Tobacco companies fighting anti-smoking laws with trade agreements, legal challenges

Fair Warning reports that as governments around the world adopt stringent rules to fight the public health burdens of smoking, tobacco companies are fighting back, trumping those laws by invoking long-standing trade agreements. Anti-smoking advocates told Fair Warning those efforts, and the cost and liability governments face in fighting them, will intimidate "all but the most wealthy, sophisticated countries" into inaction.

"The Associated Press uncovered this week that a Honduran military unit charged with murdering a 15 year old boy had been trained, equipped and vetted by the United States."

"The first story told the painful narrative of the victim’s father tracking the killers. The second story dug into the U.S. response to this and other alleged human rights abuses in Honduras. That story revealed that the U.S. may withhold as much as half of all aid to Honduras this year."

"Officials of oil-rich Azerbaijan, including members of the Aliyev ruling family, have established companies in Prague, bought land, and built hotels and luxury villas most of them focused around in the famous spa city of Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad).

The problem is that some of these investments are illegal.

The full extent of their investment became clear after reporters for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) examined the Czech property and company records of prominent Azeris.  The political elite, it appears, has been playing a real life game of Monopoly in a race to acquire properties in the heart of the European Union."

In a report filed The Boston Globe, it has been revealed that "federal agents working out of Boston, are heading an investigation into child pornography that so far has resulted in at least 40 arrests around the world and the discovery of 140 children who were sexually exploited. And it all began with a single photo sent by a Milford, Mass man."

Staff at The Globe have put together a map of how the cases are all linked.

A New York Times investigation into Wal-Mart has revealed that top Wal-Mart executives may be focusing more on damage control when they should be rooting out wrongdoing.

"In 2005, after a senior Wal-Mart lawyer learned that the company’s largest foreign subsidiary, Wal-Mart de Mexico, had orchestrated a campaign of bribery to win market dominance, Wal-Mart dispatched investigators to Mexico City, and within days they unearthed evidence of widespread bribery." A lead investigator wrote of the findings: “There is reasonable suspicion to believe that Mexican and USA laws have been violated.” However, Wal-Mart's leaders shut-down the investigation. And only after the findings came out did the executives work on controlling their image, not fixing the corruption.

In a special report from Reuters it has been found that at least two countries offer what is known as citizenship by investment, burgeoning programs that bestow on foreigners the benefits of being a citizen - namely, a passport - for a price. The main appeal for the wealthy, escaping taxes.

"A flurry of freedom of information laws adopted over the past decade has given more than 5.3 billion people worldwide the right, on paper, to know what their governments are doing behind closed doors.

However, The Associated Press found in the first worldwide test of this promised freedom of information, that more than half the countries with right-to-know laws do not follow them."

“The Sept. 11 attacks prompted almost every nation to adopt or toughen anti-terror laws. Until now, no one followed up to see who was impacted. In an unprecedented 9-month investigation, journalists in more than 100 countries found that at least 35,000 people have been convicted on terror charges since 2001, from bombers to bloggers.AP National Writer Martha Mendoza, aided by colleagues on six continents, reported the story beyond the numbers, how the war against terror is shifting to courts, and how some countries misuse their laws to curb dissent.“