Product Boycotts

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader urged the nation's grocers to pull "contaminated" California grapes from their shelves to support efforts to ban five pesticides linked to cancer, birth defects and other illnesses. Nader and 15 national groups, ranging from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group to the American Public Health Assn., joined the United Farm Workers' grape boycott Tuesday.

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader urged the nation's grocers to pull "contaminated" California grapes from their shelves to support efforts to ban five pesticides linked to cancer, birth defects and other illnesses. Nader and 15 national groups, ranging from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group to the American Public Health Assn., joined the United Farm Workers' grape boycott Tuesday.

Hoping to bring more of its 13 million members online, labor giant AFL-CIO said it is creating its own Internet service provider, called Workingfamilies.com The service--due to launch Dec. 1 at a cost of $14.95 per month--will allow unions to mobilize members at Web speed in legislative and political campaigns, organizing drives or product boycotts, federation officials said.

Forget the anti-U.S. rhetoric and product boycotts during the war in Iraq; American brands are strong and getting stronger. Far from suffering from an anti-American backlash, "megabrands" such as Coca-Cola, Starbucks and Gap actually have gained in value over the last year, accord- ing to research published Friday by consulting firm Interbrand.

When organizers from the Service Employees International Union wanted to stir the emotions during a recent rally for striking Century City janitors, they devised a chant modeled after one they had learned from South African janitors. Their teachers included Florence Devillers, general secretary of the 70,000-member South African Domestic Workers Union, who had passed through Los Angeles a few days before while on a U.S. tour sponsored by the service union.

Breaking a longstanding impasse over whether the controversial abortion pill RU-486 will ever be available in the United States, its French manufacturer has agreed to license the drug to a New York-based scientific research organization for eventual distribution in this country, the Food and Drug Administration announced Tuesday. The agreement between the pill maker, Roussel-Uclaf, and the Population Council will enable the U.S.

Scientists have grown nearly complete human corneas in a laboratory dish for the first time, fashioning a possible new tool to replace animals in some product safety testing and advancing toward an abundant future supply of vital tissue to help restore sight in people. The scientists say the bioengineered tissue has many key properties of a real human cornea, the pupil's transparent covering.

Black merchants are fighting public pressure to limit the rebuilding of liquor stores, joining Korean shopkeepers in a battle that may show that people are lining up along economic, not racial, lines. Joseph Solomon, president of the Southern California chapter of Cal-Pac, the black beverage and grocers' association, says his organization will be talking soon with the Korean-American Grocers Assn.

When a group of sports bar owners led by a San Diego hot dog vendor threatened to mount a national boycott of network sponsors over plans of CBS and NBC to scramble their satellite transmissions of professional football games, the two networks promptly gave in, at least for this season. The networks' capitulation last week to the noisy interest group--and to network advertisers including Anheuser-Busch and the Miller Brewing Co.

Arizona state Rep. Rusty Bowers began campaigning against environmental education after his son came home from a grade school ecology class declaring that coyotes didn't kill sheep. In Virginia, business consultant Jo Kwong questioned how environmental issues were being presented in local schools when her children became obsessed with recycling household waste but couldn't explain what recycling did.

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad acknowledged that significant obstacles lay ahead on the road to statehood, but insisted his government will be ready by this summer. Fayyad spoke to the Los Angeles Times about what work still needs to be done, whether he'd like to be Palestinian Authority president one day and why he continues to "confound" Israelis. With U.S. peace talks collapsed, is it time for Palestinians to shift strategies? Should your state-building program, targeted for completion in August, become the primary focus?