Go West, Young Ham

US - Pollution from hog farms in the Southeast has fouled rivers and triggered the growth of pfiesteria, a bizarre "cell from hell" that kills fish and sickens humans. Now hog farms are moving to Wyoming, where loose regulations allow pig ranchers to operate without bond or license. Wyoming Premium Farms (owned by Itoham Foods, a Japanese multinational) wants to raise and slaughter 100,000 pigs a year. After neighboring housewives and farmers in Wheatland, Wyoming, protested the $18 million plant, Itoham built a pit to hold 31 million gallons of hog waste. Hogwash, say the locals. They want Itoham to pig out somewhere else.

No Bell Laureates

Canada - US Customs agents raided a Canadian warehouse filled with 34 Bell OH-58A military helicopters. The choppers, worth $12.5 million, were equipped to spray chemicals and reportedly were destined for sale to Iraq. Among the enterprising businessmen charged with shady dealings with Iraq: a retired US Army colonel.

Give 'Em a Hand and They'll Take an Arm

Colombia - Hard times have left the Cali cartel's drug thugs looking for new work. As a result, Colombia has a new pastime - murder-for-insurance scams. San Francisco Chronicle correspondent John Otis explains how Colombian criminals "buy life insurance policies for unwitting beggars, prostitutes and peasants, then kill them and collect the money." Dozens of Colombians have died as a result and the millions of dollars in claims have bankrupted at least one insurance firm. Some desperately poor Colombians have even agreed to let criminal gangs amputate their arms or legs in exchange for a cut of the "accident insurance" settlement. And it's not just a Colombian problem, says Cynthia Robinson, manager of a Bogota insurance firm. "Anywhere that life is cheap, where there is poverty and where there are inadequate government controls, this can happen."

Cut the Deficit: Tax the Rich

France - The Common Market dream became a nightmare for French corporations this summer. Desperate to reign in its deficit prior to adopting the euro (the European Union's new common currency), the French government hiked taxes from 36.6 percent to 41.6 percent for corporations with annual sales above $8.3 million. Corporate capital gains, previously taxed at 19 percent, also were boosted to 41.6 percent. In another cost-cutting move, French Finance Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn ordered cuts in the defense budget.

Smoke and Mirrors: Smog and Mayors

US - Big Business and the White House love the idea of using pollution credits to save the world. Most enviros hate the concept. On July 23, Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) took its distaste one step further and filed suit in Los Angeles federal court, charging LA's Air Quality Management District and the California Air Resources Board with violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. CBE maintains that allowing LA businesses to avoid cleaning up their own pollution by buying and scrapping old, smoke-belching cars fails to eliminate toxic "hot spots" that threaten the health of low-income communities of color. The complaint asks the EPA to overturn LA's "smog market" on the grounds that it violates peoples' civil right to breathe clean air.

Mad Cow Meat to Moscow

Russia - British beef was the target of a global ban after kids who feasted on British burgers contracted Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human version of mad cow disease. But on July 2, the European Commission revealed that 1,600 tons of British beef had been shipped illegally to Belgium, repackaged as Belgian meat and sold to unwitting consumers in the Netherlands, Egypt, Russia and Equatorial Guinea. Russia, which banned the import of British beef in 1990, wound up with 730 tons of suspect meat.

Joe Camel's Best Bud: Uncle Sam

South Korea - The US, the world's biggest drug pusher, continues to promote tobacco smoking to Asia's children. It's part of a grand tradition. The Washington Post recently unearthed a January 1986 letter from George Griffin (commercial counselor at the US embassy in South Korea) to Matthew Winokur (public affairs manager of Philip Morris in Asia). Griffin wrote: "No matter how this process spins itself out, I want to emphasize that the embassy and various US government agencies in Washington will keep the interests of Philip Morris and the other American cigarette manufacturers in the forefront of our daily concerns."

Youths Pimp for Pumps

US - Sputnik, a New York market research firm, is promoting Converse's Dennis Rodman All Star 91 basketball shoe by hiring teams of "urban youths" to pump up the market by passing out promotional stickers and sporting "advance versions" of the footwear. According to Reuters, the kids receive $350 a week and are "hand-picked for their influence in the neighborhoods." As Converse Senior Vice President for Global Marketing Jim Solomon puts it: "We believe in the grassroots." On the West Coast, Asylm Marketing hired "150 strategically selected youths in 90 cities" to promote Mongo and Digit 3, two new shoes from LA Gear. "We really work on creating perception, which sometimes is more important than creating reality," one Asylm partner explained. (Other Asylm creations include promotions for recording artists Bjork and Smashing Pumpkins.) Peter Zollo, president of Teenage Research Unlimited, notes that teens spent $103 billion in 1996. "Unlike Generation X, who are paying off college debt," Zollo says, "Generation Y - these teens - don't have any payments to hold them down, so they can blow their money on whatever they want."

Deregulation Begets Monopoly

Japan - In 1995, Japan deregulated its energy industry. As usual, deregulation was supposed to lower prices and increase consumer choices. As usual, the results were just the opposite. Today, four large companies control 80 percent of Japan's energy sales. Look Japan reports that deregulation "had virtually no effect on the rates charged for residential use." Multinationals are becoming the new energy barons. According to Look Japan, Nippon Steel, the world's largest steel maker, plans to use its purchasing power "to undercut city gas companies."

This may run as a sidebar to the Corp. Cities story

AT&T's Secret Plan to Zap Your Home

US - On February 25, AT&T announced its intention to break the control of traditional "copper wire" phone companies by beaming phone calls - along with video, Internet and teleconferencing options - directly into US homes using microwaves. The new technology, the result of a secret, three-year research program, would require each home to be equipped with an AT&T receiver the size of a pizza box. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, AT&T has purchased the "rights to radio spectrum in markets covering 93 percent of all US households" and is expected to be beaming microwaved data at speeds of 128,000 bits per second to as many as 11 million homes by 2005. On July 22, the FCC outlawed state and local laws designed to restrict the installation of wireless-TV or satellite-TV dishes.