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BRUSSELS (October 28 2002) -- On 28 October, on behalf of the Global Unions Group, the ICFTU is releasing a new database of over 325 foreign companies with business links to Burma -- links that help to sustain the brutal and repressive dictatorship in that country. While some prominent companies have withdrawn since the initial release of the database one year ago, Global Unions have added a further 92 companies which continue to do business with Burma or have been pursuing business links with the junta.

Lord Browne, chief executive of BP and one of New Labour's favourite industrialists, has warned Washington not to carve up Iraq for its own oil companies in the aftermath of any future war.

Immediately after the Persian Gulf War ended in 1991, billions of Winstons and other American-brand cigarettes began turning up inside Iraq. Even now,the flow continues.Under U.S. trade sanctions, companies that make cigarettes in the U.S. can't knowingly sell them in the Iraqi market -- either directly or through intermediaries -- unless they obtain a license from the U.S. government.

NEW DELHI -- More than five thousand people marched under the banner of the India Climate Justice Forum (ICJF) from the Gandhi Samadhi, Rajghat to protest against climate injustice. The rallyists, who included the Mahila Jagriti Samiti, Delhi, and several cycle-rickshaw unions, the National Alliance of People's Movements and the National Fish Worker's Forum highlighted the serious deficiencies in the UN conference on climate change being held in New Delhi.

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a former union leader who never attended college, won a landslide victory today in a Brazilian presidential election that reflected the disenchantment sweeping much of Latin America after a decade of free-market reforms that have failed to deliver promised prosperity.

Communities from around the world gathered at the Climate Justice Summit in New Delhi on October 26 and 27, 2002 to provide testimony to the fact that climate change is a reality whose effects are already being felt around the world. Over 1500 participants from 17 states in India and over 20 countries, and comprising mostly of farmers, fishworkers, the poor, Indigenous Peoples, Dalits, youth and the development displaced in India, attended the summit.

In the largest U.S. anti-war protest in recent memory, at least 75,000 demonstrators encircled the White House on Saturday to demand a diplomatic solution to escalating tensions with Iraq.

Climate Justice Summit, October 26-28, 2002, Constitution Club, Rafi Marg, New Delhi. Program

Many veterans' advocates believe a certain anthrax vaccine to be a major cause of Gulf War sickness. The company manufacturing it has launched a massive lobbying campaign to persuade the Bush administration to stockpile the controversial drug so it can be administered to civilians.

Another round of international talks on curbing global climate change began Wednesday in India, a country that sees the United States and the developed world as being part of the problem rather than the solution to global warming.