News Brief – North America January 2008

Healthy Wal-Mart

Wal-mart has overhauled its healthcare plans, providing insurance for 100,000 more employees than it did three years ago, and making signing up, easy and accessible.

Despite the fact the waiting period for eligibility, which is now cut from two years, to one, Wal-Mart still insure less than half of it’s 1.4 million workers.

Forward Progress

Google will work with branded RE (Renewable energy cheaper than coal project) to reduce its energy bills, by spending hundreds of millions of dollars to develop renewable energy.

Caught in action!

BP are serving a 3 year probation, after pleading guilty to a criminal violation of the US clean water act, with a 200,000 oil spill, in Alaska’s North Slope in March 2005. A fine of $20 million was incurred.

Take it to court!

New York based Klausner Technologies is seeking $300 million dollars in damages, against Apple and AT&T, who are supposedly infringing copy write laws of their “visual voicemail” technology.
The suit also names Comcast, Cablevision Systems and eBay’s Skype as offenders.

On the Outs

Dow Chemical, will cut costs, by closing down plants, creating a loss of 1,000 jobs, and incur a charge of $500-600 million in severance costs, and asset write-downs. Estimated savings are around $180 million per annum.

US Burma sanctions

Sanctions against the Burma have been adopted by the US House of Representatives. The move, which responds to the military‘s crackdown on pro-democracy protestors, also freezes assets of Myanmar’s leaders.

The 1998 agreement, not using cartoons to market tobacco products, and a Rolling Stones magazine and RJ Reynolds, violating the agreement, lead to six US States suing the tobacco firm.

US Anti Corruption Authorities banked more than $100 million from oil, chemical and telecom companies, who we’re all engaged in bribery and corruption in 2007.
A petition to put limits on greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft is said to have been launched by California and four other states.

“Word of mouth” advertising on Face Book, called beacon, which shares member’s online purchases, has been successfully petitioned against, by its members.