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LOS ANGELES, Aug. 25 - The attorney general of California sued 39 drug companies on Thursday, accusing them of bilking the state of hundreds of millions of dollars by overcharging for medicines.

Children have become lucrative targets for data mining companies, according to a study by Politico magazine. Just weeks after Google settled a lawsuit for selling student data for advertising, the publication revealed an entire industry devoted to marketing data gathered from Internet applications offered to students and their teachers.

Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. won't push new drugs in that way for at least a year. The change comes amid criticism of the industrywide practice.

The relentless shifting of employment to countries like India and China that has occurred in manufacturing, back-office work and computer programming is now spreading to a crown jewel of corporate America: the medical and drug industries.

In this 50-mile-long stretch of rural India west of Hyderabad, the country's fifth largest city, almost 40 percent of the country's bulk pharmaceuticals are produced (a large proportion of them for export). The progress the the people of Digwal have made in protecting themselves against the industry's wastes puts them in a league of their own.

The Kazipally industrial area - once good farm country - now accounts for more than one-third of India's pharmaceutical industry, meaning skyrocketing rates of cancer, heart disease and birth defects for its residents.

The U.S. Congress had a miserable record on resisting corporate influence in 2012, according to a new report card released today. The 2012 Corporate Accountability Coalition Report Card tracks Congressional action related to corporate accountability, transparency, and responsible business during the second year of the 112th Congress.