009
Some of the world’s largest energy groups are scrambling to acquire coal mining assets in Indonesia as family-run conglomerates consider divestments to raise cash. Peabody Energy, the US coal miner, and Xstrata, the Anglo-Swiss miner, are believed to be among those interested. Industry analysts said Chinese, South Korean, Indian and Middle Eastern companies were also scouring Indonesia for assets. |
| FINLAND: In Finland, Nuclear Renaissance Runs Into Trouble
by James Kanter, New York Times
May 28th, 2009
As the Obama administration tries to steer America toward cleaner sources of energy, it would do well to consider the cautionary tale of this new-generation nuclear reactor site. The massive power plant under construction on muddy terrain on this Finnish island was supposed to be the showpiece of a nuclear renaissance. But things have not gone as planned. |
| ECUADOR: In Ecuador, Resentment of an Oil Company Oozes
by SIMON ROMERO and CLIFFORD KRAUSS, New York Times
May 14th, 2009
Texaco, the American oil company that Chevron acquired in 2001, once poured oil waste into pits used decades ago for drilling wells in Ecuador's northeastern jungle. Texaco’s roughnecks are long gone, but black gunk from the pits seeps to the topsoil here and in dozens of other spots. These days the only Chevron employees who visit the former oil fields do so escorted by bodyguards toting guns. They represent one side in a bitter fight that is developing into the world’s largest environmental lawsuit, with $27 billion in potential damages. |
| WORLD: When Chevron Hires Ex-Reporter to Investigate Pollution, Chevron Looks Good
by Brian Stelter, New York Times
May 10th, 2009
When Chevron learned that “60 Minutes” was preparing a potentially damaging report about oil company contamination of the Amazon rain forest in Ecuador, it hired a former journalist to produce a mirror image of the report, from the corporation’s point of view. An Ecuadorean judge is expected to rule soon on whether Chevron owes up to $27 billion in damages. |
| US: Oil Giants Loath to Follow Obama’s Green Lead
by Jad Mouawad, New York Times
April 7th, 2009
The Obama administration seeks the most ambitious transformation of energy policy in a generation. But Big Oil is not on board. Royal Dutch Shell said last month that it would freeze research and investments in wind, solar and hydrogen power, and focus its alternative energy efforts on biofuels. BP, a company that has spent nine years saying it was moving “beyond petroleum,” has been getting back to petroleum since 2007, paring back its renewable program. The list goes on. |
| US: Online Age Quiz Is a Window for Drug Makers
by STEPHANIE CLIFFORD, New York Times
March 25th, 2009
RealAge, promising to help shave years off your age, has become one of the most popular quizzes on the Internet. The test asks 150 questions about lifestyle and family history to assign a “biological age." But then pharmaceutical companies pay RealAge to compile test results of RealAge members and send them marketing messages by e-mail. |
| US/CANADA: Alaskan lake’s fate could echo across continent
by Todd Wilkinson, Christian Science Monitor
March 24th, 2009
A landmark legal case now before the US Supreme Court holds huge implications for lakes across the continent. Nearly four decades the Clean Water Act was passed to protect waterways from industrial pollution, a proposal by Coeur d’Alene Mines Corp. to dispose of tons of effluent in Alaska's Lower Slate Lake has sparked an international debate. |
| CHILE: Chilean Town Withers in Free Market for Water
by Alexei Barrionuevo, New York Times
March 15th, 2009
Nowhere is the system for buying and selling water more permissive than in Chile, where water rights are private property, not a public resource, and can be traded like commodities with little government oversight or safeguards for the environment. The small town of Quillaga is being swallowed up in the country’s intensifying water wars. |
| US: Food Problems Elude Private Inspectors
by Michael Moss and Andrew Martin, New York Times
March 5th, 2009
When food industry giants like Kellogg want to ensure that American consumers are being protected from contaminated products, they rely on private inspectors. With government inspectors overwhelmed by the task of guarding the nation’s food supply, the job of monitoring food plants has in large part fallen to an army of private auditors, and problems are rife. |
| EUROPE: Europe to Allow Two Bans on Genetically Altered Crops
by James Kanter, New York Times
March 2nd, 2009
European Union governments delivered a blow Monday to the biotechnology industry, allowing Austria and Hungary to maintain national bans on growing genetically modified crops from Monsanto. The market for genetically engineered crops is worth several billion dollars worldwide. |
| US: Board cancels hearing under Bayer pressure
by Ken Ward, Jr., The Charleston Gazette
February 25th, 2009
The U.S. Chemical Safety Board has canceled a public meeting to brief local residents on its investigation of an August 2008 explosion that killed two Bayer Institute plant workers. Chemical plant security activists expressed shock; the meeting was also to discuss concerns about a methyl isocyanate tank located near the site of the deadly blast. |
| US/WORLD: Smokeless Tobacco to Get Push by Venture Overseas
by Kevin Helliker, Wall Street Journal
February 4th, 2009
Swedish Match AB and Philip Morris International Inc. announced a joint venture Tuesday to market smokeless tobacco world-wide. The venture combines a world-wide giant in smokeless, Swedish Match, with the world's second-largest purveyor of cigarettes, PMI, an Altria Inc. spinoff. |
| US: Tobacco Trial Opens in Florida, First of Many Suits
by Associated Press, Wall Street Journal
February 3rd, 2009
The first of about 8,000 lawsuits blaming the health problems and deaths of Florida smokers on tobacco companies went to trial Tuesday. The key to the case is proving whether now-deceased Stuart Hess was addicted to cigarettes made by Richmond, Va.-based Philip Morris, a unit of Altria Group. |
| US: Plant Shipped Tainted Products, F.D.A. Says
by Reuters, New York Times
January 27th, 2009
Peanut Corp. of America plant in Blakely, Georgia, identified as the source of an outbreak of salmonella, shipped out products that managers knew might have been tainted, U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials said on Tuesday. |
| US: New Rules on Doctors and Medical Firms Amid Ethics Concerns
by Barry Meier, New York Times
January 24th, 2009
The Physician Payments Sunshine Act, reintroduced in the U.S. Senate on Thursday, would require device and drug makers to report all financial links with doctors on a federal Web site. The medical field has been troubled by federal investigations over the issue of frequently undisclosed financial ties between companies and physicians. |
| US: Plant That Spilled Coal Ash Had Earlier Leak Problems
by John M. Broder, New York Times
January 8th, 2009
The chief executive of the Tennessee Valley Authority, which operates the coal-burning power plant responsible for an enormous flood of coal ash in East Tennessee late last month, acknowledged Thursday that the plant’s containment ponds had leaked two other times in the last five years but had not been adequately repaired. |
| US: Altria Ruling Ignites Legal Moves
by BRENT KENDALL, The Wall Street Journal
December 21st, 2008
The Supreme Court's ruling last week allowing smokers in Maine to sue Altria Group Inc.'s Philip Morris unit for allegedly deceptive advertising of "light" cigarettes already is prompting new legal activity, including an effort to revive a multibillion-dollar case against the tobacco company that had been thrown out. |
| US/IRAQ: Indiana guardsmen sue defense contractor KBR
by Farah Stockman, Boston Globe
December 4th, 2008
Sixteen Indiana national guardsmen filed a lawsuit yesterday against military contractor KBR. The complaint alleges that several reservists contracted respiratory system tumors and skin rashes after guarding reconstruction work at the Qarmat Ali treatment plant, strewn with the toxin chromium dichromate. |
| US: Research Center Tied to Drug Company
by GARDINER HARRIS, The New York Times
November 24th, 2008
Court documents reveal that Dr. Joseph Biederman, a renowned child psychiatrist, pushed Johnson & Johnson to fund a research center whose goal was “to move forward the commercial goals of J&J.” |
| US: Radio Host Has Drug Company Ties
by GARDINER HARRIS, The New York Times
November 21st, 2008
An influential psychiatrist who was the host of the popular NPR program “The Infinite Mind” earned at least $1.3 million from 2000 to 2007 giving marketing lectures for drugmakers, income not mentioned on the program. |
| CHILE: Nearly 2,000 Carrying H.I.V. in Chile Were Not Notified
by PASCALE BONNEFOY and ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO , The New York Times
November 13th, 2008
Chile’s health minister said Thursday that the country’s public health system had failed to notify at least 512 people that they were infected with H.I.V., and that private-sector services did not inform an additional 1,364 that they were carrying the virus, which causes AIDS. |
| US: More BP refinery doubts
Journal Gazette
October 7th, 2008
Smoke rises from the Whiting refinery now owned by BP. Federal regulators are questioning BP’s permit process. According to the EPA, the agency “now has information suggesting that BP may have begun a project to process Canadian crude oil at the refinery in 2005 without the proper permit.” |
| US: Eli Lilly settles Zyprexa inquiries in 32 states
by TOM MURPHY and MARLEY SEAMAN, Associated Press
October 7th, 2008
Drugmaker Eli Lilly & Co. cleared another legal cloud hanging over its top-selling drug Zyprexa when it announced a $62 million settlement Tuesday, but several other storms are still brewing for the antipsychotic medication. |
| ARGENTINA: Is GlaxoSmithKline Behaving Badly in Argentina?
by AINA HUNTER, ABC News
September 23rd, 2008
Michaela, a deceased 5 month old, is one of more than 13,000 Argentine children to participate in a clinical study implemented a little more than a year ago by the London-based GlaxoSmithKline, the world's second-largest drug manufacturer. |
| US: Judge to Unseal Documents on the Eli Lilly Drug Zyprexa
by MARY WILLIAMS WALSH, The New York Times
September 5th, 2008
A federal judge in Brooklyn decided on Friday to unseal confidential materials about Eli Lilly’s top-selling antipsychotic drug Zyprexa, citing “the health of hundreds of thousands of people” and “fundamental questions” about the way drugs are approved for new uses. |
| US: Altria Said to Be in Talks With Tobacco Maker UST
by ANDREW ROSS SORKIN and ANDREW MARTIN, The New York Times
September 4th, 2008
Altria Group is in advanced talks to buy UST, the maker of the popular Skoal and Copenhagen smokeless tobacco brands, for more than $10 billion, people with close knowledge of the negotiations said late Thursday. The terms could not be learned. |
| US: U.S. Drug Ads Questioned
by KEITH J. WINSTEIN and SUZANNE VRANICA, The Wall Street Journal
September 3rd, 2008
Consumer advertising for prescription drugs had a negligible impact on sales of products studied by Harvard Medical School researchers -- in a finding that may confound both advertisers and their opponents. |
| US: For Widely Used Drug, Question of Usefulness Is Still Lingering
by ALEX BERENSON, The New York Times
September 1st, 2008
About the only point on which both sides agree is that no one can judge ezetimibe’s safety and benefits for certain without more data, ideally from a clinical trial covering more than 10,000 patients and lasting several years, long enough to show that the drug actually helps patients live longer or avoid heart attacks. |
| US: Files Show Governor Intervened With Court
by Ian Urbina, New York Times
August 13th, 2008
West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin III filed a friend-of-the-court brief in June, arguing the State Supreme Court should review a $382 million judgment against DuPont. The case involves thousands of residents in the area of a DuPont-operated zinc-smelting plant, and the largest civil penalty ever levied against the company, for the dumping of toxic arsenic, cadmium and lead at the plant. |
| US: WellCare to Restate Years of Results
by THEO FRANCIS, The Wall Street Journal
July 22nd, 2008
By accounting for medical expenses improperly, the company said it failed to return about $46.5 million in premiums to state programs providing health care to low-income adults and children in Florida and Illinois, and understated liabilities by about $46 million. |
| US: Menthol Dose Manipulated, Study Says
by STEPHANIE SAUL, The New York Times
July 17th, 2008
A new Harvard study claims that the tobacco industry in recent years has manipulated menthol levels in cigarettes to hook youngsters and maintain loyalty among smoking adults. The report could further inflame a controversy over menthol in pending tobacco legislation. |
| INDIA: Decades Later, Toxic Sludge Torments Bhopal
by Somini Sengupta, New York Times
July 7th, 2008
Residents of Bhopal, India continue to suffer from Union Carbide's toxic legacy, this time in the form of toxic waste that still languishes inside a shoddy warehouse on the old factory grounds. Ailments such as cleft palates and mental retardation are appearing in numbers of Bhopali children, raising questions about contaminated soil and groundwater, clean-up, and liability. |
| US: Mannatech Settles Holder Suits
by SUZANNE SATALINE, Wall Street Journal
June 13th, 2008
Dietary-supplements maker Mannatech Inc. said it settled several lawsuits with shareholders who accused the company of using improper sales tactics to boost the value of the stock. |
| EUROPE: Chemical Law Has Global Impact
by Lyndsey Layton, Washington Post
June 12th, 2008
Europe this month rolled out new restrictions on makers of chemicals linked to cancer and other health problems. The changes follow eight years of vigorous opposition from the U.S. chemical industry giants like DuPont, and the Bush administration. |
| TOBACCO: Profits in Hand, Wealthy Family Cuts Tobacco Tie
by STEPHANIE SAUL, The New York Times
June 11th, 2008
Now, the next generation of Tisches has removed tobacco from the portfolio of the conglomerate they lead, the Loews Corporation, spinning off its tobacco unit, Lorillard, as a stand-alone business, with the Newport brand representing more than 90 percent of the new company’s revenue. The new stock began trading Tuesday, and analysts have said the new company might be a takeover target. |
| US: Researchers Fail to Reveal Full Drug Pay
by GARDINER HARRIS and BENEDICT CAREY, The New York Times
June 8th, 2008
A world-renowned Harvard child psychiatrist whose work has helped fuel an explosion in the use of powerful antipsychotic medicines in children earned at least $1.6 million in consulting fees from drug makers from 2000 to 2007 but for years did not report much of this income to university officials, according to information given Congressional investigators. |
| US: Former Colo. nuke plant contractors ordered to pay $925M
AP
June 3rd, 2008
Two companies that worked as contractors with the now-defunct Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant have been ordered to pay $925 million to residents who claimed that contamination blown from the facility endangered people's health and devalued their property. |
| US: Exxon investors reject green initiatives
by Andrew Clark, The Guardian
May 29th, 2008
The world's biggest oil company emerged bruised but victorious from a bust-up with the billionaire Rockefeller family yesterday as an effort to foist green initiatives on ExxonMobil failed to capture wholehearted support from shareholders. |
| US: Drug Makers Near Old Goal: A Legal Shield
by GARDINER HARRIS and ALEX BERENSON, The New York Times
April 6th, 2008
The Bush administration has argued strongly in favor of the doctrine, which holds that the F.D.A. is the only agency with enough expertise to regulate drug makers and that its decisions should not be second-guessed by courts. The Supreme Court is to rule on a case next term that could make pre-emption a legal standard for drug cases. The court already ruled in February that many suits against the makers of medical devices like pacemakers are pre-empted. |
| US: Reynolds Ads Oppose Move to Regulate Tobacco
by STEPHANIE SAUL, The New York Times
April 1st, 2008
As legislation moves through Congress that would empower the F.D.A. to regulate the tobacco industry, Reynolds, whose brands include Camel cigarettes, is attacking what it views as the bill’s vulnerability: a weak, overextended F.D.A. |
| AFGHANISTAN: Missing: The £5bn aid needed to rebuild lives
by JEROME STARKEY AND ROSS LYDALL, The Scotsman
March 25th, 2008
Vast sums of aid are lost in corporate profits of contractors and sub-contractors, which can be as high as 50 per cent on a single contract. A vast amount of aid is absorbed by high salaries, with generous allowances, and other costs of expatriates working for consulting firms and contractors. |
| US: Study says diesel emissions raise cancer risk
by Elizabeth Fernandez, Chronicle Staff Writer, The San Francisco Chronicle
March 20th, 2008
The analysis by the California Air Resources Board, released Wednesday night, shows that the greatest health dangers related to toxic air emissions stems from diesel trucks traversing the freeways and other roadways around West Oakland and the Port of Oakland. |
| US: Eli Lilly E-Mail Discussed Unapproved Use of Drug
by ALEX BERENSON, The New York Times
March 17th, 2008
John C. Lechleiter, an Eli Lilly official who is about to become the company's top executive, wrote an e-mail message in 2003 that appears to have encouraged Lilly to promote its schizophrenia medicine Zyprexa for a use not approved by federal drug regulators. |
| IRAQ: KBR Faulted on Water Provided to Soldiers
by Dana Hedgpeth, The Washington Post
March 11th, 2008
U.S. soldiers at a military base in Iraq were provided with treated but untested wastewater for nearly two years by KBR, the giant government contractor, and may have suffered health problems as a result, according to a report released yesterday by the Pentagon's inspector general. |
| US: Pollution Is Called a Byproduct of a 'Clean' Fuel
by BRENDA GOODMAN, The New York Times
March 11th, 2008
The spills, at the Alabama Biodiesel Corporation plant outside this city about 17 miles from Tuscaloosa, are similar to others that have come from biofuel plants in the Midwest. The discharges, which can be hazardous to birds and fish, have many people scratching their heads over the seeming incongruity of pollution from an industry that sells products with the promise of blue skies and clear streams. |
| CHINA: Solar Energy Firms Leave Waste Behind in China
by Ariana Eunjung Cha, Washington Post
March 9th, 2008
The Luoyang Zhonggui High-Technology Co. of Henan, China, is a green energy company, producing polysilicon for solar energy panels. But the byproduct -- silicon tetrachloride -- is a highly toxic substance that poses environmental hazards. |
| US: In Shift, Ashcroft to Testify on Oversight Deal
by Carrie Johnson, The Washington Post
February 26th, 2008
Former Attorney General John D. Ashcroft agreed last night to appear at a House hearing to discuss his lucrative arrangement overseeing a medical equipment company, averting a showdown with committee members who had planned to meet today to authorize a subpoena. |
| US: Pfizer to End Lipitor Ads by Jarvik
by STEPHANIE SAUL, The New York Times
February 26th, 2008
Under criticism that its ads are misleading, Pfizer said Monday that it would cancel a long-running advertising campaign using the artificial heart pioneer Robert Jarvik as a spokesman for its cholesterol drug Lipitor. |
| US: Inside the world of war profiteers
by David Jackson and Jason Grotto|Tribune reporters, Chicago Tribune
February 21st, 2008
Hundreds of pages of recently unsealed court records detail how kickbacks shaped the war's largest troop support contract months before the first wave of U.S. soldiers plunged their boots into Iraqi sand. |
| GLOBAL: 2 Reports At Odds On Biotech Crops
by Rick Weiss, The Washington Post
February 14th, 2008
Dueling reports released yesterday -- one by a consortium largely funded by the biotech industry and the other by a pair of environmental and consumer groups -- came to those diametrically different conclusions. |
| CHINA: China Plant Played Role In Drug Tied to 4 Deaths
by ANNA WILDE MATHEWS and THOMAS M. BURTON, The Wall Street Journal
February 14th, 2008
A Chinese facility that hasn't been inspected by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration made the active ingredient in much of the widely used Baxter International Inc. blood-thinner that is under investigation after reports of hundreds of allergic reactions and four deaths among the drug's users, the agency said yesterday. |
| US: UnitedHealth Faces Suit Over Payment System
by VANESSA FUHRMANS and THEO FRANCIS, The Wall Street Journal
February 13th, 2008
The New York attorney general said his office plans to sue UnitedHealth Group Inc. as part of a broader investigation into the way the health insurance industry sets payment rates for hospitals and doctors outside of their networks. |
| US: Committee Investigates Ad Tactics for Lipitor
by Stephanie Saul, New York Times
February 8th, 2008
A Congressional investigation revealed that Pfizer agreed to pay Dr. Jarvik $1,350,000 as a celebrity pitchman for the heart drug Lipitor, and wants to know how much stunt doubles in the ads may have also been paid. |
| US: Drug Ads Raise Questions for Heart Pioneer
by STEPHANIE SAUL, The New York Times
February 7th, 2008
Celebrity advertising endorsements are nothing new, of course. But the Lipitor campaign is a rare instance of a well-known doctor’s endorsing a drug in advertising — and it has helped rekindle a smoldering debate over whether it is appropriate to aim ads for prescription drugs directly at consumers. |
| US: Some Campuses Decide Tobacco Company Money Is ‘Tainted’
by ALAN FINDER, The New York Times
February 4th, 2008
Across academia, universities and graduate schools are wrestling with whether to accept financing from tobacco companies for research or student activities. In the past few years, 15 public health and medical schools have turned away donations from the industry; McCombs’ move was unusual because of its longstanding ties to an array of corporations. |
| CHINA: Tainted Drugs Tied to Maker of Abortion Pill
by JAKE HOOKER and WALT BOGDANICH, The New York Times
January 31st, 2008
A huge state-owned Chinese pharmaceutical company that exports to dozens of countries, including the United States, is at the center of a nationwide drug scandal after nearly 200 Chinese cancer patients were paralyzed or otherwise harmed last summer by contaminated leukemia drugs. |
| US: Antidepressants Under Scrutiny Over Efficacy
by DAVID ARMSTRONG and KEITH J. WINSTEIN, Wall Street Journal
January 17th, 2008
The effectiveness of a dozen popular antidepressants has been exaggerated by selective publication of favorable results, according to a review of unpublished data submitted to the Food and Drug Administration. |
| US: Protests Greet Nuclear Power Resurgence in US South
by Matthew Cardinale, IPS
January 14th, 2008
Residents and environmental activists are in a bitter dispute with large U.S. energy corporations and the federal government over the safety of nuclear power, as more than a dozen corporations plan to, or have filed, paperwork to open new nuclear power plants, primarily in the U.S. South. |
| NIGERIA: Inefficient Gas Flaring Remains Unchecked
by Sam Olukoya, IPS
January 10th, 2008
Some of the largest multinational oil companies in the world -- including the U.K. and Dutch owned Shell, the French company Total, and the American companies Mobil and Chevron -- are responsible for the bulk of the scores of gas flares burning in Nigeria. |
| US: Cloned Livestock Poised
by Jane Zhang, John W. Miller and Lauren Etter, Wall Street Journal
January 4th, 2008
After more than six years of wrestling with the question of whether meat and milk from cloned animals and their offspring are safe to eat, the Food and Drug Administration is expected to declare as early as next week that they are. The food industry appears to be divided over the issue. |
| US: Suit says IBM dumped chemicals in New York state
by Dan Wilchins and Philipp Gollner, Reuters
January 3rd, 2008
Neighbors of a former IBM plant in New York state sued the company on Thursday, saying it released chemicals into the air, ground and water for nearly 80 years that caused birth defects and cancer. |
| CHINA/US: The Recalls’ Aftershocks
by Louise Story and David Barboza, New York Times
December 22nd, 2007
Toy makers are investigating whether they need to treat their tainted products with stabilization chemicals or if they must seal the toys in giant polyethylene bags. |
| US: Producer of Poisonous Toy Beads Issues Apology
by Keith Bradsher, New York Times
November 29th, 2007
The Hong Kong company that manufactured millions of poisonous toy beads in mainland China issued a public apology on Thursday, with the chairman saying that it had not occurred to anyone to check whether an inexpensive glue ingredient in the beads would be dangerous for children to eat. |
| DRC: Six arrested in Congo radioactive dumping scandal
by Joe Bavier, Reuters
November 10th, 2007
Congolese authorities arrested six people in connection with the dumping of tonnes of highly radioactive minerals into a river near the southeastern town of Likasi. A report said some 17 tons of the minerals confiscated were destined for Chinese firm Magma. |
| US: V.A. Is Limiting Use of Diabetes Drug
by Stephanie Saul, NY Times
October 18th, 2007
The Department of Veterans Affairs has decided to severely limit the use of Avandia, the once-popular drug for Type 2 diabetes, delivering another blow to the product’s maker, GlaxoSmithKline.
|
| US: Cribs Recalled After Deaths of 2 Children
by Michael M. Grynbaum, nytimes
September 24th, 2007
One million cribs designed by Simplicity for Children, a manufacturer based in Pennsylvania, have been recalled after the suffocation deaths of at least two children, the government said yesterday. It was the company’s fourth recall in a little more than two years. |
| US: FTC: Milk Ads Not Misleading
by Sam Hananel, Guardian (UK)
August 28th, 2007
Federal regulators have turned down a request from Monsanto Co. to take action against dairy companies that advertise milk as free of synthetic hormones. |
| INDIA: Novartis Patents Case Far From Dead
by Praful Bidwai, Inter Press Service News Agency
August 9th, 2007
Cancer patients in India have reason to be relieved at a high court ruling this week which dismissed a petition by Swiss pharmaceuticals multinational corporation (MNC) Novartis challenging an Indian law which denies patents for minor or trivial improvements to known drugs. |
| WORLD: We must count the true cost of cheap China
by Richard McGregor, Financial Times
August 2nd, 2007
In the wake of the multiple scandals over tainted Chinese food and drug exports in recent months, Chinese goods now have an indelible image of being not just cheap, but life-threatening as well. But the fact that wrongly labelled foods, liquor and pharmaceuticals have routinely sickened and even killed people en masse in China has been largely overlooked. |
| US: Mattel Recalls One Million Toys
by Louise Story , New York Times
August 2nd, 2007
Mattel, the maker of Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels cars, is recalling nearly one million toys in the United States today because the products’ surfaces are covered in lead paint. According to Mattel, all the toys were made by a contract manufacturer in China. |
| US: FDA Panel to Review Avandia
by Jennifer Corbett Dooren, The Wall Street Journal
July 26th, 2007
The Food and Drug Administration will ask a panel of outside medical experts Monday whether it thinks GlaxoSmithKline PLC's diabetes drug Avandia should remain on the U.S. market. |
| US: 3 Executives Spared Prison in OxyContin Case
by Barry Meier, The New York Times
July 20th, 2007
After hearing testimony from parents of young adults who died from overdoses involving the painkiller OxyContin, a federal judge Friday sentenced three top executives of the company that makes the narcotic to three years' probation and 400 hours each of community service in drug treatment programs. |
| INDONESIA: Mud Volcano Sullies Top Investment Firms
by Emad Mekay, Inter Press News Service (IPS)
June 21st, 2007
Environmental campaigners are urging several heavyweight investment firms, including Credit Suisse, Barclays, Fortis Group and Merrill Lynch, to shoulder some responsibility for a catastrophic mud volcano on the Indonesian island of Java that resulted from a gas project the firms helped fund. |
| CHILE: Chile Must Pay US$5.4 Million to Aricans Living Amid Toxic Waste
by Mike Hager, The Santiago Times
June 1st, 2007
In a landmark case, Chile’s Supreme Court ruled this week that the state must compensate 356 residents of two slums in the northern mining city of Arica for health problems brought on by years of exposure to open deposits of toxic waste. Promel, the Swedish company responsible for the importation of the toxic materials, cannot compensate the plaintiffs because the company no longer exists. |
| US: Bristol-Myers to Pay Fine
Agence France Presse
May 31st, 2007
Bristol-Myers Squibb has agreed to plead guilty and pay a $1 million criminal fine for lying to the government about a patent deal on its blood-thinning drug Plavix, officials said Wednesday.
The Justice Department said in a statement that the company’s actions had threatened to reduce competition for the drug, one of the best-selling prescription medications worldwide. |
| THAILAND: Holding Big Pharma's feet to the fire
by Marwaan Macan-Markar, Inter Press Service
May 17th, 2007
For nearly a week, the advertising pages of Thai- and English-language dailies have been the stage for debates on Thailand's decision to break patents on anti-AIDS drugs in the interest of public health. A lobby championing the cause of the powerful pharmaceutical companies ran full-page spreads in the morning newspapers with an eye-catching warning in large, bold text, which said: "The Wrong Prescription for Thailand". |
| US: Another Chemical Emerges in Pet Food Case
by
DAVID BARBOZA, The New York Times
May 9th, 2007
A second industrial chemical that regulators have found in contaminated pet food in the United States may have also been intentionally added to animal feed by producers seeking larger profits, according to interviews with chemical industry officials here. |
| US: Gore needs a greener Apple
by Marc Gunther , CNN Money
April 3rd, 2007
Environmental groups tell Al Gore to push the computer maker to improve its practices and limit its impact on the environment. |
| US: World Bank raps Exxon over Chad
by Lesley Wroughton, Reuters
March 22nd, 2007
The World Bank has told an Exxon Mobil-led consortium to take corrective action to fully compensate farmers in southern Chad who lost land and their livelihoods as the U.S. company expands its search for oil in the Doba basin. |
| PERU: Human Rights Commission May Examine Violations at La Oroya, Peru
Earthjustice Legal Fund and CIEL
March 21st, 2007
Public health and environmental organizations from throughout the Western Hemisphere today announced the filing of a petition with the human rights division of the Organization of American States in Washington, D.C. The petition accuses the Peruvian government of doing little to halt contamination from a metallurgical complex that is impacting the lives and health of the citizens of La Oroya, Peru. |
| HONDURAS: Protests Mount Against Mining Giant
by Stephen Leahy, Mines & Communities
February 24th, 2007
Dangerous levels of lead and arsenic have been found in the blood of Honduran villagers living downstream from a controversial gold and silver mine owned by Canada's Goldcorp Inc., the world's third largest gold mining firm. |
| NIGERIA: Oil Spill Displaces 10 Ijaw Communities
by Emma Arubi, Vanguard (Lagos)
February 13th, 2007
CHEVRON'S Abiteye flow station oil spill of over 1,500 barrels of crude has rendered over 10 Ijaw communities and 500 hundred persons homeless in Gbaramatu kingdom in Warri South West local government area of Delta State. |
| UK: Campaigners urge Shell to put profits into clean-up
by Terry Macalister, Guardian (UK)
January 31st, 2007
Record annual profits to be announced by Shell tomorrow should be used towards paying off a bill estimated at more than $20bn (£10bn) for the damage caused by its oil activities to local communities and the wider environment, according to an alliance of human rights and green groups including Friends of the Earth (FoE). |
| US: Nicotine boost was deliberate, study says
by Stephen Smith, Boston Globe
January 18th, 2007
Data supplied by tobacco companies strongly suggest that in recent years manufacturers deliberately boosted nicotine levels in cigarettes to more effectively hook smokers, Harvard researchers conclude in a study being released today. |
| US: Toxic Teflon: Compounds from Household Products Found in Human Blood
by Stan Cox, Alternet
January 2nd, 2007
DuPont and other companies use those synthetic compounds to make an extraordinarily wide range of products, including nonstick cookware (e.g, Teflon), grease-resistant food packaging (e.g., microwave popcorn and pizza boxes), stain-resistant fabrics and carpets (e.g., Stainmaster), shampoos, conditioners, cleaning products, electronic components, paints, firefighting foams, and a host of other artifacts of modern life. |
| ASIA: Asian Govts Push Generic Drugs
by Marwaan Macan-Markar, Inter Press Service
December 18th, 2006
In moves that are winning them praise, two South-east Asian governments -- in Thailand and the Philippines -- appear determined to push ahead with plans to provide cheaper generic drugs even if they incur the wrath of pharmaceutical giants. |
| US: Apple gets low score in Greenpeace e-waste report
by Jim Dalrymple, Macworld
December 6th, 2006
Environmental group Greenpeace on Wednesday issued the first quarterly update on the technology industry’s performance on environmental issues. While the group recognized many companies are improving Apple does not appear to be among them — Apple remains in last place. |
| GHANA: Ghana's gold inflicts heavy price
by James Haselip, People and the Planet
December 6th, 2006
Gold mining is Ghana�s most valuable export industry: in 2005, US$1.4 billion worth of gold was shipped from the country, dwarfing the value of its other major foreign currency earners - timber and cocoa. However, very little of the gold revenues stay in the country while damage to the physical environment by both large and small-scale mining is inflicting an incalculable cost to the economy with vast tracts of farming land permanently ruined, forests destroyed and water resources diverted and polluted. |
| PHILIPPINES: Banana firm bars DoH team from proving chemical poisoning
by Jeffrey M. Tupas, Inquirer (PHIL)
December 1st, 2006
Experts from the Department of Health (DoH) were denied entry Thursday by the management of the Tagum Agricultural Development Corporation, Inc. (Tadeco) to the company-owned hospital in Panabo City where victims of toxic chemical inhalation from the nearby town of Braulio Dujali in Davao del Norte were confined. |
| WORLD: Safety of Nanotechnology Needs More Attention
Environment News Service
November 28th, 2006
The number of consumer products made with nanotechnology is exploding, with a 70 percent increase in the past eight months. While recognizing the value of these molecular-level advances, critics say the Bush administration is doing too little to ensure the safety of nanotechnology for workers and the public. |
| US: The Package May Say Healthy, but This Grocer Begs to Differ
by Andrew Martin, The New York Times
November 6th, 2006
The chain, Hannaford Brothers, developed a system called Guiding Stars that rated the nutritional value of nearly all the food and drinks at its stores from zero to three stars. Of the 27,000 products that were plugged into Hannaford’s formula, 77 percent received no stars, including many, if not most, of the processed foods that advertise themselves as good for you. |
| US: Pfizer Drug Dealt Blow in Testing
by Alex Berenson, The New York Times
November 1st, 2006
Pfizer said yesterday that clinical trials of torcetrapib — a heart medication that is the most important drug in the company’s pipeline — confirmed that it raises blood pressure, a potentially serious side effect. |
| US: Unwanted Imports: Goods deemed toxic elsewhere shipped to U.S.
Associated Press
October 15th, 2006
Destined for American kitchens, planks of birch and poplar plywood are stacked to the ceiling of a cavernous port warehouse. The wood, which arrived in California via a cargo ship, carries two labels: One proclaims "Made in China," while the other warns that it contains formaldehyde, a cancer-causing chemical. |
| INDIA: 80,000 coal belt families face evacuation
Statesman News Service
October 10th, 2006
As many as 80,000 families living near the Jharia mine in Dhanbad coal belt face relocation. Officials say the coalfield area is, in effect, sitting on a “giant fireball deep inside the earth,” after they discovered at least six underground leaks of toxic fumes. Experts fear massive underground explosions followed by subsidence occuring at any moment. |
| US: Dump site back on Superfund list
by Laura Incalcaterra, The Journal News
September 27th, 2006
Pollutants dumped by Ford Motor Co. and others have led the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to restore the Ringwood mines and landfill to the Superfund National Priorities List of the country's most-contaminated sites. |
| US: Tobacco Makers Lose Key Ruling on Latest Suits
by David Cay Johnston and Melanie Warner , The New York Times
September 26th, 2006
In a legal blow to the tobacco industry, a federal judge in Brooklyn ruled yesterday that people who smoked light cigarettes that were often promoted as a safer alternative to regular cigarettes can press their fraud claim as a class-action suit. |
| IVORY COAST: Toxic dumpers face jail term
Reuters
September 24th, 2006
SUSPECTS charged in connection with the dumping of toxic waste in Ivory Coast, which killed seven people and made thousands ill, could face up to 20 years in jail if convicted, a Justice Ministry official said. |
| PERU: Leaching Out the Water with the Gold
by Milagros Salazar, Inter Press Service (IPS)
September 20th, 2006
The conflict that brought operations at Yanacocha, Latin America's largest gold mine, to a halt just a month after President Alan García took office in Peru was merely the latest illustration of the tensions between mining companies and local communities in the northern province of Cajamarca. |
| COLOMBIA: 'No' to Storm Sewer Runoff, Says Fishing Village
by Constanza Vieira, Inter Press News Service
September 14th, 2006
The residents of a picturesque fishing village in northern Colombia are up in arms against a storm drain system being built by a majority Spanish-owned water and sewage company that will serve shantytowns in the nearby port city of Santa Marta, discharging the runoff into the cove where their village is nestled. |
| US: Walking with purpose
by Edward Marshall, The Journal
September 5th, 2006
After 32 days and 380 miles of walking, Ed Wiley, a concerned grandfather of a Marsh Fork Elementary School student and grass roots activist, stopped in Shepherdstown Monday to speak with residents on his way to Washington where he hopes to meet with federal lawmakers.
Wiley is on a mission to ensure the safety of the children in Sundial, W.Va., where their elementary school sits next to a coal preparation plant and just 400 yards downstream from a dam holding back over two billion gallons of toxic sludge. |
| US: It's Not Easy Being Green: Are weed-killers turning frogs into hermaphrodites?
by William Souder, Harpers
August 25th, 2006
In the summer of 1997, Tyrone Hayes, a biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, accepted what seemed a harmless offer to join a panel of eight other scientists investigating the safety of the common weed-killer atrazine. The panel had been commissioned by atrazine's inventor and primary manufacturer, the Swiss-based chemical giant then called Novartis and since renamed Syngenta. The company wanted to know if its product threatened “non-target” organisms, including fish, reptiles, and amphibians—creatures whose fate had remained largely unexplored through the half century in which atrazine had become the most heavily used herbicide in the United States as well as one of its most widespread environmental contaminants. |
| INDONESIA: Newmont Exec to Defend Himself in Court
by Robin McDowell, Associated Press
August 25th, 2006
An American gold-mining executive was preparing Friday to defend himself in court for the first time against charges his company dumped millions of tons of mercury and arsenic-laced waste into an Indonesian bay, sickening villagers. |
| US: Alaska's Air Sullied by Oil Production
by David R. Baker, San Francisco Chronicle
August 24th, 2006
North Slope operations -- like oil production facilities everywhere -- release into the air a steady stream of pollutants and greenhouse gases, spewed by vehicles, power generators and the drilling process itself. Estimates vary, but the North Slope oil fields probably produce more smog-forming nitrogen oxides than Washington, D.C., and more carbon dioxide than San Francisco. |
| THAILAND: Patent or patient? How Washington uses trade deals to protect drugs
by Alan Beattie, Andrew Jack and Amy Kazmin, The Financial Times
August 22nd, 2006
As the World Health Organisation's top man in Thailand, William Aldis knew Thai officials were hosting their US counterparts in the northern city of Chiang Mai to negotiate what to many outsiders might seem an entirely worthy objective: a bilateral free-trade deal. But he saw dangers - and decided to make his views public. |
| INDIA: Pesticide Charge in India Hurts Pepsi and Coke
by Amelia Gentleman, International Herald Tribune
August 22nd, 2006
When claims were first published on the front pages of Indian newspapers this month that Coca-Cola and PepsiCo beverages were contaminated with pesticides, executives at the two companies were breezily confident that they could handle the issue.
Three weeks later, though, they are still struggling to win back Indian consumers. One-quarter of India’s component states have imposed partial bans on their products, and a complex legal battle to overturn those bans is only just beginning. |
| US: Unapproved Transgenic Rice Found in U.S. Rice Supply
Environment News Service
August 21st, 2006
U.S. supplies of long grain rice have been contaminated with a genetically modified variety not approved for human consumption, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said late Friday. The secretary said he learned about the contamination from the company that engineered the rice, Bayer CropScience, and could say nothing about how the contamination arose. |
| US: Mother's Milk Saves Lives
by Alberto Cremonesi, Inter Press News Service
August 21st, 2006
Although experts say that breastfeeding gives children the best start in life, protecting them from life-threatening diseases and providing essential nutrients, barely a third of all infants in developing countries are exclusively breastfed for the first six months. |
| WORLD: Has Coke become the new McDonald's?
by David Teather, The Guardian (UK)
August 18th, 2006
Welcome to the Coke side of life. Africa's planned legal action is just the latest in a litany of alleged human rights and environmental abuses in developing markets that has made Coca-Cola a cause celebre. |
| US: Once an Enemy, Health Industry Warms to Clinton
by Raymond Hernandez and Robert Pear, The New York Times
July 12th, 2006
Some of the same interests that tried to derail Mrs. Clinton’s health care overhaul are providing support for her Senate re-election bid. The Health Insurance Association of America ran the famous “Harry and Louise” commercials mocking the Clinton health care plan as impenetrably complex. Some companies that were members of that group are now donating to Mrs. Clinton. |
| INDIA: Petri Dish for Pharmaceutical MNCs
by Ann De Ron, Inter Press News Service
July 10th, 2006
Pharmaceutical multinationals, seeking to ramp up profits through cheap drug trials, are increasingly turning to India with its combination of a vast pool of poor, ignorant patients on the one hand and skilled medical personnel and fine research infrastructure on the other. |
| US: Another Merck Drug Is Under Legal Attack
by Molly Selvin, The Los Angeles Times
July 5th, 2006
As Merck & Co. defends itself against a deluge of litigation involving its pain reliever Vioxx, the pharmaceutical giant also is fielding the first of what could be another wave of lawsuits involving Fosamax, its second-biggest seller. |
| US: Charities Tied to Doctors Get Drug Industry Gifts
by Reed Abelson, The New York Times
June 28th, 2006
Around the country, doctors in private practice have set up tax-exempt charities into which drug companies and medical device makers are, with little fanfare, pouring donations — money that adds up to millions of dollars a year. And some medical experts see that as a big problem. |
| US: Drug Firms a Danger to Health – Report
by Sarah Boseley, The Guardian (UK)
June 26th, 2006
Drug companies are accused today of endangering public health through widescale marketing malpractices, ranging from covertly attempting to persuade consumers that they are ill to bribing doctors and misrepresenting the results of safety and efficacy tests on their products. |
| AUSTRALIA: Mt Isa Lead Risk For Children
by Michelle Wiese Bockmann, The Australian
June 21st, 2006
Children in the Queensland mining capital of Mount Isa have been put at risk by fallout from the city's copper and lead smelters because the state Government has failed to routinely test for lead poisoning. |
| US: Drugs firm blocks cheap blindness cure
by Sarah Boseley, The Guardian
June 17th, 2006
A major drug company is blocking access to a medicine that is cheaply and effectively saving thousands of people from going blind because it wants to launch a more expensive product on the market. |
| US: Lawyer: Merck Scrapped Study on Vioxx
by Linda A. Johnson, The Associated Press
June 16th, 2006
Merck & Co. scrapped a planned study of the cardiac safety of Vioxx once it knew U.S. regulators were going to tone down their warning about heart risks for patients taking the painkiller, a plaintiff's lawyer argued Friday in a product liability trial. |
| CANADA: Abnormal Birth Rates in Canadian Native Reserve
by Cindy Drukier and Rory Xu, The Epoch Times
June 9th, 2006
There's something is in the air at the Aamjiwnaang First Nations reserve near Sarnia, Ontario. But it's not just in the air. It's also in the water, the soil, and in the residents themselves: alarming levels of toxic chemicals, believed to be behind the area's skewed birth ratios. In Aamjiwnaang, two girls are born for every boy. |
| US: Grandmother Takes on Merck in Vioxx Trial
by LINDA A. JOHNSON, Associated Press
June 5th, 2006
Drug maker Merck & Co. repeatedly tried to downplay the cardiac risks of its painkiller Vioxx, so user Elaine Doherty didn't know about them and couldn't control them before she suffered a heart attack after taking the drug, her lawyer told jurors as a product liability trial began Monday.
|
| CANADA: Air Pollution Goes Global
by Stephen Leahy , Inter Press News Service (IPS)
June 2nd, 2006
Last month, the province of Ontario joined the states of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, along with two environmental groups, in a legal action against seven coal-fired electricity plants run by Duke Energy Corp. |
| AUSTRALIA: Judge Reopens Investigation of BAT
by Elizabeth Sexton, The Age
May 31st, 2006
A Sydney judge has reopened the legal assault on the tobacco industry with a preliminary finding that British American Tobacco's controversial document retention policy was intended to conceal the destruction of legally potent records. |
| US: Merck Admits a Data Error on Vioxx
by Alex Berenson, New York Times
May 31st, 2006
In an admission that could undermine one of its core defenses in Vioxx-related lawsuits, Merck said yesterday that it had erred when it reported in early 2005 that a crucial statistical test showed that Vioxx caused heart problems only after 18 months of continuous use. |
| US: FDA Warns Wyeth on Quality at Puerto Rico Plant
RUETERS
May 30th, 2006
Possible contaminants in headache remedies, hormone replacement therapy and other pills made at Wyeth's (WYE.N: Quote, Profile, Research) plant in Puerto Rico have not been adequately checked out or corrected, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Tuesday. |
| WORLD: From Asia to America, How Bausch's Crisis Grew
by Barnaby J. Feder, The New York Times
May 18th, 2006
Early in March, Bausch & Lomb received a troubling phone call from a New Jersey eye doctor. Dr. David S. Chu, a specialist in cornea diseases, alerted the company that three of his recent patients had been afflicted with a microbe that caused a potentially blinding eye infection. |
| US: Disney Loses Its Appetite for Happy Meal Tie-Ins
by Rachel Abramowitz, Los Angeles Times
May 8th, 2006
Disney is not renewing its cross-promotional pact with the fast-food giant, ending the arrangement with this summer's release of "Cars" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest." One reason, say multiple high-ranking sources within Disney, is that the company — which prides itself on being family friendly — wants to distance itself from fast food and its links to the epidemic of childhood obesity.
|
| US: The Case Against Coke
by Michaeil Blanding, The Nation
April 14th, 2006
The Coca-Cola Company will hold its stockholders' meeting, an annual exercise designed to boost the confidence of investors. If the meeting is anything like last year's, however, it may do the opposite. |
| NIGERIA: Government Investigation Indicts Shell over Toxic Waste
by Yemie Adeoye, Vanguard (Lagos)
April 4th, 2006
THE Ministerial investigation committee into alleged dumping of toxic waste by the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) at Igbeku and Ejekimoni communities of Sapele local government area of Delta State has come up with recommendations for the company to remove and treat in situ the "alleged buried waste" to acceptable statutory levels. |
| US: Survey Ranks 'Organic-ness' at Dairies
by Marian Burros, The New York Times
March 22nd, 2006
THE CORNUCOPIA INSTITUTE, a nonprofit agricultural policy research group in Cornucopia, Wis., will release a report today that ranks organic milk and dairy products based on federal organic standards as well as environmental and humane concerns. |
| INDIA: Battle over Indian steel mills
by Mark Dummett, BBC News
February 26th, 2006
A South Korean firm, Posco, last year promised to build a steel plant costing $12bn - the biggest ever single foreign investment in India. The only problem is that many of the people living in Kalinga Nagar, near the town of Jajpur, do not want to make way for the new factories. |
| US: Chromium Evidence Buried, Report Says
by Rick Weiss, The Washington Post
February 24th, 2006
Scientists working for the chromium industry withheld data about the metal's health risks while the industry campaigned to block strict new limits on the cancer-causing chemical, according to a scientific journal report published yesterday. |
| US: Teflon Chemical a Likely Carcinogen
by Randall Chase, Associated Press
February 15th, 2006
A group of scientific advisers to the Environmental Protection Agency voted unanimously Wednesday to approve a recommendation that a chemical used in the manufacture of Teflon and other nonstick and stain-resistant products should be considered a likely carcinogen. |
| EU: Europe Defends Stance on Genetically Altered Foods
by Paul Meller, The New York Times
February 8th, 2006
The European Commission defended its current practices on screening genetically altered foods in the wake of a report from the World Trade Organization that criticized its past action in restricting the entry of modified products into the European Union. |
| US: Exposed: the secret corporate funding behind health research
by George Monbiot, The Guardian
February 7th, 2006
Three weeks ago, while looking for something else, I came across one of the most extraordinary documents I have ever read. It relates to an organisation called Arise (Associates for Research into the Science of Enjoyment). Though largely forgotten
today, in the 1990s it was one of the world's most influential public-health groups. |
| LATIN AMERICA: Big Tobacco Fights Back
by Diego Cevallos, Inter Press Service
January 12th, 2006
According to the non-governmental Corporate Accountability International, based in the northeastern U.S. city of Boston, the tobacco industry is interfering in public health policy in several Latin American countries, and is attempting to block the regulations implemented in compliance with the World Health Organisation's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). |
| US: For One Clerk, Fight for Wal-Mart Bill Is Personal
by Mary Otto, Washington Post
January 12th, 2006
The debate over the Fair Share Health Care Fund Act, commonly known as the Wal-Mart bill, has dominated politics in the run-up to the General Assembly, with the retailer arguing that Democrats have unfairly singled out one company and union leaders arguing that workers deserve better treatment.
|
| US: Former Biogen Executive Settles Insider-Trading Charges
by John Hechinger, Wall Street Journal
January 12th, 2006
The former general counsel of Biogen Idec Inc. settled securities-fraud and insider-trading charges, agreeing to pay more than $3 million related to his sale of company shares on the day the biotech company learned that a patient taking its new multiple sclerosis drug was sick with a deadly infection.
|
| US: Moving Mountains
by Erik Reece, Orion Magazine
January 9th, 2006
It is the people of Appalachia who pay the highest price for the rest of the country's cheap energy—through contaminated water, flooding, cracked foundations and wells, bronchial problems related to breathing coal dust, and roads that have been torn up and turned deadly by speeding coal trucks. |
|
|
