Free Republic

NEW YORK (Reuters) - In an era of greater scrutiny, a number of U.S. companies are deciding being public just isn't worth the hassle anymore. After the collapse of Enron Corp, WorldCom Inc. and others, regulators and lawmakers raised financial reporting and corporate governance standards for publicly traded companies to increase accountability and transparency. In the latest and final phase of the reforms, known as Section 404, companies must assess internal financial controls and report findings to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Confronted with rising costs to comply, and tougher penalties if they don't, a growing number of companies are...

WOODMERE, Ohio - The nation's food companies are stirring up new recipes for everything from Oreos to SpaghettiOs to get rid of trans fat, the artery-clogging ingredient that must be listed on food labels next year. The companies say they're promoting good health, but they're also looking ahead to the new federal rule and new dietary guidelines urging consumers away from trans fats. Trans fats have been in the nation's food supply for decades, giving products a long shelf life and making goodies like chips and cookies oh so yummy. They are formed when liquid oils turn into solid fats...

As the death toll rises above 125,000 with countless injured, widowed and orphaned there has been a rush of aid and supplies to millions of the tsunami’s victims. Assistance came from a variety of “unlikely” sources, such as President Bush and large corporations, much to the chagrin of the liberal media and Hollywood elite. The network news bureaus and largely liberal entertainment industry have remained eerily silent regarding this devastating global crisis. Indeed, at this time of year most of the entertainers go on winter holiday to the slopes or sunny beaches. To date, they have ignored the crisis rather...

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration's foreign policy may jeopardize the economic health of American multinational companies abroad, an international consumer survey released Monday said. According to an international survey of 8,000 consumers taken by Global Marketing Insite World Poll on Dec. 10 through 12, fifty percent of foreign consumers distrust American companies as a result of the U.S. decision to invade Iraq and the war on terror. Additionally, 79 percent said they distrusted the American government, while 39 percent said they distrusted Americans. "American companies' livelihoods depend on trust. It's extremely important. You almost never get a second chance once...

International banks and financial institutions have launched the largest programme since the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US to track down employees after the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster. Concerns about the fate of employees have grown as beach resorts in south-west Thailand and Sri Lanka, among the worst affected by the tsunami, were favourite destinations during the Christmas holidays for expatriate executives and other staff in the regional financial industry. More than 4,000 persons, many of them believed to be foreigners, are estimated to be missing from upscale Thai resorts at Phuket and Khao Lak, according to Thai...

2004 Political Contributions

Ronald Honeycutt didn't hesitate. The Pizza Hut driver had just finished dropping off a delivery when a man holding a gun approached him. Honeycutt wasn't about to become another robbery statistic. He grabbed the 9 mm handgun he always carries in his belt and shot the man more than 10 times, killing him. Honeycutt faced no criminal charges, because prosecutors decided that he acted in self-defense. But the 39-year-old did lose his job: Carrying a gun violated Pizza Hut's no-weapons rule. "It's not fair," says Honeycutt of Carmel, Ind., who has found another pizza-delivery job and continues to carry a...

On July 9, 2004, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel's security barrier was a violation of international humanitarian law and human rights law. Eleven days later, the United Nations General Assembly voted 150-6 to condemn Israel and demand removal of the barrier. All twenty-five members of the European Union supported the motion.[1] The EU position would not have been so offensive had it not then undertaken an act of stunning hypocrisy. In August 2004, the EU put out tenders for companies to construct a European separation fence to prevent migration into the EU from countries excluded from...

Frédéric Desagneaux, consul general of France for San Francisco, is not happy with the light being shown on his country’s involvement with U.N. corruption in Iraq. Poor thing. Yesterday, the independent committee investigating corruption in the U.N.’s “oil-for-food” program for Iraq made public the names of 3,545 companies that sold goods to Saddam. Also published were the names of 248 companies which received Iraqi oil under the program. Through oil-for-food, Saddam stole “$10.1 billion through oil smuggling and kickbacks from suppliers.” Leave it to the U.N. to pull off one of the biggest scandals in world history. Evidence is emerging...

On Monday, December 8, 2003, President Bush signed into law a Medicare prescription drug benefits package designed to help American seniors pay for their medications. This month, the Kerry campaign released a TV ad attacking President Bush’s Medicare record stating, “The very next day George Bush imposes the biggest Medicare premium increase in history while prescription drug costs still skyrocket.” There are several problems with this ad, namely that fact that 1) Kerry skipped the December 8 vote and 2) Kerry voted to support the increase in Medicare premiums that he now criticizes. The Kerry campaign offers no specifics on...

I have been hearing rumbles at work about contract work in Iraq and Afghanistan. Wild tales of buku dollars for truck drivers and others. I decided to look into what if any private contracts had been handed out for actual security and the companies who won the bids. Any help?

The Cost of Compromiseby Jonathan Tuttle TURNING and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned;The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.                                                   William Butler Yeats,                                                   The Second Coming I feel tired way beyond my years. Well, maybe not way beyond, but beyond. What perhaps tires me more than anything is compromise. Compromise has become a way of life for modern American Catholics, and we...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Companies in Canada and seven other foreign countries have obtained hardrock mining rights on one-fifth of all current and former public lands in the United States, an environmental group's analysis said Monday. Some 28,000 companies and individuals paid less than $5 an acre to patent land with precious metals and minerals under terms of the 1872 Mining Law, the Environmental Working Group said, citing figures from the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management. Those claims account for 5.6 million acres of public lands, the group reported on a Web site in a study titled "Who Owns the...

WASHINGTON (ACA) -- A common Bush administration refrain is that foreign companies can either do business with the United States or “rogue regimes,” but not both. The United States underscored that message April 1 by imposing sanctions on 13 foreign companies for trading with Iran, while waiving penalties on six Russian companies which Washington says have mended their ways. Sanctions were imposed on five companies from China, two from Macedonia, two from Russia, and one each from Belarus, North Korea, Taiwan, and the United Arab Emirates. The companies were said to have exported items that appear on international arms export...

The United States says it has imposed sanctions against 13 foreign companies that have sold equipment or technology to Iran that could be used for making nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. A State Department spokesman said the sanctions mean the companies will not receive any business or assistance from the US government, and that US companies are banned from dealing with them for two years. The companies are based in China, Macedonia, Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Taiwan and the United Arab Emirates. The spokesman said that sanctions against a number of Russian companies and institutes had been lifted as they...

ASHINGTON, March 25 — Responding to widespread anxiety about the movement of American jobs overseas, Senator John Kerry plans to propose on Friday a sweeping revision of international corporate taxes intended to prompt companies to invest more money in the United States. Aides said Mr. Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, would also challenge President Bush by saying his administration would spawn 10 million additional jobs over four years. Democrats often point out that more than two million jobs have been lost since Mr. Bush became president. In a speech he is scheduled to deliver at Wayne State University in...

But Chicago firm says tourney good for workplace morale That giant sucking sound ringing in the ears of employers throughout the country is the estimated loss of $1.5 billion in worker productivity caused by the distraction of the men's NCAA tournament, according to a study by a Chicago-based job placement company. "You don't need a television to watch the game any more," said John A. Challenger..... "Everybody's got computers on their desks and they are streaming the games right in." But don't blame computers alone. Challenger said water-cooler talk, office betting pools, long lunches, Internet downloads, television breaks and telephone...

<p>A proposal to punish employers who hire illegal immigrants squeaked through its first step at the Legislature.</p> <p>Even so, the lawmaker pushing the bill said his proposal faces difficulties in becoming law because legislative leaders don't want the proposal to advance.</p>

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) - Federal energy regulators have dismissed cases against half the companies required last summer to justify their pricing and marketing strategies during California's 2000-2001 energy crisis.</p> <p>The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved settlements amounting to $142,000 in refunds from five companies, and dismissed cases against 31 other companies and municipal power districts, agency spokesman Bryan Lee said Monday. The actions were taken at a FERC meeting Thursday.</p>

Records by the batch on hold Courts office stops selling large volumes of criminal records, saying companies misuse them By MATTHEW EISLEY, Staff Writer Monday, January 5, 2004 12:00AM EST The agency that runs North Carolina's courts is cutting off a source of public information about criminal cases because, it says, private companies that buy and resell the data for personal background checks are misusing it. The data will still be available in another, more expensive form. Some of the companies that collect and resell the electronic information, commonly used to check the criminal histories of job and housing applicants,...