Foreign Products

A Senate plan that would allow Americans to bring in lower-cost prescription drugs from outside the United States got a significant endorsement Tuesday from a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner, Dr. David A. Kessler. Safeguards proposed in legislation by Sens. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) would protect consumers from substandard and counterfeit drugs, Kessler told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

Discount retailers won the legal right Monday to sell copyrighted U.S. goods in this country that they have bought for less in overseas markets. Reversing federal court decisions in California, the Supreme Court ruled that copyright owners do not have the "exclusive right" to control such marketing of their products. The decision affects products ranging from recordings and books to sunglasses and shampoo. It upholds a part of the estimated $130 billion a year "gray market" in U.S.

KCET Channel 28 will also show foreign films this summer. Its "Movie City Showcase" will feature films from five countries every Saturday evening. They will be presented uninterrupted and unedited. Here is the schedule: June 2: Vittorio De Sica's "Miracle in Milan." June 9: Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni in "A Special Day." June 16: Roberto Rossellini's "Open City"; De Sica's "Umberto D."

A World Trade Organization appeals board on Monday decided against Canada in a dispute with the United States, ruling that Canadian taxes on advertising in local editions of foreign magazines violate global trading rules. The appeals board ruling effectively upheld the earlier decision of a WTO panel, which had found that laws seeking to protect Canadian magazines against foreign competition--mostly from U.S. magazines--were not in the interests of free trade.

As a writer for prime-time hits such as "Moonlighting" and "Trapper John, M.D.," Carl Sautter is used to an audience of millions. But the series he's writing for now may never be seen in the United States--and he thinks that may spell good news for other writers. Set to begin production April 18 in Santa Fe, N.M., "Lucky Luke," a tongue-in-cheek look at the American West based on a popular French comic book, has been sold in France, Italy and Germany.

Twelve percent of U.S.-made condoms and 21% of foreign-made ones failed in recent testing, according to federal researchers. Prophylactics have been widely advocated as a means of slowing the spread of the AIDS virus. As of February, the Centers for Disease Control reported, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had tested samples from 430 batches of condoms--165 batches manufactured in America and 265 manufactured abroad.

Nearly 20 years of U.S.-Japan typewriter wars reached a head several weeks ago when America's biggest seller of consumer typewriters, Connecticut-based Smith Corona, announced that it was moving its last American factory to Mexico. Smith Corona complained that it was driven out of the United States by unfair competition from Japan-based Brother Industries, which had been found guilty by the U.S. government of dumping products at below "fair value."

For illustrating the opposing mentalities and styles of the doves and the hawks in the war on drugs, your juxtaposition of articles March 15 ("It's a Drive as Natural as Food or Sex" by Ronald Siegel and "Some Among Us Would Seek to Surrender" by Daryl Gates) is the best yet in your series. Siegel, a psychopharmacologist at the UCLA School of Medicine, after a professional lifetime studying drugs, has logically worked from facts to a sensible conclusion (" . . .

1990 will be the year of the mule--a new, slope-nosed generation of suburban minivans built to outhaul and finally outdate the American station wagon. 1990 could hear the last hurrah for 200-m.p.h. supercars, see a luxury car market choke on excess, watch Japan roar through a high-performance sports car field previously monopolized by Ferrari and Porsche. . .

How does a U.S. consumer make sure that a toy for Christmas, leather shoes for hiking or other imported goods are not made by children living in near bondage while they toil at a sweatshop overseas? A Labor Department report recommended on Thursday that U.S. importers and retailers consider developing and expanding voluntary programs for placing labels on imported goods guaranteeing they are not made by children. The report was endorsed by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who joined Rep.