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Coca-Cola: Competitors smeared Dasani

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ATLANTA (AP) – The Coca-Cola Co. said Thursday its Argentinian subsidiary has filed a criminal complaint against executives of a unit of French food and drink maker Danone and public relations firm Euro RSCG, accusing them of orchestrating a smear campaign against Coke’s Dasani water brand.

Atlanta-based Coca-Cola said in a statement that the complaint was filed in Argentina against two executives at Aguas Danone de Argentina and an executive at Euro RSCG Buenos Aires under the country’s Unfair Trade Practices statute. Euro RSCG is based in New York.

Coca-Cola alleges the executives were behind a widely circulated two-year Internet campaign that made false statements against Dasani.

The campaign, Coca-Cola said, called into question the quality of Dansani, misleading consumers and hurting the reputation and sales of Desani and parent Coca-Cola in Argentina and other Latin American countries.

Coke is seeking damages of up to $10,000, spokesman Dana Bolden said.

Dasani was launched in Argentina in October 2005, and then released in other countries in Latin America.
Immediately following the launch, Coca-Cola said, the brand was maligned as ‘bottled tap water’ and ‘cancer water’ on the Internet.

The campaign extended beyond Argentina to Mexico, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Peru, Ecuador and a number of other Latin American markets, Coca-Cola said. Major customers in Argentina have refused to sell Dasani because of the rumors, Coca-Cola said.

Coca-Cola said it will consider whether other executives at Aguas Danone de Argentina, Euro RSCG Buenos Aires or other agencies should be included in the complaint.

Messages left Thursday with a spokeswoman at Euro RSCG and with Group Danone SA’s public relations staff in France seeking comment were not immediately returned.

Coca-Cola says Dasani is water ‘from a municipal source’ that is ‘subjected to multi-barrier filtration,’ purified and enhanced with minerals. The company said the water is from local sources in different countries.

Outside Coke’s annual meeting in 2006, activists were offering a tapwater challenge to passers-by to try to demonstrate that Dasani tastes no better than municipal tap water but is much more expensive.

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Indonesia terror threat serious, says Australian PM

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SYDNEY (Thomson Financial) – Australian Prime Minister John Howard said Monday the threat of a terrorist attack in Indonesia was serious and justified an upgraded travel warning.

The foreign affairs department on Sunday warned Australians to stay away from Indonesia because of fears that an attack could be imminent.

Howard said travel advisories were only issued on strong intelligence.

‘All terrorist threats are serious and the problem is if you don’t warn them and something happens
you are legitimately criticised,’ he said in a television interview.

A total of 92 Australian holidaymakers were killed in two bomb attacks on the popular Indonesian resort island of Bali in 2002 and 2005.

‘We are the last country in the world to want to say anything unnecessarily serious about Indonesia, because Indonesia is a friendly country, but we have above all of that a greater obligation to warn our citizens,’ Howard said.

‘They have to stay away from places frequented by Westerners, that’s the advice we give.’
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said the travel warning was not based on information about a specific attack.

‘We don’t have any information designating a specific target or for that matter a specific time of a terrorist attack,’ Downer told national radio.

‘We have a constant flow of information about possible terrorist activity in Indonesia.’

The recent arrest of high ranking operatives in the Islamic extremist group blamed for the Bali bombings, Jemaah Islamiah (JI), was a reminder of the ongoing threat, he said.

The head of JI, Zarkasi, and the leader of its military wing, Abu Dujana, were arrested by Indonesian anti-terror police last month along with six other suspected militants.

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China’s oil-tanker construction falls behind rising oil imports – COSCO official

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SHANGHAI (XFN-ASIA) – The rate of construction of oil tankers for Chinese shipping lines is falling behind the rate of increase in oil imports, which may pose a threat to the country’s energy security, a China Ocean Shipping (Group) Co (COSCO) official said.

The manager of the COSCO group shipping research department, Kong Fanhua, told a forum here that only 20 pct of China’s seaborne oil imports had been carried by Chinese shipping lines last year.

Kong said China’s tanker fleet did not meet the country’s needs, and that more ships were needed.

‘China’s oil-tanker building has been slow due to high construction costs,’ Kong said.

He said the COSCO group, the parent of China COSCO Holdings Ltd (also HK 1919), was building seven very large crude carriers (VLCCs), with one or two to be delivered by the end of this year or early next year. At present, COSCO has 10 VLCCs.

kelly.zang@xfn.com

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The copying, republication or redistribution of AFX News Content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of AFX News.

Buying China-free products a hard task

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SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) – Whether U.S. shoppers are concerned about food and product safety, set on making a political statement against outsourcing or simply intent on showing a little patriotism, they are sure to have a tough time avoiding products made in China.

Chinese exports have been in the spotlight since the deaths of dogs and cats in North America attributed to tainted Chinese wheat gluten, followed by this week’s recall of Chinese-made radial tires and an alert Thursday by the Food and Drug Administration, warning about contaminated Chinese seafood.

My family hit some stores to see how hard it would it be for the average consumer to pull off a ‘Made in China’ boycott — even for just a week.

My sons’ well-worn sneakers were starting to resemble sandals, so our family headed to the Empire Mall in Sioux Falls in search of a couple of cheap pairs to get the boys, ages 10 and 12, through the summer.

The quest began in the J.C. Penney shoe department. We soon found out this was going to be no easy task: Adidas, made in China; Sketchers, made in China; Reebok, made in China or Indonesia; Nike, made in Indonesia, Vietnam or Thailand.

Then, a pair of Converse Chuck Taylor All Stars caught my eye. An American classic, right? Well, sort of — an Indonesian-made classic now sold by Nike Inc.

We finally found some New Balance shoes and I recalled reading that the company still makes some running shoes in the United States. The first few said ‘Made in China,’ but we then spotted three adult styles marked ‘Made in the USA of imported materials.’

That sounded as close as we could get, so I asked my 12-year-old which of the three he liked.

‘This one,’ he said, pointing to the $75 shoe he’ll likely outgrow in months.

‘Let’s keep looking,’ I said.

We headed to a couple of other shoe stores — Famous Footwear and Payless — and found several other styles of sneakers mostly made in China and Indonesia.

Famous Footwear had one U.S.-made New Balance sneaker on sale for $40, but my oldest didn’t like the color combination so we moved on. I guess those well-worn sneakers can last another week until this little experiment ends.

Shopping for non China-made groceries at our local Hy-Vee grocery store seemed to be presenting few challenges, but it turned out to be more of a case of blissful ignorance than well-informed consumerism.

Products in nonfood aisles communicated their origins better than their edible counterparts. Labels of Suave shampoo, Dial hand soap, Kleenex tissues, Ziploc bags, Solo cups, Bounty napkins, Tide laundry detergent, SOS pads and Dawn dish detergent all read ‘Made in USA,’ although none of the labels got specific about the ingredients.

Toothpaste was a bit more confusing — a concern considering some brands toothpaste made in China were recently found to contain a chemical called diethylene glycol, which is used to make antifreeze.

AquaFresh said ‘Made in USA’ right on the box, but boxes of Crest and Colgate named only the companies that distributed the product, Procter & Gamble Co. and Colgate-Palmolive Co. respectively.

Procter and Gamble on its Web site says the Crest toothpaste found in stores is made in North America, not China. Colgate-Palmolive on its site says Colgate toothpaste is safe regardless of where the company manufactures it.

The labels on most food products we looked at were of little help.

The 2002 Farm Bill passed by Congress mandated country-of-origin labeling for seafood, beef, lamb, pork, fish, fruits, vegetables and peanuts, but the Bush administration has delayed its implementation for everything except seafood until October 2008.

Some fruits and vegetables sported voluntary stickers, but shoppers always should consider the calendar when shopping for produce, as stores get a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables from Central and South America during winter months.

None of the sweets in the candy aisle said ‘Made in China,’ but most are likely made with at least one ingredient that originated there, said William Hubbard, a former U.S. Food and Drug Administration official.

Candy wrappers typically list just the U.S. distributor of the products, so label readers can’t determine the origin of the vanillin found in a Nestle Crunch bar, the carageenan in a Baby Ruth or the gum arabic in a pack of Mentos.

Those three ingredients, and numerous other flavoring and preservative additives, commonly come from Chinese companies, Hubbard said.

‘The cocoa might come from another country and the sugar might be American, so you are not going to get a country of origin on that product,’ Hubbard said.

Companies in China produce about 80 percent of the world’s wheat gluten, common in most breads, cakes and cookies, and 80 percent of its sorbic acid, a preservative used in just about everything, he said.

We found a bit of irony in the ethnic food section, where a box of Golden Bowl fortune cookies and a bag of Kokuho Rose Rice brand sushi rice both sported ‘Product of USA’ labels.

My boys have been asking to get their own tennis rackets — ours look like they once belonged to Bjorn Borg and Chris Evert — so we headed to a couple of sporting goods stores and Wal-Mart.

All of the rackets we found were made in China, but at least we were able to pick up a can of Penn tennis balls that were made in America.

We moved a couple aisles down to Wal-Mart’s toy section and found tons of products originating in China, including action figures, vehicles, stuffed animals and games.

Packages of Hot Wheels miniature cars, once a U.S.-made icon, now read, ‘Made in China, Malaysia or Thailand as marked.’ Matchbox cars hail from either China or Thailand.

The classic capitalist board game Monopoly still qualifies, though with a caveat. ‘Made in the USA with dice and tokens made in China,’ the box reads.

At least a deck of Bicycle playing cards is still homegrown, although we’ll have to switch our game to rummy as the cribbage board was born in China.

With the Fourth of July approaching, I decided to check out the store’s display of U.S. flags and found that all were domestic, with the exception of one style made in China.

I knew the small appliance section would likely be a lost cause for this quest, but I decided to take a look. All of the toasters and all but one of the coffee makers originated in China. A Bunn 10-cup professional brewer said it was assembled in the United States, but it was priced in the higher end of Wal-Mart’s selection.

Hubbard said all consumers receive value from the ubiquity of Chinese-made appliances, but when it comes to food products and ingredients, companies need to be more vigilant in tracking their supply chains.

‘Unfortunately in the case of foods and drugs, there’s a safety issue on top of the quality issue,’ Hubbard said. ‘If the toaster doesn’t work you just take it back to Wal-Mart and they give you another one. But if the food is unsafe, that’s a different matter.’

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Ryanair plans to reopen Clermont Ferrand-London route

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CLERMONT-FERRAND, France (Thomson Financial) – Ryanair Holdings aims to reopen a route between the town of Clermont Ferrand in France and London, said Rene Souchon, president of the Auvergne regional council.

‘Negotiations are going on with a view to Ryanair being able to reopen a thrice-weekly flight between Clermont and London from April 1 2008’, Souchon said.

‘We have a draft agreement, but there are still many things to negotiate’, Souchon said, adding Ryanair did not give a timetable as it wanted to ‘test the number of potential customers’. The route would operate between April and October.

Ryanair had a daily route between Clermont Ferrand and London Stansted between May 2003 and Jan 2004, which was used by 45,000 passengers. The route was opened as Ryanair received construction and commercial aid to do so when former French president Valery Giscard d’Estaing was president of the regional council.

‘At the time, the aid was not supervised as it is today. I am not going to give a blank cheque to Ryanair,’ Souchon said.

He said the reopening of the route would increase passenger traffic at the Auvergne airport, which had dropped to 552,000 in 2006 from 1.1 mln passengers in 2002 and would attract British tourists to the region.

Ryanair, which left Saint-Etienne in June 2006 for Grenoble, is present in Limoges and Rodez. ‘There is a big gap between Limoges-Rodez and Grenoble; that gives it a not-inconsiderable potential,’ said the Auvergne council president.

tf.TFN-Europe_newsdesk@thomson.com

afp/cmr/ms1

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General Dynamics gets $29.8M Navy deal

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WASHINGTON (AP) – The U.S. Navy on Wednesday awarded a $29.8 million contract boost to a unit of General Dynamics Corp. for maintenance and repair on the USS Texas battleship.

General Dynamics’ subsidiary Electric Boat Corp. will provide alterations and testing on the ship as part of an effort to correct deficiencies on one of the oldest battleships left since World War I.

The company will perform the work in Groton, Conn., and is expected to be completed by February 2008.

Shares of General Dynamics rose 44 cents to $78.43.

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Lawsuit ends over boy-pilot’s acne drug

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TAMPA, Fla. (AP) – Relatives of a 15-year-old boy who crashed a stolen plane into a skyscraper in 2002 have dropped their lawsuit that blamed an acne drug for his suicide, saying they were physically and emotionally unable to pursue the claim.

U.S. District Judge James Moody dismissed the lawsuit Tuesday at the request of lawyers for Julia Bishop and Karen Johnson, the mother and grandmother of Charles Bishop.

The boy’s death gained international attention as images were broadcast of the stolen Cessna protruding from the Bank of America Plaza downtown, four months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Inside the plane, Charles left a note sympathetic to Osama bin Laden.

Hoffmann-La Roche Inc., the maker of Accutane, contended Charles was a troubled young man and his use of Accutane was not to blame for his suicide. Court papers filed by the company say the boy’s parents tried to carry out a suicide pact before he was born, and his mother had numerous bouts of depression.

Hoffman-La Roche contends Accutane is safe, but recommends users be screened for depression. The Food and Drug Administration said it has 234 reports of suicide among Accutane users worldwide from 1982 to December 2003.

Hoffman-La Roche Inc., based in Nutley, N.J., is the United States prescription drug unit of the Swiss drug maker Roche Group.

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Raytheon details dispute over $2B deal

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WASHINGTON (AP) – Raytheon Co. on Wednesday sought to explain its rationale for protesting the Army’s recent decision to award rival bidder L-3 Communication Holdings Inc. a $2 billion cargo plane contract.

The Waltham, Mass-based company said it does not want the Army to re-compete the contract, but to explain why it selected a more expensive plane and did not give more weight to maintenance and other long-term costs in its appraisal of bids.

‘We really didn’t get a good explanation as to those decisions,’ Jim Hvizd, a Raytheon vice president said. ‘We felt there were errors in the way that some of the various sub-factors were evaluated related to our proposal.’

Raytheon filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office on June 22, more than a week after the Army awarded the contract to New York-based L-3’s team to build up to 78 cargo planes.

Raytheon said the Army’s own evaluation found its C-295J aircraft to be 15 percent cheaper than L-3’s C-27J. Moreover, had the government considered fuel efficiency and other long-term factors, the price difference would have been even greater, Hvizd said.

Hvizd said Raytheon raised other issues in the protest, but declined to provide additional details.

While both companies make twin-engine turboprop planes, L-3’s C-27J is considered larger, heavier and more technologically advanced than the C-295.

The L-3 plane costs slightly more than the cargo plane Raytheon offered, but it has performed better on short runways, flying longer distances without refueling and is bale to hold more weight.

Analysts had been expecting L-3’s team, which includes Italian partner Finmeccanica SpA’s subsidiary Alenia North America Inc., Boeing Co. and Global Military Aircraft Systems to beat Raytheon. For its part, Raytheon teamed up with CASA, a subsidiary of European Aeronautic Defense & Space Co. NV.

The new planes will replace the C-23 Sherpa, a 23-year old cargo plan built by Short Brothers Plc, the C-36 and some of the C-12s, as well as other transport aircraft, such as Boeing’s CH-47 Chinook, which the Army has been using for battlefield support operations.

The C-23 has several drawbacks to meet the needs of U.S. soldiers in the field, including the inability to fly at high altitudes, limited cargo space and a lack of defensive systems.

The Army plans to purchase up to 145 planes that support tactical missions, such as delivering supplies and deploying soldiers in combat.

Shares of Raytheon fell 26 cents to $53.88 in midday trading, as shares of L-3 rose 40 cents to $97.68.

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Bankruptcy filings rise in 1Q

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WASHINGTON (AP) – Bankruptcy filings rose by 66 percent nationwide in the first quarter, according to government data that analysts say are partly a reflection of the fallout from the housing market slump and rising household debt.
Filings for the three months ended March 31 rose to 193,641, according to statistics released Wednesday by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. Business filings rose nearly 54 percent to 6,280, while personal cases surged more than 66 percent to 187,361.
In the 12 months ended March 31, the number of bankruptcy filings dropped by more than 61 percent to 695,575, though the data were skewed by a change in the law. Filings in the year-ago period were unusually high because of the pending Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005, which went into effect in October and made filings more difficult and expensive.
The full-year statistics ‘still capture the distortion effects’ of the reform, said Sam Gerdano, executive director of the Alexandria, Va.-based American Bankruptcy Institute.
Still, Gerdano expects monthly filings to remain about 50 percent higher than a year ago for the remainder of 2007. Rising mortgage defaults and foreclosures, as well as higher overall debt burdens on households, make it ‘inevitable that there is going to be an increase in the numbers … people looking to bankruptcy as a way out of their financial problems,’ Gerdano said.
Consumer groups in April called on Congress to reform bankruptcy laws that give mortgage lenders a higher priority than most other creditors and make it easier for families hurt by the cool housing market to file for bankruptcy and keep their homes.
For the year ending in March, business filings dropped nearly 38 percent to 21,960, while personal filings fell almost 62 percent to 673,615, according to the federal courts data.
Filings under Chapters 7, 11, and 13 all fell, while only Chapter 12 filings rose slightly to 372 from 366 in the year-ago period. Chapter 12 is an extension of Chapter 11, which protects companies from creditors’ lawsuits while reorganizing, and applies to family farms.
Proponents of the legislative change can say that despite a quarterly increase, filings are well below the levels of the decade leading up to it, while critics will note that more people with financial vulnerability ‘need bankruptcy as a safety valve,’ Gerdano said.
Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

W.Va. Internet among nation’s slowest

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CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) – Downloading a large file off the Internet in West Virginia? If so, don’t make any other plans; it could take a while.

A new national study says Internet connection speed in the Mountain State is slower than everywhere else, except Alaska. The same file that takes 15 seconds to download in Rhode Island takes more than two minutes to download in West Virginia.

The report, issued by the Communications Workers of America union, is based on data collected on the Speed Matters Web site. Visitors to the site could take a test to determine how fast their Internet connection speed is, and the study is based on results from more than 80,000 users.

West Virginians have a median download speed of 1.12 megabits. That’s not terrible considering the national average is 1.97, but it’s far behind the jackrabbit-like speed of Rhode Island, the fastest state, with 5.01 megabits. But even Rhode Island pales in comparison to countries like Canada, with 7.60 megabits, or Japan, fastest in the world at 61 megabits.

Although West Virginia’s neighbors fare better, many of them are still in the bottom half of the country in Internet speed, with Ohio ranked 40th, Pennsylvania at 33 and Kentucky just ahead at 32. Maryland and Virginia did better, coming in at 10 and 11, respectively.

The union warns that slow Internet speeds will dull America’s edge in competition with other countries as the Web becomes an even more important aspect of commerce.

‘We are behind, not just as a state, but as a country,’ said Elaine Harris, spokeswoman for the union in West Virginia.

Sen. John Unger, co-chairman of the Legislature’s select committee on broadband access, said West Virginia will only improve by extending high-speed service throughout its borders and creating more demand for faster access. In today’s economy, he said, there’s no excuse for doing otherwise.

‘You can have all the nice roads and welcome signs you want, but if you don’t have the infrastructure and the demand for high-speed Internet, we can’t do business,’ he said.

Unger sponsored a bill earlier this year approved by the Legislature that he said would have helped accomplish those goals. Gov. Joe Manchin vetoed the bill, though, after getting an offer to help the state improve broadband access from Cisco Systems CEO and West Virginia native John Chambers.

The problem, though, may be less a matter of supply than of demand, according to Mark Polen, executive director of the West Virginia Cable Telecommunications Association.

About 80 percent of the homes with Internet access through their cable companies can get it at speeds of at least 3 megabits, Polen said.

But the higher speeds typically cost more, which is no small matter for West Virginia, 49th overall in median household income. In addition, there are other factors that limit the extent of high-speed Internet use in the state.

About 34.6 percent of households in the state subscribe to broadband Internet service, according to an April report by the state Advanced Services Task Force. The national average is about 49.6 percent. The report also found that about 59 percent of households in West Virginia have a computer, compared to 69 percent nationally.

‘Whether we have one megabit or 10 megabits isn’t going to matter much if people don’t have computers and aren’t online,’ Polen said.

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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