Federal Trade Commission

2Amid the tumult of the delivery room, Rohit and Geeta Jain were calm about one thing: Their new baby was sure to be a boy. Six months earlier, the Jains had spent more than $300 for a test that screened a minute quantity of Geeta's blood for traces of male DNA. The testing company said it was 95% accurate in determining the sex of a baby, even as early as the eighth week of pregnancy. After six hours in the delivery room, Rohit gaped as his wife gave birth to a daughter.

Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Deborah Platt Majoras will resign in late March, the agency said Thursday, to handle antitrust issues for Procter & Gamble Co. Majoras will join the consumer products manufacturer as vice president and general counsel June 1, a company spokeswoman said. During her tenure at the FTC, the agency cleared P&G's $57-billion acquisition of rival consumer products company Gillette.

More than a year after millions of T.J. Maxx and Marshalls customers found out their credit card information had been hacked into, the discount stores' operator agreed to have its information audited but avoided paying federal fines. TJX Cos. was one of three firms that agreed to settle charges that each "failed to provide reasonable and appropriate security for sensitive consumer information," federal regulators said Thursday in two unrelated data-breach decisions.

It's hard to think of anything more heinous than bogus cancer cures. Yet there is no lack of Internet sites that promise to cure, for a price, any cancer with an elixir, concoction of herbs or systematized program of thinking good thoughts. Last week the Federal Trade Commission disclosed actions it had taken against several companies that promoted online cancer cures. The actions were the result of a project started last year to identify websites making unsubstantiated cure claims.

In a nationwide crackdown on credit repair companies, the Federal Trade Commission said Thursday that 30 firms were being targeted, including a Woodland Hills company that had its assets frozen. Success Credit Services was accused in an FTC civil suit of violating the Credit Repair Organizations Act by contending that it could quickly clean up credit reports by removing legitimate negative items, such as late payments, bankruptcies and tax liens.

The Federal Trade Commission on Thursday fined the marketers of four weight-loss pills $25 million for making false advertising claims including rapid weight loss and cancer prevention. FTC Chairwoman Deborah Platt Majoras said that the products would remain on store shelves, but that the companies would have to stop making the false claims. "What we challenge is the marketing of the claims," she said.

The Federal Trade Commission finalized its ruling that Rambus Inc. violated antitrust laws, imposing limits on the royalties the memory chip designer can charge. Wall Street was bracing for a potentially harsher order than the one that the FTC released Monday, and Rambus stock surged 24%.

A company that caused Internet pop-up ads to appear on consumers' computers has agreed to pay $1.5 million to settle charges brought by the Federal Trade Commission, the agency said Friday. The FTC charged that New York-based Direct Revenue and its four principals illegally downloaded advertising software, or adware, onto consumers' computers and made it difficult to locate and remove.

The Federal Trade Commission endorsed bipartisan legislation Friday that would let the agency impose civil fines on those using deceptive methods to obtain consumers' telephone records. The bill would also impose new restrictions on phone company use of customers' personal phone records. The measure is part of a broader crackdown after revelations last year that investigators hired by Hewlett-Packard Co.

A national animal rights group wants to put some fur-clothing makers and high-end retailers in the doghouse. The Humane Society of the United States plans to ask the Federal Trade Commission today to fine designers and retailers of apparel that contains mislabeled fur from dogs, wolves and raccoon dogs. The group also wants inventories seized and perhaps criminal charges filed.