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When United States negotiators fly into Thailand to thrash out a bilateral free trade deal next week, they will be greeted with jeers rather than this country's famed smile of welcome.

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.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said Thursday that it has filed a sex-discrimination lawsuit against Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. in federal court in Manhattan, alleging discriminatory behavior in its hiring practices.

Spectacular. Bad-boy investment celebrity Jim Cramer, host of CNBC's "Mad Money with Jim Cramer," actually recommended today investing in "mine-safety" stocks. Not because it is important for us as a country to pick up the slack left by a "paper tiger" federal mine safety agency, but because there could be lots of dough in it.

Government lawyers who will try the case against Enron's former chief executives, Kenneth L. Lay and Jeffrey K. Skilling, have signaled that they intend to spend less time befuddling jurors with talk of Enron's accounting.

Also yesterday, federal mine officials made public records of inspections done at the Sago Mine last year that concluded that mine supervisors had repeatedly failed to uncover dangerous conditions before starting a day's production.

A Congressional investigation of the money that drug companies give as supposed educational grants has found that the payments are growing rapidly and are sometimes steered by marketing executives to doctors and groups who push unapproved uses of drugs.

Spanish energy giant Repsol-YPF said that it respects international law, in reaction to accusations that the company claimed to own part of Bolivia's gas reserves.

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.

The nation's coal mines have been required to pay only a fraction of the federal fines imposed after deadly accidents since 1999, a USA TODAY analysis shows.