A leaked document, stamped "Confidential: National Semiconductor Communications Plan," shows how the American-based microchip company hired a maverick public relations firm, Beattie Media, to spy on its union and sabotate a BBC investigation into health problems plaguing employees. The company's union has been concerned for years that the firm's chemically intensive process of making computer microchips has caused scores of cancers, fertility problems, reproductive illnesses and miscarriages among its female staff.

Recent anti-globalisation protests have been met by an increasingly militarised state response aimed at deflecting attention from the issues. Corporate Watch's Lucy Michaels reports back from the BIOjustice protests against the US biotech industry in San Diego.

In the wake of a decision by England's University of Nottingham to accept