| July 22, 2009 | - John Berry, the businessman who popularized WD-40, died.
| Source:
Los Angeles Times
|
| May 31, 2009 | - Bausch & Lomb reportedly had so far paid out $250 million to settle nearly 600 lawsuits over its contact-lens cleaner product ReNu with MoistureLoc, which prior to its recall caused hundreds of fungal infections, necessitating 60 corneal transplants and seven eye removals.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| April 22, 2009 | - David Kellerman, the chief financial officer of Freddie Mac, hanged himself.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 6, 2009 | - Auditors said that even with loans from the Treasury, General Motors is likely to fail.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| February 27, 2009 | - Fifty-four percent of graduating U.S. business majors lacked job offers, and Latham & Watkins, an international law firm, planned to lay off 8 percent of its attorneys with six months' severance (up to $100,000 plus benefits) and to pay recent law-school hires up to $75,000 to defer work until late 2010.
| Source 1:
BusinessWeek
Source 2:
The AM Law Daily
|
| January 29, 2009 | - A disgruntled former Fannie Mae computer engineer was indicted for allegedly attempting to plant a “logic bomb” in the corporation's computer code.
| Source:
Channel Web
|
| January 28, 2009 | -
Wall Street was found to have distributed $18.4 billion in bonuses, its sixth largest payout ever.
| Source:
NYTimes
|
| January 5, 2009 | - Steve Jobs, the C.E.O. of Apple, said that his recent weight loss was due not to pancreatic cancer but to a hormone imbalance that “has been 'robbing' me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy.”
| Source:
PCWorld
|
| December 23, 2008 | -
Manpower Inc., a temporary-staffing agency, lowered its fourth-quarter financial forecast due to a rapid decline in demand.
| Source:
Wall Street Journal
|
| December 4, 2008 | -
Representatives of the Big Three car companies, facing their lowest sales in decades and, in the case of Chrysler and General Motors, imminent collapse, again appeared before Congress (traveling by car and commercial flights this time, rather than on private jets) to ask for $34 billion in aid, a few billion less than the value of Harvard University's endowment four months ago, before it lost $8 billion.
| Source 1:
KansasCity.com
Source 2:
The Guardian
Source 3:
The Wall Street Journal
Source 4:
The Financial Times
|
| November 23, 2008 | - Federal regulators planned to bail out Citigroup with $20 billion in direct investment as well as over $300 billion in loan and securities guarantees.
| Source:
NYTimes
|
| November 12, 2008 | - It was announced that a portion of the government's $700 billion bailout package may be used to pay year-end bonuses on Wall Street.
| Source:
CBS
|
| October 23, 2008 | -
AIG announced that it would halt $19 million in payments to its former chief executive, Martin Sullivan, and freeze its $600 million deferred-compensation and bonus pools.
| Source:
Wall Street Journal
|
| October 23, 2008 | - More than 50 banks received letters containing a white powder, warning “It's payback time.”
| Source:
CNN
|
| September 18, 2008 | - After many years of increasing borrowing and at least thirteen months of evidence of an impending catastrophe, American financial institutions faced the worst credit crisis since the Great Depression. “The world,” explained Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, “no longer has the capacity to absorb fake U.S. dollars.”
| Source 1:
Economist
Source 2:
The Wall Street Journal
Source 3:
Bloomberg
|
| September 18, 2008 | - Global stock markets lost $3.1 trillion in four days, and American International Group (AIG), the world's biggest insurance company and a leader in the $62 trillion credit-default swap market, was nearly bankrupted. “The private market has screwed itself up,” said Representative Barney Frank (D., Mass.), “and they need the government to come help them unscrew it.” The Federal Reserve loaned AIG $85 billion at 11 percent interest and took control of the company, which was founded in China in 1919 and driven out thirty years later by Mao. AIG was replaced in the Dow Jones Industrial Average by Kraft, the makers of Cheez Whiz.
| Source 1:
Der Spiegel
Source 2:
The New York Times
Source 3:
The New York Times
Source 4:
Der Spiegel
Source 5:
Boston Globe
Source 6:
CNN
Source 7:
Bloomberg
|
| September 15, 2008 | - Stocks on Wall Street and other exchanges throughout the world dropped as brokerage Merrill Lynch was bought by Bank of America, insurance giant AIG sought tens of billions of dollars in government loans, and investment bank Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| August 26, 2008 | -
Citibank, facing huge losses, asked its bankers to stop making color photocopies and to start printing internal presentations on both sides of the page.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 13, 2008 | - The U.S. Office of Thrift Supervision seized the IndyMac Bank of California, worth an estimated 32 billion dollars, after the bank's closure in the wake of mortgage industry collapse.
| Source:
AFP
|
| June 26, 2008 | - The Supreme Court determined that Exxon need pay only $507.5 million (about four days' worth of recent profits) of the $5 billion in punitive damages initially awarded to victims of the 1989 “Valdez” oil spill.
| Source 1:
CNN Money
Source 2:
AP via Yahoo! News
|
| March 30, 2008 | -
McCain asked mortgage lenders to provide voluntary aid to homeowners, recalling that General Motors had offered no-interest car financing after September 11. Senator Hillary Clinton suggested consulting former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. While Clinton conceded that Greenspan helped cause the current crisis, she claimed that he has a “calming influence” on Wall Street. “Don't ask me why,” she said, “because I never understand what he's saying.” Senator Barack Obama gave a stirring speech, invoking the history of American finance from Hamilton and Jefferson to the present day, and Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr. proposed the largest reform of the American financial system since the Great Depression.
| Source 1:
LAT
Source 2:
LAT
Source 3:
NYT
Source 4:
WP
Source 5:
Attytood
Source 6:
NYT
Source 7:
Boston Globe
Source 8:
WP
Source 9:
WSJ
Source 10:
Businessweek via Der Spiegel
Source 11:
NYT
Source 12:
WP
|
| March 14, 2008 | - The cubicle turned 40, Viagra turned 10, and Hotel Luxor, the oldest whorehouse in Germany's red light district, announced that it would close for lack of business.
| Source 1:
Time
Source 2:
Yahoo News
Source 3:
Associated Press
|
| January 8, 2008 | -
Merrill Lynch reported that the United States had already entered a recession.
| Source:
BBCnews.com
|
| October 29, 2007 | -
General Motors announced it would open a new research center into alternative fuels and vehicles in Shanghai.
| Source:
Forbes.com
|
| October 14, 2007 | - Two thirds of American CEOs, a study found, think that American CEOs are overpaid.
| Source:
Financial Times
|
| September 25, 2007 | -
Nike unveiled the Air Native, a sneaker that has a larger fit for the distinct foot shape of American Indians and features several “heritage callouts,” including sunrise patterns, feather designs, and stars representing the night sky.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| September 22, 2007 | - A University of Florida student was Tasered after his question for Senator John Kerry went on too long. An Ocala, Florida, man accused police of Tasering him after he refused to drop his Koran; police in Tustin, California, Tasered a 15-year-old autistic boy; and a Taser dart fired at a Vancouver, Washington, man ignited the cigarette lighter in his pocket, setting his pants on fire. Sales at Taser International were expected to reach $90 million this year.
| Source 1:
The Boston Globe
Source 2:
WRAL.com
Source 3:
OC Register
Source 4:
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Source 5:
Times Online
|
| September 17, 2007 | -
Raytheon unveiled Silent Guardian, a device that radiates unbearable pain. “You don't have time to think about it,” said an executive. “You just run.” The ray gun, Raytheon promised, will not be sold to countries with questionable human rights records, although it will be used by the United States in Iraq.
| Source:
Daily Mail
|
| August 13, 2007 | - Losses among lenders to American debtors led to a one-day plunge of 387 points in the Dow Industrial Average. The Federal Reserve injected $62 billion into the market--its largest intervention since September 19, 2001--and its international counterparts followed suit. Hedge funds were in the red. “You have a better chance at making money on the craps table than in this market,” remarked one analyst.
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
New York Times
|
| August 12, 2007 | -
China Public Security, a U.S.-financed company contracted by the People's Republic, was outfitting the city of Shenzen with 20,000 surveillance cameras and issuing identity cards to record each citizen's name, address, employment status, education, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical-insurance status, reproductive history, and landlord's phone number. “If they do not get the permanent card,” said a China Public Security executive, “they cannot live here, they cannot get government benefits, and that is a way for the government to control the population in the future.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 16, 2007 | - IHOP, which serves more than 700 million pancakes each year, announced that it would buy Applebee's for $1.9 billion.
| Source 1:
IHOP
Source 2:
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
|
| May 21, 2007 | -
Microsoft announced that it would acquire online media and advertising firm aQuantive for $6 billion.
| Source:
MediaWeek
|
| February 13, 2007 | -
Bank of America was offering a new credit card aimed at illegal immigrants.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| January 26, 2007 | -
North Korea
demanded 44 million euros from
the insurance company Lloyd's
of London as compensation for damages in
an alleged catastrophic helicopter accident in April 2005. According
to their filed claim, a helicopter owned by the state airline was
flying from Pyongyang to a remote island to save a woman who was in
labor with triplets when it crashed into a warehouse full of
humanitarian-relief supplies, causing a fire. “All this business
about spending their money on
their nuclear program,” said a source
close to the North Koreans, “is
complete
tosh.”
| Source:
London
Times
|
| January 26, 2007 | -
Ford
posted a loss of $12.7 billion for 2006, the largest in its 103-year history, and equivalent to the GDP of Jordan. Asked about his plans for the company, CEO Alan R. Mulally said, “At the top of the list, I would put dealing with reality.”
| Source 1:
USA Today
Source 2:
NYT
|
| January 26, 2007 | -
Profits at Tokyo-based Nintendo Co. were up 43 percent in the nine months ending in December, largely on sales of its new Wii video-game system.
| Source:
AP via LA Times
|
| December 17, 2006 | - The pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly was found to have downplayed the health risks of Zyprexa, its best-selling medication for schizophrenia.
| Source:
NYT
|
| November 27, 2006 | - Barry Diller, at one time the highest paid CEO in the world, said corporate compensation consultants should be “flushed into the East River.”
| Source:
Reuters via Gawker
|
| October 25, 2006 | -
Daimler Chrysler also lost $1.5 billion during the same time period.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 24, 2006 | -
Ford Motor Company announced $7.6 billion in third quarter losses.
| Source:
Sydney Morning Herald
|
| October 12, 2006 | -
Coca-Cola announced plans to market a new calorie-burning green tea beverage called Enviga.
| Source:
NBC
|
| October 7, 2006 | -
Tower Records, which is bankrupt, announced that it had been sold and that its assets would be liquidated.
| Source:
The Hollywood Reporter
|
| October 6, 2006 | - Dog-feces-cleanup franchises were opening across the United States. It's the “best job in the world,” said Matt Boswell, the Chief Excrement Officer of Texas-based Pet Butler, which operates in 14 states.
| Source 1:
The Seattle Times
Source 2:
MSNBC
|
| October 5, 2006 | -
Starbucks announced plans to add 28,000 new locations to its extant 12,000.
| Source:
Starbucks' new store-opening goal: 40,000
|
| September 22, 2006 | -
Businessman Richard Branson pledged to donate $3 billion to alternative energy development.
| Source:
ABC News via google news
|
| September 18, 2006 | - Patricia C. Dunn, the chairwoman of Hewlett-Packard, agreed to resign in January after it was revealed that Hewlett-Packard had spied on its own board in order to stop leaks.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| September 5, 2006 | - Visitors to the Texas State Fair were enjoying deep-fried Coca-Cola.
| Source:
Local6.com
|
| July 15, 2006 | - Peter Coors, chief executive of Molson Coors Brewing Co., had his license revoked for drunk driving.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| July 12, 2006 | - The Vatican announced that, while it paid $9 million for the funeral of Pope John Paul II, it still made a $12.4 million profit in 2005.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| July 8, 2006 | - An Army reserve colonel offered to plead guilty to charges that he engaged in bribery, conspiracy, and money laundering while he was stationed in Iraq.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 26, 2006 | - A gang of marauding transvestite thieves was terrorizing New Orleans
businesses.
| Source:
New Orleans City Business
|
| June 20, 2006 | - A study by Pfizer found that most women between the ages of 25 and 74 prefer their sex partners to have hard penises.
| Source:
Malaysia Star via Google News
|
| June 19, 2006 | -
Nestlé announced that it would buy weight loss firm Jenny Craig.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| May 31, 2006 | -
President George W. Bush named Goldman Sachs Group Chairman Henry Paulson Jr as the new Secretary of the Treasury.
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| March 22, 2006 | -
Colgate announced that it would buy Tom's of Maine for about $100 million.
| Source:
The Boston Globe
|
| March 8, 2006 | - After 213 years as a nonprofit, the New York Stock Exchange became a public company.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| March 6, 2006 | -
AT&T announced that it would purchase Bell South for $67 billion and eliminate 10,000 jobs.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| January 31, 2006 | -
ExxonMobil announced that it had a $36.1 billion profit in 2005, more than any company in any year ever, then announced that its profits were actually moderate. Royal Dutch Shell also reported record profits.
| Source 1:
The Seattle Times
Source 2:
BBC News
|
| December 31, 2005 | - U.S. financial giant Citigroup was attempting to purchase about 85 percent of the state-owned Guangdong Development Bank of China.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| December 30, 2005 | - The University of Michigan was boycotting Coca-Cola products because of Coca-Cola's human rights policies.
| Source:
Local 6
|
| December 15, 2005 | -
EBay was selling 85 toys a minute.
| Source:
Click2Houston.com
|
| December 6, 2005 | - Ford began to cut back its advertising in gay publications.
| Source:
Breitbart.com
|
| November 24, 2005 | - At the Macy's
Thanksgiving Day Parade, the M&M's Chocolate Candies balloon knocked parts of a street lamp onto a woman and child. Both were briefly hospitalized. “We should be thankful,” said New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, “none were more seriously hurt.”
| Source:
AP
|
| November 17, 2005 | -
Peter Drucker died.
| Source:
The Economist
|
| November 11, 2005 | - In China the death sentence of entrepreneur Yuan Baojing was suspended after Yuan’s wife transferred $6.12 billion in shares to the government.
| Source:
News.telegraph
|
| October 24, 2005 | - It was reported that in 2003 Senator
Bill Frist was told (in writing) that a significant amount of HCA, Inc., stock had been added to his blind trust; two weeks later he said he did not believe that he owned any stock in HCA. "I have no control," said Frist. "He could have been more exact," explained Frist's spokesman.
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| October 20, 2005 | -
Babies were up for auction on eBay's Chinese subsidiary, Eachnet. Boys were going for $3,450, while girls cost $1,603.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| September 16, 2005 | -
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was under criticism for saying that rape victimhood was "a money-making concern"; "A lot of people," he explained, "say if you want to go abroad and get a visa for Canada or citizenship and be a millionaire, get yourself raped."
| Source:
BBC News
|
| September 15, 2005 | -
Delta and Northwest both filed for bankruptcy.
| Source:
Forbes
|
| September 12, 2005 | -
Chuck E. Cheese restaurants were showing Defense Department footage. "We support what our troops are doing over there," said a Chuck E. Cheese representative. "Helping kids."
| Source:
New York
|
| September 11, 2005 | -
Yahoo! admitted that it had helped China track down a journalist, Shi Tao, who had anonymously redistributed a message from the Chinese government suggesting journalists be careful about what they write. Shi is serving a 10-year sentence for revealing "state secrets."
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| August 30, 2005 | - Federal prosecutors accused eight officials from KPMG and a lawyer of conspiracy for helping wealthy people evade at least $2.5 billion in taxes, and a man named Glenn Allen Powell pleaded guilty to taking as much as $1.25 million in kickbacks in Iraq while working for Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root.
| Source 1:
The Washington Post
Source 2:
The Washington Post
|
| August 6, 2005 | - The Presbyterian Church USA announced that it would ask Caterpillar, Motorola, ITT Industries, and United Technologies to stop providing Israel with the materials it uses to enforce the occupation of Palestine.
| Source:
Kentucky.com
|
| July 18, 2005 | - Investigations into the expenses of former Tyco executive Dennis Kozlowski revealed that Kozlowski had once held an extravagant
bachelor party for his son-in-law. “It wasn't like a three-ring circus,” said the son-in-law's father. “It was a nice party. There was only one dwarf.”
| Source:
New York Daily News
|
| July 13, 2005 | - The NHL and Player's Association came to an agreement and announced that hockey could start up again.
| Source:
CBC
|
| June 29, 2005 | -
China Export & Credit Insurance Corporation was planning to buy
Huffy Bikes.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| June 27, 2005 | - A trader for Taiwan's Fubon Securities accidentally purchased $223 million worth of the wrong stocks.
| Source:
Bloomberg
|
| June 25, 2005 | - The NAACP named former Verizon
executive Bruce S. Gordon as president.
| Source:
The Guardian
|
| June 17, 2005 | - Dennis Kozlowski and Mark Swartz, former executives at Tyco, were found guilty on thirty counts of grand larceny, conspiracy, falsifying business records, and securities fraud.
| Source:
Houston Chronicle
|
| June 15, 2005 | - Philip Cooney, the chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, who achieved notoriety when he revised government reports on global warming to cover up the link between greenhouse gas emissions and rising temperatures, quit his job to become a lobbyist for ExxonMobil. “Perhaps he won't even notice he has changed jobs,” said the director of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| June 7, 2005 | - Recently released emails showed that Air Force officials knew all along that a contract for leased refueling tankers was actually a bailout for Boeing. "We all know," wrote an official in the Pentagon comptroller's office, "that this is a bailout for Boeing."
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| June 6, 2005 | - The American Family Association called on its members to boycott Ford, saying that the auto-maker promotes the homosexual lifestyle. They suspended the boycott a few days later.
| Source:
Detroit Free Press
|
| May 31, 2005 | - The CIA was running its own fleet of twenty-six airplanes, owned by seven shell companies.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| May 19, 2005 | -
Donald Trump called on New York City to rebuild the Twin Towers, only taller, and described the city's planned “Freedom Tower” as “the worst pile of crap architecture I have ever seen in my life.”
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| May 8, 2005 | - Ave Maria University, a Catholic college founded by the retired CEO of Domino's Pizza, graduated its first class and gave an honorary degree to L. Paul Bremer, who told the assembled graduates that Muslim extremists were against the separation of church and state.
| Source:
Netscape News
|
| May 6, 2005 | -
IBM announced that it would fire up to 13,000 employees in Europe and the United States.
| Source:
Ployer.com
|
| April 10, 2005 | - A study found that store clerks are more respectful to slender shoppers than to obese ones.
| Source:
AP
|
| April 4, 2005 | -
Cambodia
privatized the Killing Fields at Cheoung Ek; a Japanese firm will plant flowers near the tower of eight thousand skulls and will raise admission rates.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| March 28, 2005 | - Terri Schiavo's parents authorized a direct-marketing firm to sell a list of those who contributed to Terri's cause.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| March 23, 2005 | - A California woman, eating chili at a Wendy's restaurant, bit into a human finger. The finger had a manicured nail.
| Source:
Stuff.co.nz
|
| March 15, 2005 | - Bernard Ebbers, the former chief executive of WorldCom, was convicted of securities fraud, conspiracy, and seven counts of filing false reports.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 11, 2005 | - A New York judge dismissed a lawsuit brought against Monsanto, Dow Chemical, and several other chemical companies on behalf of 4 million Vietnamese who were poisoned by the 80 million liters of Agent Orange sprayed during the Vietnam War. The judge said that there was no clear link between Agent Orange and the illnesses of the Vietnamese plaintiffs, even though the U.S. government currently pays compensation to ten thousand U.S. veterans of the Vietnam War impaired by Agent Orange.
| Source:
VOA
|
| March 11, 2005 | - A Georgia man was arrested for setting up a methamphetamine lab in a Kmart bathroom.
| Source:
News4Jax.com
|
| March 7, 2005 | -
Sony made a Welshman its chairman.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 25, 2005 | - A Swiss court lifted the ban on using “Bin Ladin” as a brand name. The name is registered to Osama bin Laden's half-brother.
| Source:
CANOE
|
| February 24, 2005 | -
Tom Ridge joined the board of Home Depot.
| Source:
MarketWatch
|
| February 14, 2005 | -
Verizon agreed to buy MCI.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| February 13, 2005 | - A Swedish woman found a “medium-sized” penis in a bottle of ketchup. “I will never buy this brand again,” she said.
| Source:
Mail and Guardian Online
|
| February 13, 2005 | - At the Best Buy in the Hudson Valley Mall in Kingston, New York, a man ran amok with an AK-47, injuring an Army recruiter.
| Source:
ABC News
|
| February 13, 2005 | -
General Motors was spending more for health care than for steel.
| Source:
Kalamazoo Gazette
|
| February 10, 2005 | - The Commerce Department announced that the U.S. had a $672 billion trade deficit in 2004.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| February 9, 2005 | - Hewlett-Packard fired CEO Carly Fiorina.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| January 26, 2005 | - Human Rights Watch declared meatpacking to be "the most dangerous factory job in America,"
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| January 17, 2005 | - The White House was preparing for the president's inauguration, and it was revealed that Laura Bush's inaugural gown is an ice-blue and silver embroidered tulle V-neck dress with matching satin coat, by de la Renta; Jenna and Barbara Bush are being dressed by Lela Rose, de la Renta, Derek Lam, and Badgley Mischka. President Bush will wear a business suit.
| Source:
The Ledger
|
| January 11, 2005 | - The parents of a baby born on January 6, and officially named the 1.3 billionth citizen of China, turned down sponsorship deals from diaper makers. “Zhang Yichi is too young, and too many commercial activities will have negative impact on the boy's healthy growth,” said Zhang Tong, the boy's father.
| Source:
China Daily
|
| January 6, 2005 | -
Airlines cut prices
| Source:
USA Today
|
| January 4, 2005 | -
Sales of Ford automobiles were down.
| Source:
MSNBC
|
| January 4, 2005 | - Online jewelry sales were up.
| Source:
Jeweler's Circular Keystone
|
| November 17, 2004 | - Kmart and Sears merged.
| Source:
CNN
|
| October 25, 2004 | - The chief contracting officer for the Army Corps of Engineers called for an investigation of how Halliburton was awarded large government contracts for work in Iraq.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 13, 2004 | - The Justice Department opened an investigation into the Chiron Corporation, which was supposed to provide about half the American flu vaccine supply until the British government shut down the operation because of problems with bacterial contamination.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 7, 2004 | - Public health experts have long warned that it is insane for the United States to depend on two companies for the country's flu vaccine.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 7, 2004 | - The World Health Organization released a study, based on an unscientific "spot-check" sampling, concluding that Indonesian villagers in Buyat Bay, Sulawesi, have not been poisoned by a gold mine, owned by the Newmont Mining Corporation, that dumped about 2,000 tons of mine tailings a day into nearby waters.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 1, 2004 | -
Merck & Co. withdrew its arthritis drug Vioxx because it apparently doubles the risk of heart attack.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| September 30, 2004 | -
Thai health officials confirmed that avian flu has probably begun to spread from person to person. Influenza experts were begging drug companies to begin manufacturing enough vaccine to prevent a pandemic but the companies were complaining that production is too expensive and that they will lose money if a pandemic does not occur. Patent issues were also cited.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 22, 2004 | - The company that makes Hostess Twinkies and Wonder Bread went bankrupt.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| September 4, 2004 | - A Kansas City company said that its synthetic urine was proving popular with researchers.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| September 2, 2004 | - Three people were trampled to death at an Ikea grand opening in Saudi Arabia.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 25, 2004 | - The Bush Administration has decided that consumers should not be able to sue manufacturers of drugs that have been approved by the FDA.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 24, 2004 | -
Janssen Pharmaceutica Products, a unit of Johnson & Johnson, warned doctors that it had "minimized potentially fatal risks, and made misleading claims" about Risperdal, an anti-schizophrenia drug; the drug can cause stroke, diabetes, and other fatal complications, the company said, and contrary to claims on the label it is not safer than similar drugs. It was reported that some boys who were given Risperdal in Florida, where it is used as a "chemical restraint" in state facilities, developed lactating breasts.
| Source:
Miami Herald
|
| July 18, 2004 | - Charges were dismissed against a Texas woman who holds "Tupperware-type" parties for housewives interested in buying dildos.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| July 9, 2004 | - The EPA announced that it will fine DuPont for failing to report significant test results relating to a chemical used in making Teflon that was found in drinking water near factories and in the fetus of a pregnant employee.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 7, 2004 | -
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Portland, Oregon, filed for bankruptcy.
| Source:
Oregonian
|
| July 3, 2004 | - Little boys in Utah were selling lemonade for $250 a glass to offset a potential $14 million judgment against the Boy Scouts for starting a wildfire.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| June 29, 2004 | - In response to a note from Condoleezza Rice announcing Iraq's new status, President Bush wrote: "Let Freedom Reign!"
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 25, 2004 | -
Cheney said he felt much better after he told Senator Patrick Leahy, who has been critical of Halliburton's war profiteering in Iraq, to go fuck himself.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| June 3, 2004 | - The attorney general of New York sued GlaxoSmithKline for suppressing studies that showed that its antidepressant drug Paxil might cause adolescents to have suicidal thoughts.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 24, 2004 | - Scientists discovered prions in the muscle of a sheep infected with scrapie; experts were very quick to say that this does not necessarily pose any danger to humans who eat lamb, even though scrapie prions are believed to have caused mad cow disease. A prion expert at the National Institutes of Health predicted that "within the next year, somebody will make a big splash by finding it in the muscles of cattle and the beef industry will go crazy."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 11, 2004 | -
Citigroup agreed to pay $2.85 billion to people who invested in WorldCom.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 6, 2004 | - It was reported that CACI International, the company that employs one of the accused Abu Ghraib torturers, also sells the Bush Administration ethics training tapes.
| Source:
Intelwire
|
| May 5, 2004 | - The Walt Disney Company
refused to distribute a new Miramax documentary by Michael Moore called Fahrenheit 911, which is highly critical of President Bush.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 30, 2004 | - Some of the soldiers blamed mercenaries for the abuses;
| Source:
Guardian
|
| April 29, 2004 | -
President Bush declined to investigate China's unfair trade practices.
| Source:
Cleveland Plain Dealer
|
| April 23, 2004 | -
Diebold Election Systems was in trouble again for using insecure software in its voting machines in California.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| April 20, 2004 | - The CEO of McDonald's dropped dead of a heart attack.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| April 15, 2004 | -
Mattel and Tek Nek Toys International recalled thousands of Batman cars and trucks after dozens of children were hurt playing with them; one child died.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 14, 2004 | - The Department of Health and Human Services held a hearing on the recent decision by Abbott Laboratories to quintuple the price of its essential AIDS drug Norvir, which used to cost about $1,500 a year but now costs $7,800.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 5, 2004 | - The founder of Ikea, the Swedish furniture company, denied that he is now the world's richest man.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| April 3, 2004 | - The trial of L. Dennis Kozlowski and Mark H. Swartz, the former CEO and CFO of Tyco International, ended in a mistrial.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 31, 2004 | - Four American mercenaries employed by Blackwater Security Consulting were pulled from their vehicles in Fallujah, Iraq, hacked to death, burned, and dragged through the streets; the remains of two were then hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River along with a sign that said "Fallujah is the cemetery for Americans."
| Source:
BBC
|
| March 31, 2004 | - Attacks on occupation forces were averaging about 26 per day, and Bell Pottinger, the British PR firm, was hired to teach Iraqis about democracy.
| Source:
International Herald Tribune
|
| March 26, 2004 | - It was found that health-care
lobbyists spent $237 million lobbying Congress in 2000, more than every other industry combined; drug companies spent $96 million, quite a bit more than other medical sectors.
| Source:
Case Western Reserve University
|
| March 24, 2004 | - The European Union fined Microsoft $613 million for abusing its "near monopoly" on personal computers.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| March 20, 2004 | -
Virgin Atlantic Airways decided not to install urinals shaped like a woman's open lips at a first-class lounge at New York's JFK Airport.
| Source:
ABC.com.au
|
| March 18, 2004 | - The U.S. Army and DuPont were hoping to dispose of 1,200 tons of VX nerve gas by mixing it with sodium hydroxide and hot water and then dumping it into the Delaware River.
| Source:
Philadelphia Inquirer
|
| March 12, 2004 | - Criminal investigations of Halliburton for its war profiteering in Iraq were ongoing; the company has acknowledged that mistakes were made.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| March 11, 2004 | - The House of Representatives passed the so-called cheeseburger bill, which if made law would grant immunity from lawsuits to restaurants, especially fast-food chains, that serve unhealthy food.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 9, 2004 | -
UCLA apologized for selling off body parts of people who donated their bodies to science.
| Source:
MSNBC
|
| March 9, 2004 | - The British Nutrition Foundation reported that McDonald's new Caesar salad with Chicken Premiere contains 18.4 grams of fat, whereas a cheeseburger contains only 11.5 grams.
| Source:
CNN
|
| March 7, 2004 | - The Union of Concerned Scientists reported that more than two thirds of conventional crops have been polluted with genetically modified material. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Biotechnology Industry Association said the report was unsurprising.
| Source:
Independent
|
| March 6, 2004 | -
Martha Stewart revealed that she was "distressed" to have been convicted for lying about an improper stock trade that saved her about $45,000. Stewart's television show was withdrawn by WCBS, and there was speculation that her company might not be able to survive its association with a convicted felon.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 3, 2004 | - Swiss Re, the world's second largest reinsurance company, warned that the costs of climate change could be $150 billion a year before long, with insurers facing $30-40 billion in annual claims. "There is a danger," the company said in a report, "that human intervention will accelerate and intensify natural climate changes to such a point that it will become impossible to adapt our socio-economic system in time."
| Source:
Reuters
|
| March 3, 2004 | -
McDonald's began phasing out its popular "Supersize" order of french fries.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| March 3, 2004 | - Bernard Ebbers, the former CEO of WorldCom, pleaded not guilty to carrying out the largest accounting fraud in American history.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 28, 2004 | -
Pfizer Global Pharmaceuticals announced that Viagra doesn't work on women.
| Source:
BBC
|
| February 26, 2004 | - The Senate was considering a bill to give gunmakers immunity from prosecution.
| Source:
San Francisco Chronicle
|
| February 26, 2004 | - The chairman of the board of Smith & Wesson resigned after it was discovered that he is a convicted bank robber.
| Source:
Arizona Republic
|
| February 20, 2004 | - Jeffrey K. Skilling, the former CEO of Enron, was indicted for fraud.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 16, 2004 | - Police chiefs from around the country were trying to defeat a Senate bill that would give gunmakers and dealers immunity from lawsuits.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 11, 2004 | - In Finland, a sausage heir was fined $216,000 for speeding.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| January 29, 2004 | - A federal judge tried for the third time to impose punitive damages on the Exxon Mobil Corporation for the Exxon Valdez oil spill fifteen years ago; Exxon Mobil said it would appeal the $4.5 billion judgment.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 28, 2004 | - Amazon.com posted its first annual profit.
| Source:
Wired News
|
| January 22, 2004 | - The worker at Vern's Moses Lake Meats who killed the Washington State mad cow insisted that the cow was not a downer. "I can't stand a government cover-up," said Dave Louthan. "Since we only had a few walkers on this trailer full of downers, we just killed her along with them. We took a brain sample from her head because the USDA gives up $10 per sample. If we would have unloaded her in the pens, we would have never caught the BSE. How many other walkers have BSE? We will never know."
| Source:
Columbia Basin Herald
|
| January 19, 2004 | -
Spanish bordello owners were protesting a court ruling that the owner of an "alternative club" in Seville must pay social-security tax on the prostitutes who work there. The owners, who claim that the women are technically freelance marketing consultants, said that paying such taxes would turn them into pimps.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 11, 2004 | -
Lockheed Martin and Boeing were said to be enthusiastic about the President's
Mars
plan.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 7, 2004 | - The International Monetary Fund published a report warning that the United States' budget and trade deficits threaten to destabilize the entire global economy; Bush Administration officials dismissed the report and said that lots of countries run huge budget deficits.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 7, 2004 | - The head of the Army Corps of Engineers waived federal contracting requirements for Halliburton's operations in Iraq that would have required the company to submit cost and pricing information on its gasoline imports even though Halliburton was recently accused of overcharging the government $61 million for gasoline.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 3, 2004 | - State officials in California said they were unable to reveal the ultimate destinations of a large quantity of tainted soup bones, tenderloins, and other cuts of meat included in the voluntary mad-cow recall, because doing so would violate the beef industry's proprietary interests. Consumers were told simply to ask their grocers if their meat was infected. "I do think that the USDA has erred in its judgment," said a health officer in Alameda County. "It has sacrificed the public's health in favor of the beef industry."
| Source:
San Francisco Chronicle
|
| January 2, 2004 | - A French magistrate was thinking about indicting the vice president in a bribery case involving a gas liquefication factory built by Halliburton in Nigeria.
| Source:
Nation
|
| December 31, 2003 | - In response to the mad-cow crisis, the United States Department of Agriculture banned the human consumption of cow brains, skulls, spinal cords, vertebral columns, eyes, and nerve tissue from cows older than 30 months. Downer cows may no longer be eaten by humans, though they will be boiled down and fed to chickens and pigs, and younger cow brains may still be eaten.
| Source:
Forbes, New York Times
|
| December 31, 2003 | - The American Meat Institute
criticized the new rules.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 28, 2003 | - Parmalat, the Italian dairy company, went bankrupt and its founder, Calisto Tanzi, was arrested on suspicion of fraud.
| Source:
Telegraph
|
| December 24, 2003 | -
Mad cow disease was discovered in the United States for the first time, in a Holstein cow that was too sick to walk but was nonetheless slaughtered and sold for meat. The mad Holstein's brain and spinal column were sent to a rendering plant somewhere, possibly to be turned into dog or chicken food; there was no word on whether the cow's blood was processed to be fed to young calves as a milk supplement. Secretary of Agriculture Ann Venemen, a former lobbyist for the beef industry, insisted that even meat from a mad cow is safe to eat, and she promised to feed beef to her family for Christmas.
| Source:
Guardian, New York Times
|
| December 16, 2003 | - The Bush Administration announced that it plans to let companies buy and sell the right to release mercury
pollution into the environment, a policy considered and rejected by the EPA in 2000 as inconsistent with the Clean Air Act.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 16, 2003 | - An American gun
manufacturer was promoting a new pistol that can shoot around corners.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| December 15, 2003 | - Several officials in Las Vegas were in trouble for accepting bribes from a strip-club operator. "There's a tendency on the part of people to think politicians are inherently corrupt," said the mayor. "That's unfair, but it's a fact."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 10, 2003 | -
David Lynch let it be known that he is helping the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi raise $1 billion to build 100 "peace palaces" around the world. "When you do [transcendental meditation]," Lynch declared, "this level of unity can be enlivening the world consciousness and it can go into the atmosphere."
| Source:
Guardian
|
| December 8, 2003 | -
GlaxoSmithKline's head of genetics admitted that "the vast majority of drugs — more than 90 percent — only work in 30 or 50 percent of the people."
| Source:
Independent
|
| December 8, 2003 | - President George W. Bush signed a $400 billion Medicare bill that will provide a prescription-drug benefit to elderly Americans; the bill permits private insurance companies to compete with Medicare, which many think will destroy the program, but bans policies that would cover gaps in the drug benefit on the theory that people with good prescription coverage take too many pills and drive up medical costs.
| Source:
Associated Press, New York Times
|
| December 8, 2003 | - Fourteen people were arrested in Brazil and South Africa for selling human organs on the black market.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 5, 2003 | -
President Bush explained in a written statement that he repealed his tariffs on foreign steel, which were ruled illegal by the World Trade Organization, not because Europe and Japan planned to retaliate with damaging tariffs (carefully aimed at states Bush needs to capture in the upcoming election) but because the economic outlook for the steel industry has improved and they are no longer necessary.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 3, 2003 | - Thomas Scully, the federal official who runs Medicare, was preparing to take a job in the private sector, probably with a company that will directly benefit from the new bill, which he helped draft.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 1, 2003 | - Administration officials let it be known that President Bush has decided to back down and repeal his illegal tariffs on foreign steel in order to avoid a trade war with Europe and Japan.
| Source:
Washington Times
|
| December 1, 2003 | - Boeing forced its chairman and CEO, Phil Condit, to resign just one week after his chief financial officer was fired for unethical conduct in the hiring of the Air Force's head of procurement.
| Source:
Guardian
|
| November 29, 2003 | -
Congress approved a major Medicare bill that permits the elderly to buy prescription drug coverage; few citizens were able to understand the plan, though the health-care industry appeared to be well pleased by it. The legislation was endorsed by AARP, which nowadays makes a great deal of money selling health-care products to its members, and consumer advocates denounced it as "a classic election-year giveaway." Some experts predicted a revolt among the elderly once the plan takes effect in 2006 and the true costs of reform become clear.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 24, 2003 | - American security consultants were using Iraqi guerrillas to test nonstandard "limited-penetration" ammunition that punctures steel but shatters when it hits "soft targets" and creates untreatable wounds.
| Source:
Army Times
|
| November 18, 2003 | - Conrad Black, the right-wing Canadian press mogul and British lord, was caught receiving large "unauthorized payments" from his company and announced that he was resigning as CEO and that he will sell his company, Hollinger International, which owns the Chicago Sun-Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Jerusalem Post, and other media properties.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 18, 2003 | - The big mutual-fund scandal continued to unfold.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 9, 2003 | - The state attorneys general of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, which are downwind from many of the plants, promised to sue the polluters directly.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 7, 2003 | - A racing
camel
sold for $286,000 in Oman.
| Source:
Agence France-Presse
|
| November 6, 2003 | -
Yukos Oil, the Russian company whose chairman, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was arrested last month, was being investigated for allegedly mistreating pigs and permitting rabbit "couplings [to] take place unsystematically."
| Source:
Reuters
|
| November 6, 2003 | -
Federal Express workers in St. Louis discovered human body parts in a leaky package.
| Source:
St. Louis Today
|
| November 1, 2003 | - Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, who is considered pro-business, said he was "deeply concerned" about the case, but experts agreed that most Russians hate the rich.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 31, 2003 | - A new study from the Center for Public Integrity revealed that the 70 companies that have benefited the most from $8 billion in government contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan collectively contributed more than $500,000 to President Bush's 2000 presidential campaign.
| Source:
Boston Globe, New York Times
|
| October 31, 2003 | - The Food and Drug Administration issued a preliminary conclusion that clones are safe to eat; it was noted that some companies plan to use clones' milk to manufacture pharmaceuticals.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 30, 2003 | - Members of the House Ways and Means Committee decided to give tax relief to manufacturers of bows and arrows; makers of fishing tackle boxes were also expected to see relief, as were liquor and wine distributors and movie studios.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 28, 2003 | -
Russian financial markets dropped after police arrested the country's richest man, Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, the CEO of Yukos Oil, on charges of fraud and tax evasion.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 28, 2003 | - An alligator got loose in the cargo hold of an American Airlines jet in Newark, New Jersey.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| October 27, 2003 | - Brewers in Colorado were offering a pint of beer in exchange for a pint of blood.
| Source:
Ananova
|
| October 21, 2003 | - The United States was granted broad exemptions for the use of methyl bromide, a pesticide that damages the ozone layer; the chemical was supposed to be banned under the Montreal Protocol, which the U.S. signed. Strawberry and tomato farmers, as well as the owners of golf courses, will benefit.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 21, 2003 | -
Sales of industrial robots were up 26 percent.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| October 16, 2003 | -
Commerce Secretary Donald Evans introduced the new Iraqi dinar, printed in Britain minus the face of Saddam Hussein, in a live broadcast from the Baghdad International Airport, and encouraged investors to come to Iraq. "You have to look beyond these isolated incidents that are occurring," he said.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 13, 2003 | - The United States and Vietnam agreed to open direct commercial flights between the countries for the first time since the Vietnam War.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 30, 2003 | - It was noticed that Joe M. Allbaugh, President Bush's former campaign manager and until recently the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has set up a consulting firm to help clients exploit the occupation of Iraq. According to the company's website, "New Bridge Strategies, LLC is a unique company that was created specifically with the aim of assisting clients to evaluate and take advantage of business opportunities in the Middle East following the conclusion of the U.S.-led war in Iraq." The company describes the "opportunities" in Iraq as "unprecedented" in nature and in scope.
| Source:
New Bridge Strategies
|
| September 29, 2003 | - It was reported that U.S. casket companies have started building extra-large coffins. "The economic opportunity exists until the country changes," said one coffin maker. "We're just reacting to the supersizing of America."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 26, 2003 | - The Industrial Christian Fellowship, a Christian think tank, said that financial workers don't get enough prayer support and called on believers to pray for bankers and stockbrokers.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| September 24, 2003 | - The Computer and Communications Industry Association released a report warning that the government's growing reliance on Microsoft operating systems and software was exposing federal computer networks to "massive, cascading failures." The author of the report was fired the next day by his employer, a consulting firm that does business with Microsoft.
| Source:
CCIA, Associated Press
|
| September 24, 2003 | -
Red Lobster fired its chief executive after an all-you-can-eat crab promotion went horribly wrong.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| September 23, 2003 | -
President Bush addressed the United Nations General Assembly and devoted a surprising portion of his speech to the global sex trade, which he unambiguously condemned.
| Source:
CNN
|
| September 23, 2003 | - The International Monetary Fund called for the destruction of Afghanistan's poppy fields, which supply a $2.5 billion opium export industry. The fund said that opium accounts for up to 50 percent of the Afghan economy.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| September 22, 2003 | -
Iraq's governing council announced that it was opening the entire Iraqi economy, including essential services such as electricity, telecommunications, and health, to foreign investors. Taxes and trade tariffs will be cut, though oil and other natural resources will be exempt from the new policy.
| Source:
Independent
|
| September 22, 2003 | - Richard Grasso, the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, resigned because of a scandal over his compensation, which at $139.5 million was thought by some people to be excessive.
| |
| September 18, 2003 | - Merrill Lynch avoided criminal charges in the Enron affair by agreeing to let the government monitor some parts of its affairs for the next 18 months; the firm promised not to engage in any more shady business deals.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 18, 2003 | - AOL Time Warner dropped "AOL" from its corporate name.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| September 17, 2003 | - The Senate passed a resolution of disapproval condemning the Federal Communication Commission's new rules giving more freedom to media monopolies.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 16, 2003 | -
Bosnia began accepting bids for 105 tanks, 20,000 machine guns, 13,000 submachine guns, 21 missiles, and 13 million pieces of artillery and ammunition that were left over from its civil war.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| September 15, 2003 | - The World Trade Organization met in Cancun, Mexico, and much of the discussion concerned a demand by several poor countries that wealthy countries eliminate agricultural subsidies for their farmers.The talks collapsed after the United States and Europe declined to do so and delegates from several African, Caribbean, and Asian countries walked out.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 11, 2003 | - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that a new Security Council resolution would be helpful, because it would allow other countries to pretend that the Iraqi occupation was a multinational operation, which would justify sending more money.
Rumsfeld said that tourism will soon be a major industry in Iraq.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 8, 2003 | - and surface-to-air missiles were fired at a transport plane in Baghdad.
Donald Rumsfeld, who was nearby, said that such attacks are just a cost of doing business.
Rumsfeld claimed that there has been "breathtaking" progress in Afghanistan since the war ended.
"I'm not being Pollyannaish," he said.
"I'm telling the truth."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 4, 2003 | - A federal appeals court blocked the FCC's new rules expanding the freedom of media monopolies.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 3, 2003 | - Jessica Lynch, the former Army private who was captured by Iraqis and became the subject of an elaborate heroic fiction, signed a book deal and reportedly received a $1 million advance.
Lynch will share the advance with her co-author Rick Bragg, a former New York Times reporter.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 2, 2003 | - The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission announced a settlement with energy companies that benefited from market manipulation in the California
energy crisis two years ago.
The companies agreed to pay about $1 million in fines, or about 3 cents for every Californian, though the energy scam cost the state $8.9 billion, or $250 per citizen.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 30, 2003 | - A women's soccer team in Germany agreed to wear jerseys advertising a brothel.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| August 20, 2003 | - Mary Carey, the porn actress who is running for governor in California, offered to go on a date with anyone who contributes $5,000 to her campaign.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| August 15, 2003 | - Opium production was up in Afghanistan; Donald Rumsfeld described the situation as "one whale of a tough problem."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 12, 2003 | -
Penthouse magazine's parent company filed for bankruptcy protection.
| Source:
Bloomberg
|
| August 6, 2003 | - A mob attacked a brothel in Basra and smashed cases of beer in the street.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 1, 2003 | - The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) quickly scuttled an idea to create a futures-trading market for terrorist attacks, after the plan was revealed by opponents in Congress. DARPA head John M. Poindexter announced his resignation, telling a friend that he planned to spend more time sailing.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 1, 2003 | - A Russian man said he had Hitler's penis, and offered to sell it for $20,000.
| Source:
Ananova
|
| July 30, 2003 | - New evidence suggested that men who wear tight neckties are at greater risk of eye disease and blindness.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| July 30, 2003 | - A Senate Finance Committee report revealed that the IRS had asked the SEC to investigate Enron in 1999, after it uncovered evidence that the company had bribed
Guatemalan officials.
| Source:
Houston Chronicle
|
| July 23, 2003 | - Northern Europeans were protesting Greek plans to license more brothels in time for the 2004 Olympics.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| July 21, 2003 | - Mortuary workers in Zimbabwe were renting cadavers to motorists who wished to take advantage of the priority given to hearses in gas-station lines.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| July 17, 2003 | - Defense contractor Lockheed Martin filed suit against antiwar demonstrators for $41,000 in security costs the company incurred preparing for a protest.
| Source:
Veteransforcommonsense.org
|
| July 16, 2003 | - It was noted that the current job-market contraction is the worst since the Great Depression and that Bush could well become the first president since Hoover to leave office with fewer people working than when he took office.
| Source:
Undernews
|
| July 15, 2003 | - A man in Hong Kong set fire to his life savings to protest his bank's low interest rates.
| Source:
Ananova
|
| July 15, 2003 | - The Department of Homeland Security announced that Microsoft was chosen as its exclusive supplier of desktop and server software.
| Source:
GovExec.com
|
| July 15, 2003 | - American teenagers were having a hard time finding summer jobs.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 12, 2003 | -
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder cancelled his Italian vacation in retaliation for insulting remarks about German tourists made by Italy's tourism minister; regional officials asked the Italian government to declare a "state of calamity" to compensate for the anticipated loss of German tourist business.
| Source:
New York Times, BBC
|
| July 11, 2003 | - The Food and Drug Administration was planning to make it easier for companies to make misleading health claims about their food products. "Many Americans are not getting clear information on how the foods they choose affect their health," said the FDA's commissioner about the initiative. "We need to do a better job on this urgent public-health problem."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 10, 2003 | - Customs agents in Hong Kong seized 10,000 endangered turtles on their way from Malaysia to China, probably to be eaten.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| July 8, 2003 | - Americans were spritzing their offspring with "ChildCalm," a spray that purports to mollify unruly children.
| Source:
Charlotte Observer
|
| July 7, 2003 | -
Kraft Foods, apparently worried about tobacco-style lawsuits from obese people, announced that it was committed to producing healthier foods.
| Source:
Daily Telegraph
|
| July 4, 2003 | - The United States announced a $25 million bounty for Saddam Hussein and $15 million for each of his sons.
| Source:
News-Leader.com
|
| July 4, 2003 | -
Tanzania was cracking down on the human skin trade.
| Source:
BBC
|
| July 4, 2003 | - Dell Computer announced that it will no longer use prison labor.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 4, 2003 | - Coca-Cola's bottler in Colombia was sued for financing right-wing death squads.
| Source:
News.com.au
|
| July 3, 2003 | -
Poland's foreign minister admitted that his country sent troops to Iraq because it wanted to obtain direct access to Iraqi oil supplies.
| Source:
BBC
|
| July 2, 2003 | - The United States suspended military aid to almost 50 countries, including Colombia, that have failed to promise they will not send American war criminals to the International Criminal Court.
| Source:
Daily Telegraph
|
| June 28, 2003 | - Nevada was planning to levy a "live entertainment" tax on whorehouses.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 27, 2003 | - "[The overturning of a Texas law against sodomy] opens the door to bigamy, adult incest, polygamy, and prostitution," said the head of the Family
Research Council.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 26, 2003 | - The Internal Revenue Service reported that the nation's wealthiest 400 taxpayers earned an average $174 million in 2000 (totaling 1.1 percent of all reported income); in 1992 that group averaged $46.8 million (0.5 percent of all reported income).
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 24, 2003 | - The Environmental Protection Agency issued its first comprehensive report on the American environment but failed to give much attention to global warming; it was reported last week that White House officials edited the passages that had originally focused on the subject.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 16, 2003 | - CBS News sent an interview request to Pfc. Jessica Lynch, the American P.O.W. whose dramatic rescue in Iraq turned out to be largely simulated, that included "ideas" from CBS Entertainment, MTV, and Simon & Schuster; some news critics found the combination of news and entertainment offers "troubling."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 15, 2003 | - A genetically modified
fish that glows in the dark went on sale in Taiwan.
| Source:
Observer
|
| June 13, 2003 | - A Coca-Cola employee was reportedly fired for drinking Pepsi on the job.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| June 13, 2003 | -
ConAgra Foods Poultry recalled 129,000 pounds of chicken because it contains glass.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| June 13, 2003 | - Monkeypox victims were being quarantined and pet prairie dogs were banned, as was the importation of African rodents.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| June 7, 2003 | - The unemployment rate rose to 6.1 percent.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 4, 2003 | -
Tom DeLay, the House Majority Leader, killed a Democratic attempt to extend a new tax credit to 6.5 million low-income families who were left out of President Bush's latest tax cut.
"There are a lot of things that are more important than that," DeLay said.
"To me, it's a little difficult to give tax relief to people that don't pay income tax."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 3, 2003 | - A brothel in Nevada was offering free sex to American soldiers.
| Source:
CNN
|
| May 29, 2003 | - President Bush signed a bill permitting a record-breaking $984 billion increase in the amount the government is allowed to borrow, raising the limit to an historic $7.4 trillion; the next day Bush signed his new tax cut, which could save Dick Cheney
$100,000 a year.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 28, 2003 | -
President Bush told the new owner of the Anaheim Angels that "it's pretty quick how things happen in America.
You buy the team, now you're at the White House."
| Source:
Los Angeles Times
|
| January 14, 2003 | -
President Bush revealed his new economic plan, the centerpiece of which is the repeal of most taxes on corporate dividends.
| |
| October 8, 2002 | - The Department of Labor reported that payrolls shrank last month, and the stock market closed at 1997 levels.
| |
| June 4, 2002 | -
Punch, the English satirical magazine, published its last issue after 161 years. “The market for sophisticated political satire,” said a representative of the publisher, Mohammed al-Fayed, whose son Dodi died in a car crash with Princess Diana, “has diminished.”
| |
| December 25, 2001 | - Passengers subdued a large man who bit an American Airlines stewardess on a flight from Paris to Miami when she tried to stop him from igniting his shoe, which contained a makeshift bomb made from C-4 plastic explosive.
| |
| December 18, 2001 | -
Cracker Barrel, the restaurant chain, was sued for discriminating against blacks.
| |
| December 11, 2001 | -
Moscow
police
arrested seven men trying to sell more than two pounds of weapons-grade enriched uranium.
| |
| December 4, 2001 | - Lipstick sales were up.
| |
| November 27, 2001 | -
Al Gore decided to become vice chairman of an obscure financial services company in Los Angeles after he failed to persuade anyone on Wall Street to hire him.
| |
| November 20, 2001 | - A grave digger in Nigeria was arrested trying to sell two fresh human heads, which he was carrying in a bag; many Nigerians believe that human genitals, tongues, eyes, and skulls are good for casting spells.
| |
| November 13, 2001 | -
Prostitutes in China were giving student discounts.
| |
| November 6, 2001 | - Official sources revealed that the CIA's
New York
counterterrorism office was destroyed in the attack on the World Trade Center.
| |
| November 6, 2001 | - In October, 415,000 Americans lost their jobs, one quarter of which were attributed to the September 11
attacks.
| |
| October 30, 2001 | -
New York was beginning to have trouble with rats in the ruins of the World Trade Center.
| |
| October 30, 2001 | - The House of Representatives decided to repeal the corporate alternative minimum tax in a putative economic stimulus package.
If signed into law, the repeal, which is retroactive to 1986, will this year result in $25.4 billion in tax refunds to corporations; seven large companies, including I.B.M. ($1.4 billion) and General Motors ($832 million), would receive $3.3 billion. Enron, the Houston energy company and a major Bush supporter, would get $254 million. Economists pointed out that such refunds do nothing to stimulate the economy.
| |
| October 30, 2001 | -
Sales of puppies were up 30 percent.
| |
| October 23, 2001 | - Three new studies found that the chicken, beef, turkey, and pork sold in American supermarkets commonly contain antibiotic-resistant strains of dangerous bacteria.
| |
| October 23, 2001 | -
Germany gave its 400,000 prostitutes working rights, including the right to unemployment benefits, job training, health insurance, and a pension.
| |
| October 9, 2001 | - A dozen Burger King employees were treated for first- and second-degree burns after they walked barefoot over white-hot coals at a “corporate bonding” retreat in Florida.
| |
| October 9, 2001 | -
Prostitutes in Amsterdam were organizing a trade union.
| |
| October 2, 2001 | - Drug smuggling was down, as was the stock market.
| |
| October 2, 2001 | -
Financial regulators said there was no evidence that terrorists had tried to profit from the September 11 attack by betting against airline and insurance stocks.
| |
| October 2, 2001 | -
American Airlines, which will receive about $808 million in bailout money from the federal government, announced that it will invoke an emergency clause in its contracts to avoid paying severance to the 200,000 workers it plans to lay off.
| |
| September 25, 2001 | -
Congress approved a $15 billion bailout for the airline industry, which has already eliminated over 100,000 jobs.
| |
| September 25, 2001 | - After four concerts of his music were cancelled, Karlheinz Stockhausen, the German avant-garde composer, apologized for describing the attack on the World Trade Center as “the greatest work of art one can imagine . . . the greatest work of art there is in the entire cosmos.”
| |
| September 25, 2001 | - Video-game makers delayed introducing several new titles; WTC Defender, a video game in which players try to shoot down airplanes before they destroy the World Trade Center, was removed from the Internet.
| |
| September 11, 2001 | -
Terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center in New York City and damaged the Pentagon using hijacked commercial airliners.
| |
| September 11, 2001 | - Entrepreneurs tried to sell water to rescue workers, and confidence men worked the crowds, called up the elderly, seeking donations.
| |
| September 11, 2001 | - Prozac's share of the antidepressant market had dropped by two thirds in the three weeks since its patent expired and generic versions appeared.
| |
| September 11, 2001 | - After much hullabaloo, the delegates who remained at the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance agreed to condemn the old European slave trade and to express concern about the “plight of the Palestinians under foreign occupation.” After two days of throwing stones at Catholic schoolgirls who were on their way to school, Protestants in Belfast decided to throw a pipe bomb.
| |
| September 4, 2001 | -
The stock market went down.
| |
| August 14, 2001 | - A German businessman was planning to sell toilet paper in Britain printed with images of the Queen and Margaret Thatcher.
| |
| August 14, 2001 | - Former president Bill Clinton
sold his book to Alfred A. Knopf for over $10 million.
| |
| August 14, 2001 | -
Wal-Mart's
sales were up 6 percent.
| |
| August 7, 2001 | - The United States House of Representatives voted to ban human cloning for both reproduction and medical research; the measure also prohibits the sale of treatments derived from such procedures.
| |
| August 7, 2001 | -
Texas began deregulating its market in electricity; prices immediately shot from $45 per megawatt hour to $1,000.
| |
| August 7, 2001 | - A couple in New York was trying to sell naming rights to their newborn baby boy to a corporation for $500,000.
| |
| July 31, 2001 | - Norwegians were preparing to sell millions of tons of edible whale blubber to Japan.
| |
| July 24, 2001 | -
Trade
unions and human-rights groups filed suit against Coca-Cola for allegedly hiring right-wing death squads to terrorize workers at bottling plants in Colombia.
| |
| July 24, 2001 | - Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil proposed reviewing whether the corporate income tax is really necessary.
| |
| July 17, 2001 | - The United States was opposing a treaty meant to cut down on the illegal trade in small arms, saying it might infringe on Americans' right to possess guns.
| |
| July 3, 2001 | -
Police in Aachen, Germany, were called in to quell a domestic dispute that arose after a man visited a brothel and discovered his wife working there.
| |
| June 19, 2001 | - Procter & Gamble largely eliminated its line of foods containing Olestra, a fat substitute that failed to catch on with consumers, perhaps because of widespread concerns about “anal oil leakage.” Karl Rove, President Bush's chief adviser, was in trouble because he owned $100,000 worth of Intel stock when he met with the company's CEO, who was in town lobbying for approval of a corporate merger, which followed with celerity.
| |
| May 22, 2001 | - London's FTSE 100 index fell sharply after a Lehman Brothers trader made a typo that resulted in a sale 100 times larger than intended.
| |
| May 15, 2001 | -
President George W. Bush said that free trade was “a moral imperative.” A psychiatrist at Columbia University announced a new study and claimed that “highly motivated” homosexuals can go straight.
| |
| May 8, 2001 | - An Albanian woman, formerly penniless, sold her newborn two-headed calf to an anonymous American group for $25,000.
| |
| May 1, 2001 | -
New York's supreme court ruled that gun makers could not be held responsible for shootings with guns that were bought and sold illegally; a Brooklyn jury had previously awarded $522,000 to a teenager, who was shot in the head, on the theory that the manufacturer was guilty of “negligent marketing.”
| |
| April 24, 2001 | - The pharmaceutical industry dropped its suit against the South African government over a law that will permit the importation of inexpensive anti-AIDS
drugs; the drug companies agreed to pay the government's legal costs and admitted that the law in question does in fact abide by international trade agreements.
| |
| April 24, 2001 | - Twenty thousand hippies stormed the site of the Summit of the Americas in Quebec, throwing rocks and bottles and tearing down a chainlink fence as they protested plans for a hemispheric free trade area.
| |
| April 24, 2001 | - Apparently worried that his own stock was falling faster than the Dow, Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan again cut interest rates and was duly rewarded with a market surge.
| |
| April 10, 2001 | -
Italian
police
arrested two men for stealing the body of a dead investment banker to protest the recent drop in the stock market; the body was found under a pile of hay near Turin.
| |
| April 10, 2001 | -
New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani announced his new decency panel, which will police the city's museums for smutty art; the panel includes Leonard Garment, the lawyer for pardoned fugitive Marc Rich, and John Howard Sanden, an artist who makes portraits of corporate chief executives.
| |
| March 27, 2001 | -
Moscow warned the United States about its new Cold War rhetoric; the Russians were upset over remarks by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who said that “Russia is an active proliferator” of dangerous weapons
technology which “seems to be willing to sell anything to anyone for money.” The United States expelled 50 Russian diplomats, four of whom were thought to have been working with Robert Philip Hanssen, the FBI agent recently arrested for spying; Russia in turn said it would expel the 50 diplomats most precious to America.
| |
| March 20, 2001 | -
Russia said it would again sell arms to Iran, causing some Russians to wonder whether the weapons would end up in the hands of Islamic
terrorists within their own borders.
| |
| February 27, 2001 | - Federal authorities in New York were investigating whether the pardon of four Hasidic Jews convicted of fraud was granted in exchange for votes.
| |
| February 13, 2001 | - A drug used to cure sleeping sickness—which infects about 300,000 Africans a year, makes them go crazy, and kills them—was back in production after its former manufacturer discovered that it removes facial hair on women, thus ensuring a lucrative Western market for the drug; Doctors Without Borders had been down to its last 1,000 doses.
| |
| February 6, 2001 | - A Mormon in Utah was renting Hollywood movies he had personally edited to exclude nudity, violence, and bad words; Jack Valenti promised to put a stop to it.
| |
| January 30, 2001 | - The new government symbolized by George W. Bush continued to insist that it would deploy a national missile defense system despite the fact that the program, developed with equal parts fraud and wishful thinking, would upset the balance of terror with Russia—not to mention the world-historical irony that it might easily drive China to sell missile technology to the very “rogue” nations the program seeks to neutralize.
| |
| January 30, 2001 | - A grill cook at a Whataburger restaurant in Dallas, Texas, was arrested for lacing a taquito sold to a police officer with marijuana.
| |
| January 30, 2001 | - The United Nations said the world needed to create 500 million new jobs over the next ten years.
| |
| January 23, 2001 | - Mount Fuji was rumbling; Japanese officials were reluctant to draw up an evacuation map of the area for fear of hurting the tourist
trade.
| |
| January 16, 2001 | - U.S. officials approved the merger of Time Warner and America Online.
| |
| January 2, 2001 | - The League of Women Voters said that it was closing its New York office because of financial difficulties.
| |
| December 26, 2000 | - A Hewlett-Packard employee who jumped out of a corporate plane at two thousand feet, landing in a vegetable garden, committed suicide, a coroner decided.
| |
| December 19, 2000 | -
Switzerland banned the sale of beef on the bone because of mad-cow concerns.
| |
| December 19, 2000 | - Terry Walker, a Michigan cook, was being held because he sold a gun several years ago that recently was used to kill a policeman; Walker failed to file a form with the government when he sold the gun and on that basis was charged with manslaughter.
| |
| November 21, 2000 | -
Italy banned the importation of French beef.
| |
| November 21, 2000 | -
Sales of beef in France dropped, even at McDonalds, even though France has rigid controls on the provenance of its homegrown beef cattle (each cow is given a “passport” at birth documenting its parentage and place of origin, which must be submitted to the slaughterhouse).
| |
| November 14, 2000 | - The European Commission filed suit in Brooklyn against the Philip Morris Company and the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company for allegedly engaging in money laundering, wire fraud, and other illegal activities connected with “a massive ongoing smuggling scheme.”
| |
| November 7, 2000 | - Questions emerged about the safety of Lotronex, a drug used to treat irritable bowel syndrome; in its first eight months on the market, five patients died, several had surgery on their bowels, one colon was removed entirely, and forty-nine people came down with ischemic colitis, which can kill.
| |
| November 7, 2000 | -
French
police arrested a father and son who knowingly sold mad-cow-infected beef for slaughter; over a ton of the beef was processed and sold. Much of it was eaten.
| |
| November 7, 2000 | - Vladimir Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky, two Russian oligarchs, were called to appear before the deputy prosecutor general of Russia for unrelated investigations into financial crimes.
| |
| October 31, 2000 | - Gun sales in Israel were on the rise.
| |
| October 31, 2000 | - The United States Congress increased military aid to Israel by $60 million, bringing the total up to $1.9 billion; Israel put a rush on its order for a new German submarine; according to some reports, the submarine will be equipped with nuclear weapons.
| |
| October 31, 2000 | -
Republican partisans were running a knock-off of the famous “Daisy” commercial used by LBJ against Barry Goldwater in 1964; the ad claimed that Clinton and Gore sold the nation's security to the Red Chinese.
| |
| October 31, 2000 | -
Russian hackers penetrated Microsoft's computer network using a well-known Trojan attack and for six weeks had access to the company's internal computer records, including the source code of some programs; the security breach was discovered only when system administrators noticed passwords being emailed to an address in St.
| |
| October 24, 2000 | -
Farmers who planted StarLink, a type of genetically modified corn
sold by Aventis CropScience, said they were not told the corn was unfit for human consumption; millions of bushels of the corn may have contaminated the nation's corn supply.
| |
| October 17, 2000 | - The National Grain and Feed Association demanded the names of some 2,000 farmers who have planted StarLink crops; the manufacturer, Aventis Crop Science, refused to provide the names.
| |
| October 17, 2000 | - Yakama Indians were trying to enforce a ban on the sale of alcohol; non-Indian owners of bars and grocery stores were refusing to comply; the occurrence of fetal alcohol syndrome among the Yakama is 500 percent higher than normal.
| |
| October 17, 2000 | -
The stock market went down, then it went up.
| |
| September 26, 2000 | -
Kraft Foods recalled taco shells that contain StarLink, a type of genetically modified corn that was approved for animal consumption but specifically disapproved for humans.
| |
| September 26, 2000 | - The U.S. Senate
voted to lift restrictions on trade with China.
| |
| September 19, 2000 | - The Bush campaign was preoccupied with a controversy over a negative ad that was said to contain subliminal messages; Governor Bush denied that the flashing word “rats” was “subliminable.” Lawsuits were filed against the makers of Ritalin; lawyers claimed that the company was conspiring to expand the market for the stimulant, which is used to treat hyperactivity in children, beyond its legitimate use.
| |
| September 19, 2000 | -
Christian Solidarity International, a Swiss aid group, bought 4,435 slaves in Sudan and set them free; so far the group has bought 38,000 slaves, causing some to wonder whether they were contributing to the market in human chattel.
| |
| September 12, 2000 | -
Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky claimed that the Kremlin told him to sell his stake in a major television station or risk going to jail.
| |
| September 5, 2000 | - Some 7,000 Chinese
bears were being farmed for bile on 247 licensed bear farms: farmers insert a tube into a live bear's gall bladder to extract the bile, which is sold as a traditional medicine.
| |
| September 5, 2000 | - A large group of religious leaders met and exchanged business cards at the United Nations; the Dalai Lama was excluded for fear of angering China.
| |
| August 29, 2000 | -
China was engaged in a $7 million American public relations campaign; the traveling exhibits and displays were partially paid for by corporations that do business in China.
| |
| August 29, 2000 | - A fake press release caused the stock of Emulex, a fiber optics company, to drop from $103 to $45 in fifteen minutes; the stock recovered once the fraud was discovered.
| |
| August 29, 2000 | - Mitsubishi Motors admitted to covering up defects in automobiles manufactured since 1977; the company has recalled over 600,000 vehicles.
| |
| August 22, 2000 | - Hasbro, Inc., the toy manufacturer, announced a recall of 420,000 Busy Poppin' Pals due to small springs that can break loose and choke young children.
| |
| August 22, 2000 | - The Congressional Research Service reported that the U.S. was still the world's largest arms dealer, having sold $11.8 billion in weapons in 1999.
| |
| August 22, 2000 | - Six people tried to sell their votes on Ebay.
| |
| August 22, 2000 | - After an outbreak of swine fever in Britain, the United States and other countries banned the importation of porcine semen and other pork products; a National Pig Association spokesman said that pig farmers were “at their wits' end.”
| |
| August 15, 2000 | -
Saddam Hussein's decision to send assassins disguised as belly dancers to kill Iraqi exiles in London was denounced by British belly dancers, who said it would undermine their business.
| |
| August 15, 2000 | - After an outbreak of hoof and mouth disease, America and Argentina called a halt to the beef trade.
| |
| April 0, 2000 | - The New York Times Company decided not to close the Boston Globe.
| Source:
New York Times
|
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