TV or Not TV
US - There's too much violence on TV screens, and there is too little diversity behind the screens. Only 2.8 percent of US TV and radio stations are minority-owned, and that number is falling. The 1996 Telecommunications Act was supposed to diversify the industry. Instead, the Associated Press concludes, the law actually "fueled an unprecedented wave of media mergers." On April 7, FCC chairman Bill Kennard told the National Association of Broadcasters: "I'm concerned that as the industry consolidates, as we have more and more stations in fewer and fewer hands, diversity of viewpoints will be hampered and opportunities for new entrants will be further reduced." A movement afoot to create thousands of new 1- 3,000-watt "micro" radio stations in the US is opposed by reigning corporate radio operators. [www.freeradio.org]

Gilded Parachutes
US - The Pegasus Gold mining company's decision to file for bankruptcy could help the firm avoid paying Montana state property taxes and evade responsibility for a $63.5 million clean-up at its Zortman-Landusky mine. The Bozeman Daily Chronicle reports that this hasn't stopped the company from asking the US Securities and Exchange Commission for a green light to pay its top executives $5 million in bonuses.

Buddy, Can You Spare a Dram?
FRANCE - Reuters reports that a UN conference on water ruled on March 21 that water "should be paid for as a commodity rather than be treated as an essential staple to be provided free of cost." French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin called the decision a "prudent" rejection of the old-fashioned concept that water should be free "because it fell from the heavens." French President Jacques Chirac promptly called for the creation of a $400 billion system of global water networks. Reporting on this in The Nation, Kirkpatrick Sale pondered: "Would anyone like to bet against the concept of 'air rights' being extended to include what you breathe - and who will sell it to you?"

A Living Wage: It's the Law
US - Oakland, California passed a Jobs and Living Wage Ordinance that went into effect on July 1. Companies doing more than $25,000 a year in business, or receiving more than $100,000 in subsidies, must now pay workers a "living wage" of $8 per hour with benefits ($9.25 without benefits). The federal minimum wage is $5.75. Oakland is the 17th US city to adopt a living wage law.

Shorter Hours = More Jobs
CANADA - A Toronto organization, 32 Hours: Action for Full Employment, wants to solve the country's employment woes by giving current workers a shorter workweek and hiring the unemployed to fill the gap. Relying on economic "growth" to create jobs has not worked, notes 32 Hours' Anders Hayden. "We can't just rev up the growth machine without considering the ecological consequences." In addition to opening up new jobs in the existing workplace, "redistributing work time could help to shift social values away from endless production and consumption to a more sustainable way of life," notes Alternatives Journal. Last October, France announced a bold plan to solve its unemployment crisis by cutting the work week from 39 to 35 hours by the year 2000.

US: Banking on Drug Dealers
US - The proposed merger of Citicorp and the Travelers Group has drawn fire from Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), a member of the House Banking Committee. Waters has asked Congress to investigate "the nefarious use of Citibank's private bank system by the world's most notorious drug lords and money launderers." If bank officials are found guilty, Waters declared, "Citicorp never should be allowed to merge or acquire again." Citicorp is the subject of investigations by Mexican and Swiss police and the US Justice Department for its role in laundering drug money for Raul Salinas de Gortari, the jailed brother of former Mexican President Salinas.

What A Waste
US - Mergermania rattled the world of trash cans in March when the multinational garbage handler, USA Waste Services. announced plans to acquire Waste Management Inc., creating the world's largest trash hauler, dominating 20 percent of the US market. According to wire service reports, the new $12 billion firm plans to "compete more effectively" (and save $800 million a year) by consolidating routes, eliminating facilities and slashing thousands of jobs from its combined 76,500-member workforce.

Europe Passes Life Patenting Directive
GENEVA - In May, the European Parliament (EP) voted to approve a controversial Biotech Patent Directive that will permit the patenting of: genes from plants, animals and human body parts (once removed from the body). The directive also allows patenting of genetically modified human body parts, cloned human body parts and cloned human embryos. All of these practices were previously banned under existing European patent law. The unelected European Commission removed a key EP amendment designed to limit "biopiracy." "Without this amendment," warns The Cornerhouse [PO Box 3137, Station Rd., Sturminster Newton, Dorset Dt10 1YJ, Britain], "human biological material could be patented without the knowledge or consent of [the donor]."

Butterfly Smuggling
INDIA - The rare butterflies of northern India are vanishing into the nets of a $200 million global butterfly smuggling industry. A seven-month survey by Delhi's Friends of the Butterflies (FoB) found that traffickers are snatching as much as $350 per butterfly. The trade violates the 1972 Wildlife Act but is thriving because of the involvement of "high officials," FoB found. The Atlas moth of Khasi Hills is nearly extinct, and the loss of these rare pollinators could soon disrupt the local food web.

Mitsubishi's Bail-out
CANADA -The Alberta government loaned the Japanese multinational Mitsubishi $155 million to build its Al-Pac pulp mill with the understanding that the loan would be repaid when the mill became profitable. In March, Al-Pac (which the Western Canada Wilderness Committee has called "the most heavily subsidized mill in history") claimed its $1.8 billion mill could not repay the loan. Alberta Premier Ralph Klein "forgave" the debt, and provincial tax-payers took a $155 million hit. Al-Pac continues to log a hunk of old-growth boreal forests the size of Indiana - much of it on land claimed by the traditional Lubicon Lake Cree Indian Nation.

World's Poor Can Halt Population Growth
UN - If the world's population rises as expected to 9.4 billion by the middle of the next century, it will take a double of the world's current grain harvest to feed everyone. According to the Worldwatch Institute's State of the World Report, supplying even the most modest nutritional gains would require a volume of irrigation water 20 times that of the Nile River. No one knows where the hundreds of millions of new homes, classrooms and jobs would come from. Worldwatch notes that "rapid economic growth is not a prerequisite for reduced fertility." In the 1970s women in Bangladesh averaged seven children but today the average is down to 3.3 children per woman, despite Bangladesh's per capita average income of only $200 a year. The key factor in the reduction, Worldwatch reports, is educational opportunities for women.

Golden Eggs and Udder Disasters
SOUTH AFRICA - The world had never seen a dairy cow like Ludwig VanderVenter's "Superstar." According to the Canadian Broadcast Corporation's "As It Happens" news program, the average dairy cow produces 32 liters of milk per month, while Superstar churned out 125 liters. A smallish cow, weighing only 500 kg, Superstar was so prodigious that she had to be milked every four hours. Figuring that two Superstars were better than one, VanderVenter readily agreed when some scientists offered to clone her. They began by taking a sample of skin but something went terribly wrong. Within a week of the sampling, Superstar, who had been in the peak of health, grew feeble and died. She is survived by a calf and a half-sister, Megastar. Asked about the possibility of trying to clone Megastar, VanderVenter muttered, "I have scientist-fright at the moment."

Our Alma Mater, Coca Cola
US - The Cola Wars have gone Ivy League. Georgetown University has accepted a $6.5 million gift from Coke in exchange for making its campus a Pepsi-free zone. Meanwhile, the University of Maryland has accepted $57.7 million from Pepsi, which gains exclusive rights to market its sodas on campus. "We were concerned that, any time the university creates an agreement with just one company, it limits student choice," Georgetown Student Association President John Cronan explained, but "Ultimately, the deal meant a lot of money."

This Toy Story Has No Happy Ending
VIETNAM - Ethical Consumer magazine reports that 200 young Vietnamese women were sickened by acetone fumes in a factory manufacturing 101 Dalmatians toys for McDonald's restaurants. Two months after the accident, acetone levels in the factory were still 105 times higher than allowed under Vietnamese law. The workers earn 8 cents an hour and labor 10 hours a day. Workers in Chinese toy factories reportedly work 14-15 hour days.

McCard Revolt in UK Schools
UK - At the start of the 1998 academic year, the National Union of Students (NUS) handed all incoming and returning scholars a McDonald's "privilege card" good for a free burger with the purchase of a Big Mac, fries and soda. The student Food Commission issued a report noting that McD meals are high in fat, salt and sugar and predicted "a rapid rise in coronary bypass operations among university graduates in about 20 years." The NUS Conference subsequently passed a motion urging NUS to sever its dealings with McD's because of the firm's "destruction of the environment and promotion of unhealthy food products."

vRadio Disney Lures Kids, Spurns Veggies
US - The Walt Disney company has bought a San Francisco AM radio station targeted "just for kids." Disney's print ads for the station will have child nutritionists wondering whose side Disney is on. The ad, which appeared in the Sunday comics pages, showed three kids recoiling at the sight of a table piled high with pumpkins, peppers, artichokes, corn, peas, lettuce and melons. The ad read: "Winning a prize on Radio Disney is more fun than eating your veggies!"

Three Cheers for Iceland!
UK - In March, Iceland Foods, one of Britain's largest supermarket chains broke with its competitors - Safeway, Tesco and Sainsbury's - and banned the sale of US genetically engineered (GE) foods under the Iceland label. "Consumers are being conned," company founder Malcolm Walker told the press. Walker called GE foods "the most significant and potentially dangerous development in food production this century."

Massive Anti-WTO Demo
INDIA - Hundreds of thousands of Indian farmers, workers and peasants jammed the streets of Hyderabad on May 1 to demand India's immediate withdrawal from the World Trade Organization (WTO). The Joint Action Forum (JAF) claimed WTO policies were responsible for a rash of peasant suicides - more than 400 in the first five months of the year. A JAF declaration called the WTO "our brutal enemy. This unaccountable and notoriously undemocratic body has also started destroying our natural habitats and traditional agriculture and other knowledge systems converting us into objects of transnational corporations' economy of consumerism. The WTO will kill us unless we kill it."

Big Oil Sued
US - In April, the US government joined the citizens group Project on Government Oversight in a lawsuit that charges Shell, Conoco, Amoco, Exxon, Chevron, Phillips, Pennzoil, Kerr-McGee, Union Pacific and other energy giants with engaging in "a nationwide conspiracy to shortchange the United States of hundred of millions of dollars in revenues derived from the production of crude oil from federal and American Indian-owned lands."

IBM's Rogues on the Loose
ARGENTINA -Investigators in Buenos Aires are hot on the trail of four IBM executives accused of paying a $21 million bribe to win a contract with the state-owned Banco de la Nacion in 1994 and 1995. "If they don't come voluntarily to testify," Judge Adolfo Bagnasco told the New York Times, "I will have to ask Interpol to capture them with or without the assistance of the US government." A former Banco de la Nacion executive has confessed to accepting a $1 million bribe from IBM.

Boycott the Planet-Killers
UK - The Global Climate Coalition [1331 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, No. 1600, North Tower, Washington, DC 20004-1703] is a business lobby that spends millions on articles employing "junk science" to challenge the scientific consensus that global warming will result from burning fossil fuels. Don't buy the spiel, or products made by the GCC members: Chevron, Chrysler, Exxon, Ford, General Motors, Goodyear and Texaco.

Why Free-Trade Fails
CHILE - In April, President Clinton confessed to the delegates attending the Summit of the Americas that "too many of our own citizens have not yet seen their lives improve as a result of our participation as free nations in a global economy." While 34 heads of state met under police guard at the Sheraton Hotel, nearly 1,000 small farmers, indigenous people and activists conducted a parallel Summit of the Peoples of America. Ed Rosario, coordinator of the Western Hemisphere Worker's Conference, offered a telling observation: "Experience shows us that free-trade agreements are not government initiatives, but policy agendas pushed by global corporations precisely to get governments out of the way."

Lights, Camera, Achtung!
GERMANY - Commercials leap from TV screens and glower on billboards and now commercials are set to disrupt a cherished centuries-old tradition, the German scholars' akademische Viertelstunde - a 15-minute respite "between the time courses and lectures are supposed to begin and the time they actually do so." While the university's attendance has grown ten percent, some departmental budgets have been slashed 30 percent. According to This Week in Germany, Darmstadt Polytechnic is one of the first German universities to "offer its lecture halls as an advertising venue" where corporate ads will be projected "onto the walls much like in movie theaters."