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| US: Industry Takes Aim at Plan to Create Financial Protection Agency
by Brady Dennis, Washington Post
July 7th, 2009
Business and trade-group lobbyists are beating a path for the first major battle over the Obama administration's efforts to overhaul the financial regulatory system. Recent discussions have involved the American Bankers Association, National Auto Dealers Association, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Mortgage Bankers Association and other lobbyists. |
| US: Activist Financier 'Terrorizes' Bankers in Foreclosure Fight
by James R. Hagerty, Wall Street Journal
May 20th, 2009
A nonprofit organization, Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America, or NACA, has emerged as one of the loudest scourges of the banking industry in the post-bubble economy. Though some bankers privately deplore his tactics, NACA's Bruce Marks is a growing influence in the lending industry and the effort to curb foreclosures. |
| US: Debt Settlers Offer Promises but Little Help
by David Streitfeld, New York Times
April 19th, 2009
With the economy on the ropes, hundreds of thousands of consumers are turning to “debt settlement” companies like Credit Solutions to escape a crushing pile of bills. State attorneys general are being flooded with complaints about settlement companies and other forms of debt relief. |
| WORLD: The Jewel Trade's Fading Luster
by V. Dion Haynes and Rama Lakshmi, Washington Post
March 28th, 2009
The drop in U.S. demand for high-end jewelry in a slumping economy is having ripple effects around the globe as stores close, workers are laid off in mass in the diamond-polishing factories of Gujarat, and countries like Botswana experience a dramatic drop in diamond revenue. |
| US: Mr. Whipple Left It Out: Soft Is Rough on Forests
by Leslie Kaufman, New York Times
February 25th, 2009
The U.S. obsession with soft toilet paper has driven the growth of brands like Cottonelle Ultra, Quilted Northern Ultra and Charmin Ultra. But fluffiness comes at a price: millions of trees harvested in North America and in Latin American countries, including some percentage of trees from rare old-growth forests in Canada. |
| JAPAN: Nissan to Slash Payroll, Pare Japanese Output
by John Murphy, Wall Street Journal
February 9th, 2009
Nissan Motor Co. Monday announced plans to slash more than 20,000 jobs world-wide, shift production out of Japan and seek government assistance from Japan, the U.S. and elsewhere, part of a broad new effort by the Japanese car maker to weather the economic downturn. |
| US: U.S. jewelry retailers oppose large Alaska gold mine
by Mary Pemberton, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
February 12th, 2008
Just in time for Valentine's Day, five of the leading U.S. jewellers have sworn off gold that someday could come from the Pebble Mine, a huge deposit being scoped out by a subsidiary of a Canadian company near the world's most productive wild sockeye salmon stream in southwestern Alaska. |
| 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: Charity’s Share From Shopping Raises Concern
by Stephanie Strom, New York Times
December 13th, 2007
Increasingly, nonprofit experts are questioning one of the fastest-growing sectors of giving, the practice of building a donation into the purchase of items. Such giving is unregulated and, in most cases, unaccountable — and no one knows who, if anyone, is claiming a tax deduction for it. |
| 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. |
| MEXICO: Thousands of Unpaid Teens Bag Groceries for Wal-Mart
by Joseph Contreras, Newsweek
August 1st, 2007
Wal-Mart prides itself on cutting costs at home and abroad, and its Mexican operations are no exception. Wal-Mart is Mexico's largest private-sector employer in the nation today, with nearly 150,000 local residents on its payroll. An additional 19,000 youngsters between the ages of 14 and 16 work after school in hundreds of Wal-Mart stores, mostly as grocery baggers, throughout Mexico-and none of them receives a red cent in wages or fringe benefits. |
| CHINA: Lead Toxins Take a Global Round Trip
by Gordon Fairclough, The Wall Street Journal
July 12th, 2007
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. |
| CHINA: The Growing Dangers of China Trade
by Jyoti Thottam, TIME Magazine
June 28th, 2007
Growing concerns over the safety of everyday goods manufactured in China and imported to the US have thrown into relief the problematic (and dangerous) differences in safety and regulatory standards between the two countries. |
| US: Green like money: Activists counter PG&E's greenwashing
by Amanda Witherell, SF Bay Guardian
January 31st, 2007
During a so-called green fair at the LGBT center in San Francisco, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG & E) unveiled a $170,000 gift of solar panels for the roof of the building. But activists complain that this recent move is a greenwashing tactic, to make this corporation, which owns a mere 0 percent solar and 2 percent wind, appear green when it is in fact not. |
| US: Gates Foundation faces multibillion-dollar dilemma
by Kristi Heim, Seattle Times
January 14th, 2007
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation owns shares of BP — a company accused of fouling the air with its oil refinery and paper mill in South Africa. Since the foundation spends billions of dollars to improve the health of Africans, that investment strategy would seem to conflict with its mission. |
| US: Ads Test Payola Case Settlement
by Jeff Leeds, The New York Times
October 25th, 2006
Hardly more than a year has passed since the nation’s biggest record labels started agreeing to a series of measures that were intended to end the industry’s long history of employing bribes and other shady practices to influence which songs are heard on the radio. |
| 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: The Next Niche: School Bus Ads
by Caroline E. Mayer, The Washington Post
June 4th, 2006
BusRadio, a start-up company in Massachusetts, wants to pipe into school buses around the country a private radio network that plays music, public-service announcements, contests and, of course, ads, aimed at kids as they travel to and from school. |
| IRAN: Iran Target of Apparent Disinformation Campaign
by Jim Lobe, Inter Press Service
May 23rd, 2006
A story authored by a prominent U.S. neo-conservative regarding new legislation in Iran allegedly requiring Jews and other religious minorities to wear distinctive colour badges circulated around the world this weekend before it was exposed as false. The article by a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal, Iranian-American Amir Taheri, was initially published in Friday's edition of Canada's National Post, which ran alongside the story a 1935 photograph of a Jewish businessman in Berlin with a yellow, six-pointed star sewn on his overcoat, as required by Nazi legislation at the time. The Post subsequently issued a retraction.
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| 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.
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| US: America's Fake News Pandemic
by Timothy Karr, Media Citizen
April 7th, 2006
A report released yesterday by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) and Free Press exposes corporate propaganda’s infiltration of local television news across the country. |
| US: Unwitting Shoppers Recruited for Wal-Mart PR Fight
by Marilyn Geewax, Cox News Service
April 4th, 2006
Last December, Wal-Mart, based in Bentonville, Ark., created its own grassroots group, Working Families for Wal-Mart. It hired Edelman, a global public relations firm, to organize the group out of its Washington office and launch a nationwide campaign. |
| US: For Tobacco, Stealth Marketing Is the Norm
by Julie Bosman, New York Times
March 10th, 2006
Tobacco companies, which are able to vastly outspend antitobacco groups, may still be winning the marketing wars. While tobacco companies have abandoned most conventional advertising, they are using other means to get their point across. Antismoking groups, on the other hand, are now struggling to find the money to maintain even a small-scale campaign. |
| 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: Wal-Mart to Loosen Health Insurance Limits
by Michael Barbaro, The New York Times
February 23rd, 2006
Wal-Mart Stores, facing a raft of state legislation that would require it to increase spending on employee health insurance, will lift several of its long-standing — and most-criticized — restrictions on eligibility over the next year, the giant retailer said this morning. |
| AUSTRALIA: Lobbyists hired by AWB
by Richard Baker, Sydney Morning Herald
February 22nd, 2006
AWB enlisted the help of an influential Washington lobby firm headed by the former US defence secretary, William Cohen, to deal with a United Nations investigation into kickbacks paid to Saddam Hussein. |
| US: Sales Brisk for "Wal-Mart" Docu As Accusations Fly
Reuters
February 15th, 2006
Berlin's European Film Market became the backdrop for yet another verbal battle between Wal-Mart and its filmmaker nemesis Robert Greenwald on Tuesday. The Greenwald-directed film "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price" made for hot sales but heated words at the market. |
| UK: Drug firm censured for lapdancing junket
by Sarah Boseley, The Guardian
February 14th, 2006
One of the world's largest drug companies has been disciplined by the industry's UK watchdog after admitting that its staff entertained doctors to greyhound racing, lapdancing and Centre Court tickets at Wimbledon. |
| US: AmeriDebt Founder Settles Charges
by Caroline E. Mayer, Washington Post
January 10th, 2006
The founder of the defunct credit-counseling firm AmeriDebt Inc. yesterday agreed to pay up to $35 million to settle two lawsuits accusing him of misleading debt-burdened consumers into paying high fees to support his lavish lifestyle. |
| US: AmeriDebt Founder to Settle With the FTC
by Steven Manning, Associated Press
January 9th, 2006
The founder of the credit counseling firm AmeriDebt on Monday agreed to pay $35 million to settle suits filed by regulators and former customers over $172 million in allegedly hidden fees the company collected from financially strapped debtors.
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| AFRICA: Death By Dilution
by Robert Cockburn, American Prospect
December 20th, 2005
When fakes of a GlaxoSmithKline anti-malarial drug turned up in Africa, authorities assumed the drug giant would want to know. Instead, they learned about a huge, evil trade in fake drugs -- and about an industry that doesn’t want the truth to get out. |
| US: Best Buy Sued for Bias
by Jason Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle
December 10th, 2005
Six current and former employees of Best Buy filed a race- and sex-discrimination lawsuit Thursday against the consumer electronics chain in federal court in San Francisco, accusing it of denying better-paying sales and managerial jobs to African Americans, Latinos and women in favor of white men. |
| U.S.: A New Weapon for Wal-Mart: A War Room
by Michael Barbaro, The New York Times
November 1st, 2005
Wal-Mart is taking a page from the modern political playbook. Under fire from well-organized opponents who have hammered the retailer with criticisms of its wages, health insurance and treatment of workers, Wal-Mart has quietly recruited former presidential advisers, including Michael K. Deaver, who was Ronald Reagan's image-meister, and Leslie Dach, one of Bill Clinton's media consultants, to set up a rapid-response public relations team in Arkansas. |
| U.S.: Fiction Genre Fits Big Pharma
by Michael Hiltzik, LA Times
October 27th, 2005
According to a proposal, PhRMA was to pay Phoenix a six-figure sum for the marketing and production of a written-to-order fictional thriller. The plotline was what Hollywood would term high-concept — a group of shadowy terrorists conspires to murder thousands of Americans by poisoning the medicine they're importing from Canada to beat U.S. drug prices. PhRMA subsequently pulled the plug on the deal. |
| US: On Television, Brands Go From Props to Stars
by Lorne Manly, The New York Times
October 2nd, 2005
Network, advertising and production executives say that this season, more and more brands will venture outside the confines of 30-second ads. They may have no choice: As technology and clutter blunt the effectiveness and reach of the commercial spots that have underpinned the television business for nearly 50 years, the various players are scrambling to adapt. |
 | US: Magazine ad "unleashes hell" for Boeing and Bell
by Hal Bernton, The Seattle Times
October 1st, 2005
Boeing and its joint-venture partner Bell Helicopter apologized yesterday for a magazine ad published a month ago - and again this week by mistake - depicting U.S. Special Forces troops rappelling from an Osprey aircraft onto the roof of a mosque. |
| US: The New Blacklist
by Doug Ireland, LA Weekly
June 13th, 2005
The Christian right has launched a series of boycotts and pressure campaigns aimed at corporate America -- and at its sponsorship of entertainment, programs and activities they don't like. |
| US: Is Fast Food Just What the Doctor Ordered?
by Melanie Warner, New York Times
May 2nd, 2005
In the last two years, at least two dozen leading nutrition scientists and experts have started working for large food companies, either as consultants or as members of health advisory boards. Most do not directly promote products, though Dr. Arthur Agatston, a practicing cardiologist and author of "The South Beach Diet," has a licensing deal with Kraft Foods to sell a line of South Beach foods, which are appearing on supermarket shelves this month. |
| US: Video Games Add Advertisements
by Matt Richtel, New York Times
April 11th, 2005
Until now, ads have appeared occasionally and haphazardly in video games. But a new advertising agency hopes to bring a more aggressive marketing approach to interactive media. The aim is to put up billboards and make product placements for mainstream advertisers in the cyberworlds of sports, shooting and strategy games. |
| MEXICO: Teoti-Wal-Mart
by John Ross, The Progressive
March 14th, 2005
Wal-Mart puts down roots in the shadow of the Pyramid of the Sun in San Juan Teotihuacan. Is the global leviathan any match for Quetzalcoatl? |
| US: Beyond the God Pod
by Silja J.A. Talvi, The Santa Fe Reporter
March 9th, 2005
The nation's biggest private prison corporation is forging strong ties with a fundamentalist Christian ministry, blurring the line between church and state and harkening a new turn in corrections toward Christian-based programming. |
| US: Pepsi Puts a Lid on Kids' Ads
by Andrew Ward and Jeremy Grant, The Australian
March 1st, 2005
PepsiCo, one of the world's largest soft-drink makers, has introduced voluntary restrictions on its advertising to children, in response to rising levels of obesity in the US and western Europe.
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| US: Wal-Mart Starts Image Boosting Ads
Reuters
January 13th, 2005
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's biggest retailer, launched a national advertising campaign on Thursday to burnish an image tarnished by allegations that it discriminates in hiring and promotions and drives smaller rivals out of business. |
| US: Marketing Under the Radar
by Deborah Branscum, CMO
December 22nd, 2004
Stealth. Guerilla. Undercover. Whatever it’s called, covert marketing woos ad-weary consumers by pretending to be something it’s not. But is it the real deal for marketers? |
| UK: To Be a 'Clone Town,' or Not: That Is the Question
by Lizette Alvarez, New York Times
November 1st, 2004
To survive the approach to the home where William Shakespeare was born, a striking timber-frame house in the center of this bustling town, it would be wise to bid adieu to all bucolic notions of quaint old England and ready oneself for the onslaught of globalization. |
| USA: Unhappy Meals
by Barry Yeoman, Mother Jones magazine
January 6th, 2003
Every weekday at lunch, courtesy of the federal government, more than 27 million schoolchildren sit down to the nation's largest mass feeding. |
| USA: New Report Examines Commercialism in Schools
by Constance L. Hays, New York Times
September 14th, 2000
From exclusive soft-drink contracts to computers displaying continuous advertising, corporate marketing in public schools is rising sharply. But few states have laws in place to address the phenomenon, and most decisions on commercial arrangements in schools are made piecemeal by local officials, according to a report from the General Accounting Office scheduled to be released today. |
| TURKEY: Dam Will Destroy Kurdish Culture, Say Critics
Bloomberg
August 16th, 2000
A Kurdish human rights lawyer is spearheading an international campaign to block the Turkish government's efforts to build a dam he says will dislodge thousands of Kurds and destroy archeological artifacts. |
| US: Info-Cleansing on the Web
by Marcia Stepanek, Business Week Online
July 7th, 2000
Beware the public relations person with a modem. Now corporate spinmeisters, too, can go online to track customers -- especially the disgruntled ones who vent their spleen in cyberspace. |
| US:
by Michael Barbaro, The New
Wal-Mart Stores, facing a raft of state legislation that would require it to increase spending on employee health insurance, will lift several of its long-standing — and most-criticized — restrictions on eligibility over the next year, the giant retailer said this morning. |
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