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| 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. |
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