Labels

Record labels including Vivendi's Universal Music Group were ordered by a judge to pay more than $100,000 in legal fees to an Oregon woman after they dropped their music-piracy lawsuit against her. A U.S. District judge in Portland approved the fee award totaling $107,834 to Tanya Andersen on Tuesday, three years after the disabled single mother was sued over alleged copyright infringement. Her lawsuit accusing the industry of racketeering and fraud is pending.

New cars for sale in California will soon come with a special feature: a window sticker showing how much they pollute. The new labels, displaying each model's smog and greenhouse gas emissions on a 1-to-10 scale, will be required beginning Jan. 1 under a California Air Resources Board regulation. The goal, officials say, is to help car shoppers identify low-polluting vehicles. "Consumer choice is an especially powerful tool in our fight against climate change," said Mary Nichols, chairwoman of the Air Resources Board.

Re "Whole Foods, gone bad," Opinion, Aug. 12 Matthew DeBord trivializes the reason people shop at Whole Foods Market: the desire to eat food that is good for them. Many Whole Foods Market customers believe that wellness through healthy eating is a fundamental part of living -- not an indulgence, as DeBord suggests. We are proud to have been the pioneer in making high-quality natural and organic food broadly available to consumers nationwide. What distinguishes Whole Foods Market are the number and variety of natural and organic products we offer consumers, at pricing that is very competitive.

Federal regulators are working on a stronger label for a widely used diabetes drug marketed by Amylin Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Eli Lilly & Co. after deaths were reported with the medication despite earlier government warnings. The Food and Drug Administration said it had received six new reports of patients developing a dangerous form of pancreatitis while taking Byetta. Two of the patients died.

The brewer who dared market "Legal Weed" has won. Vaune Dillmann took on federal regulators this year when they ordered his Mt. Shasta Brewing Co. in the Northern California town of Weed to stop topping beer bottles with caps bearing the play on words, "Try Legal Weed." Regulators cited federal law prohibiting drug references on alcoholic beverages.

The U.S. Supreme Court asked the Justice Department on Monday for advice on a bid by the nation's largest grocery chains to block customers from suing over violations of government food-labeling rules. Supermarkets led by Supervalu Inc., Safeway Inc. and Kroger Co. contend that only government regulators, and not customers, can enforce federal and state labeling laws. The companies are seeking to stop a suit accusing them of concealing that salmon they sold contained artificial coloring.

The top staff regulators who oversaw the approval of new drugs in this country objected to the Bush administration's drive to shield drug makers from being sued, according to internal documents released Wednesday by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Beverly Hills), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The regulators said the White House and top administration officials were operating under the "false assumption" that warning labels on new drugs were adequate and up-to-date.

Federal health regulators have scolded Coca-Cola Co. for placing inappropriate nutritional claims on its Diet Coke Plus soft drink. The Food and Drug Administration issued a warning to the company objecting to the product's labeling, which describes the drink as "Diet Coke with Vitamins and Minerals." According to the agency, foods labeled "plus" must have at least 10% more nutrients than comparable products. Calls to the Atlanta company were not immediately returned.

Eli Lilly & Co. said Thursday that it would settle about 18,000 additional lawsuits alleging the drug maker did not adequately warn patients that its antipsychotic medication Zyprexa heightens the risk of diabetes. Lilly did not disclose the amount of the settlement but said in a statement that it would take a fourth-quarter settlement charge that's not expected to exceed $500 million.

California is preparing to label new autos to show for the first time the vehicles' annual emissions of so-called greenhouse gases linked to global warming. The stickers, the first in the U.S., should be approved by the California Air Resources Board by June and should start appearing on 2009 model cars and light trucks, board spokesman Jerry Martin said. The board will hold a hearing next month on the labels.