International

A New Nuke Sell: Reprocessing

As "part of an effort to jump-start the nuclear-power industry," the Bush administration is proposing "a $250 million initiative to reprocess spent nuclear fuel." The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership proposal would allow General Electric and other U.S. companies to sell developing countries "reactors and nuclear fuel on the condition that the U.S.

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USAID Involvement in Palestinian Elections Backfires

A U.S. Agency for International Development program in the Palestinian territories put $2 million towards a series of "small, popular projects and events," such as computer donations, a soccer tournament, and free food and water at border crossings, prior to the January 25 elections. The program "bears no evidence of U.S.

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Nuclear Company Underwrites Parliamentary Committee

British Prime Minister Tony Blair's bid to pave the way for an expansion of the nuclear power industry through the 2006 Energy Review and its consultation document, Our Energy Challenge, has been hit by controversy over undisclosed corporate lobbying.

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Phantom Patients

A study published in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet, which concluded that taking painkillers could protect against oral cancer, has been exposed as being based entirely on fabricated data. "He faked everything: names, diagnosis, gender, weight, age, drug use. There is no real data whatsoever, just figures he made up himself. Every patient in this paper is a fake," Stein Vaaler, the director of strategy at the hospital, told the Guardian.

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Environmental Defense or Nanotech Defense?

If you have concerns about the development of nanotechnology, you might want to keep an eye on the 'partnership' between the chemical industry giant DuPont and Environmental Defense (ED), the New York-based environmental group.

The project, according to a joint media release issued in October 2005 by ED's Fred Krupp and DuPont's Chad Halliday, is to "identify, manage and reduce potential health, safety and environmental risks of nano-scale materials across all lifecycle stages." Once developed, the framework will "then be pilot-tested on specific nano-scale materials or applications of commercial interest to DuPont."

To be fair, ED has flagged concerns about there being inadequate health and environmental assessments of nanotechnologies to date. However, ED hasn't mentioned publicly what they think about DuPont and other companies having products that are already on the market without such assessments.

Blair Son To Learn PR, U.S. Politics

Reuters reports that British Prime Minister "Tony Blair's eldest son Euan is to gain work experience with financial public relations company Finsbury." Finsbury, which is owned by the WPP advertising firm, offers "corporate strategic advice, UK and cross-border mergers and acquisitions,

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Ashcroft Group: "Let our Client's Radar Soar"

Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft's lobbying firm has at least two new clients. Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) hired the Ashcroft Group "to help secure the U.S. government's approval to sell a weapons system to the South Korean Air Force." Since their early-warning radar system uses U.S.

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