We're Just Trying to Snuff Your Kids: Owen Clements, the San Francisco Deputy City Attorney who sued R.J. Reynolds and forced it to can its Joe Camel ad campaign now has a new nemesis -- smokeless chewing tobacco products designed for children. The $1.6 billion "spit tobacco" industry has already turned 20 percent of the country's teenage males into chew-addicts who run anywhere from a four- to 50-fold higher chance of contracting mouth or throat cancer. Clements' lawsuit details how the industry lures youngsters with "starter" brands like US Tobacco's fruit-flavored Skoal Bandits, which releases a limited 7 percent nicotine kick. Cherry-flavored Long Cut chew delivers a 23 percent nicotine charge and Copenhagen, the top-of-the-line brand, drops a 79 percent charge of narcotic into the users bloodstream. Chew tobacco industry documents refer to this process as "graduation." As industry ads openly declare, "Sooner or later, it's Copenhagen."

Biofilmidarity Forever: Individually or in small clusters, bacteria can easily be eradicated, but when they assemble into complex colonies known as biofilms, they become resistant to chemicals, detergents and antibiotics. In the April 10 edition of Science, researchers reported that they had found the molecule that causes bacteria to link up into complex biofilms. This is good news to hospitals, which lose thousands of patients to Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection each year. The bacterium forms biofilms on catheters, implants, and tubes. (On the downside, if scientists can extend this discovery to humans, it could put an end to political organizing.)

Hounding Hurwitz: Earth First! activist Darryl Cherney has sent registered letters to 25 of the US government's top bank fraud investigators inviting them to investigate charges of "criminal activity on the part of [MAXXAM/Pacific Lumber Chairman Charles] Hurwitz, his board of directors and associates." Cherney's brief points out that three of Hurwitz's cohorts involved in the take-over of California's Pacific Lumber (PL) company - Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken and Boyd Jeffries - "have already gone to federal prison for related crimes" and that the US Labor Department has filed suit against Hurwitz for "loot[ing] the PL worker pension fund of $55 million." Earth First! has upped its reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of this clearcut-timber baron to $50,000. For more information, check the website: www.jailhurwitz.com.

Clowns Nix Free Expression: Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus officials are suing People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals [PETA, 501 Front St., Norfolk, VA 23510, (747) 662-PETA] for publicizing Ringling's activities on a website called www.ringlingbrothers.com. Ringling's website (www.ringling.com) features glowing reports about animal welfare but PETA's website posts information about Kenny, an ailing 3-year-old orphan elephant who died after being forced to perform three times in one day. PETA also uncovered information showing that most of Ringling's pachyderms were captured in the wild, not bred in captivity.

Consternation in Canada: The RCMP is trying to find the culprits responsible for attacking timber and oil companies in Alberta. Since October 1995 Weyerhaeuser has had 11 rail cars loaded with pulped trees set on fire. In 1996, vandals stole a Weyerhaeuser loader and dug up 114 meters of rail used for shipping pulp, lumber and chemicals. ("The vandalism occurred less than a day after news of a report linking birth defects to industrial pollution," the Edmonton Journal noted.) Last December, 17 power poles carrying electricity to oil wells were toppled by a chainsaw. The Mounties have not ruled out disgruntled employees as suspects.

Get the Lead Out: Philips Lighting Company [200 Franklin Square Dr., PO Box 6800, Somerset, NJ 08875, (908) 563-3000] will be equipping 150 new Wal-Mart stores with fluorescent lamps that contain 80 percent less mercury than regular lamps. Philips' ALTO lamps are the first to pass the EPA's test for qualification as "non-hazardous" waste. Wal-Mart has promised to educate its customers about mercury pollution. Perhaps Wal-Mart will point out that, while the ALTO lamps will keep 13,350 grams of mercury from finding their way into landfills and the environment, the remaining mercury in the new Philips bulbs will still be sufficient (according to figures cited in a Philips press release) to poison 417 small lakes. Philips promises information on disposal of used mercury products [1(800) 555-0050].

Hot Oatmeal: Quaker Oats and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have promised to pay $185 million to more than 100 former students at Massachusetts' Fernald State School who were fed radiation-spiked cereal during the 1940s and 1950s. The developmentally-disabled students were used as part of a secret nutritional experiment that constituted, in the words of lawyer Alexander Bok, "a violation of the civil rights of helpless children."

Radioactive Spoils of War: British Prime Minister Tony Blair took some heat when it became known that he had agreed to a US plan to ship nuclear material from Russia to a Scottish reprocessing plant. In his defense, Blair mentioned that the US had already taken 270 pounds of highly enriched uranium from Kazakstan. Blair also answered a lingering question from the Persian Gulf War: What became of the nuclear material that was found in and removed from sites in Iraq? According to Blair, 61.6 pounds of Iraqi nuclear material was taken away by Russia.

Mole Kiss: To Wisconsin's Republican Governor Tommy Thompson who signed the Sulfide Mining Moratorium Bill which promises to grant new mining rights to any company that can provide just one example of a sulfide mine that has operated for ten years and which, after closure, has gone ten years without polluting the surrounding environment. According to Project Underground [1847 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, CA 94703, (510) 705-8981], this provides such an "insurmountable hurdle" that it will block Rio Algom's plans to open its proposed Crandon sulfide mine.

Mole Nip: To Vice President All Gore. In April, Gore ordered the EPA to reconsider its role under a 1996 law that required it to ban pesticides that could cause neurological damage in children. Wire service reports explained that Gore was "trying to mollify an anxious agriculture industry" and that his directive followed "an escalating lobbying campaign by the agriculture and chemical industries."

Mole Nip: To the gunmen of the US Interior's "Wildlife Services" extermination squad, who shot 67 coyotes from the air during a week-long assault bankrolled by the Arizona Game and Fish Department. Some of the aerial assault took place near the Wupatki National Monument, over ranch land owned by the family of Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt.

Mole Nip:"A (refurbished) island in time" Near Satellite Beach on Florida's east coast, Samsons Island is being transformed from an overgrown swampland to a nature park, with the help of volunteers and the National Tree Trust [1120 G Street NW, Suite 770, Washington DC 20005, (800) 846-8733], which is providing 1100 trees. So what's wrong with swampland? (The Tree Trust is backed by the paper, timber and oil industries.).