Agriculture, Beverages & Food

NEW YORK - A group of socially responsible investment funds, with assets valued at $13 billion, are urging Dow Chemical Company to address ongoing economic, health and environmental liabilities stemming from a poisonous gas leak in Bhopal, India, which has killed and injured tens of thousands of people to date. The investors, Trillium Asset Management, Domini Social Investments, Calvert Group and others, sent a letter to Dow"s CEO Michael Parker and board Chair William Stavropoulos, calling on them to "continue dialogue with representatives of Bhopal citizens groups, to take their claims seriously, and to work towards a mutually acceptable solution." Read More

December 3rd is both Pesticide Action Network's International Day of No Pesticides and the 18th anniversary of the explosion of the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India. Read More

Sathianath Sarangi, Nityanand Jayaraman, Ananthapadmanabhan,Adarsh Vansay, Shailendra Yeshwant, two reporters from an independent European media and 3 local activists were beaten this morning by the local police at Bhopal .They were then taken taken to the Shajahanabad police station and are being detained there as I write this. Read More

France's highest court ruled Tuesday that militant French farmer Jose Bove must serve 14 months in prison for destroying two fields of genetically modified crops. Read More

Kenneth Clarke, former chancellor and deputy chairman of British American Tobacco, faces severe embarrassment today over revelations that he criticised companies investing in Burma -- where BAT has a joint venture with the military junta. Read More

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. Read More

LONDON -- Legislation to ban tobacco advertising in Britain cleared its last parliamentary hurdle on Monday and is set to become law. Read More

GENEVA (October 16, 2002) -- The United States delegation negotiating the proposed tobacco treaty, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), today continued to take positions that protect the interests of the tobacco industry rather than public health around the world. The delegation spoke out during the negotiations against a provision of the treaty that would allow a ban on the advertising of tobacco in nations whose constitutions allow one. Read More

LOS ANGELES (October 14, 2002) -- Every parent has gained a right to know of pesticide application to which their children may be exposed if they are enrolled in the Los Angeles Unified School District. At the beginning of the school year, parents are given a list of pesticide products that have been approved for use at LAUSD sites. Read More

GENEVA -- Warning that delay means more deaths, World Health Organization chief Gro Harlem Brundtland urged governments Tuesday to agree to sweeping anti-smoking restrictions and tighter controls on the tobacco industry. Read More