F.D.A. Detains Chinese Imports for Testing [NYT] (Photo: amyadoyzie)

The chemical, melamine, is the same chemical that was responsible for the pet food recalls last year, and has caused 53,000 illnesses in children — including nearly 13,000 hospitalizations and 4 deaths.

The NYT says that there is widespread speculation that the contamination was being covered up due to government pressure tied to the Olympic games.

The delays have led to widespread speculation in China that the Sanlu Group and some government officials were attempting to cover up the scandal during the Olympics because Beijing had pressured Chinese journalists and companies not to release negative news.

22 companies have been caught producing melamine tainted dairy products, leading to something of a panic in China. The substance, used in the manufacture of plastics, looks like protein when tested and was used to artificially increase the protein count of the milk.

China Milk Cover-Up Started Last Year [NYT]
(Photo: Getty)

Taiwan banned all dairy products from mainland China today, while Marudai Food Co. in Japan and Nestle SA in Hong Kong announced product recalls. The scandal has claimed the lives of four infants and revived concerns about the effectiveness of China's food safety controls after scares last year over contaminated seafood, toothpaste and pet food.

``That shows that they're serious,'' said Jim Rice, greater China country manager for Springdale, Arkansas-based Tyson Foods Inc., who has worked with China's food regulator. ``Now this means a new guy with new ideas and maybe a new quality assurance system. It could be a healthy shakeup.''

Reuters says:

Melamine, used in making plastics, has also been found in cartons of milk and some dairy exports, but no illnesses from those sources have been reported.

Medical experts said on Monday that, as well as causing kidney stones, melamine could potentially cause far more serious complications by crystallizing and then blocking tiny tubes in the kidneys.

Japan, Brunei, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Taiwan have all banned Chinese dairy products.

China Quality Watchdog Chief Quits in Wake of Scandal (Update1) [Bloomberg]
Nearly 13,000 in hospital as China milk scandal grows [Reuters]

Oddly enough, one of the other teams that posed for a picture while making the "slanty-eyed" face did so for an actual ad for a Spanish courier company. This time, it's not an ad, and Coca-Cola's probably not going to be happy with this association. The photo was published August 5th, but so far, we haven't heard anything from Coke.

Shame the cry for good service came from the Chinese government, not the FAA.

Chinese officials aren't the only ones playing hardball. Americans and our Executive Email Carpet Bombs look like pushovers compared to our Chinese counterparts:

State media reported this week that scores of Chinese passengers smashed computers and desks and clashed with police after a night stranded at an airport without accommodation.

More than 170 passengers were due to leave Kunming, capital of southwestern Yunnan province, on three flights operated by China Southern Airlines late Monday, but the flights were cancelled due to bad weather, Xinhua news agency said.

The report blamed the melee on China Southern staff's "inappropriate working attitude."

Yang said customers must also be kept better informed about delays, especially those caused by bad weather, a big issue in China.

"If there is bad weather, for example, we will tell the media to publicize it so that passengers can be informed ahead of time and avoid long waits at airports due to the weather," he added.

Another worry, with the Games a week away, has been ensuring Beijing's main airport does not suffer delays from thunderstorms, which often strike the capital over the summer, just as athletes and other visitors arrive.

During last year's Spring Festival, riot police had to be called to Beijing airport after passengers angry at fog-related delays roughed up airline staff, attacked service counters and tried to storm grounded aircraft.

Airlines that fail to improve their service will lose runway slots at popular airports. China's centralized government may not be able to secure their food supply, but we sure do love their can-do attitude towards the airlines!

Punishing airlines whose passengers misbehave [Reuters]
(Photo: Getty)

• cheated its workers out of more than $5 million in pay;
• instructed workers to lie to state inspectors;
• required 6 and 7-day workweeks, sometimes for up to 120 days at a time;
• didn't pay overtime or minimum wage;
• kept two sets of timecards to fake-out inspectors.

Urban Apparel, which apparently faced a large inventory issue, took more practical steps:

The Labor Department announced that on Wednesday morning it placed special tags on more than 10,000 items of Jin Shun’s apparel, stating that the garments were produced under unlawful conditions.

Within hours of that tagging, the clothing company Urban Apparel paid state officials $60,000 to have the tags removed. The money covered the amount of wage violations that the department found had occurred when employees were making the tagged garments.

The factory, which was previously named Venture 47 and has recently been renamed Garlee NY, was quite blatant about lying to inspectors:

State officials said that the instructions given to employees, written in English and Mandarin, told them that if government inspectors ever asked them how many hours they worked each week, they were to respond, “Not sure, depends on the workload.”

The instructions told the workers that if inspectors asked how much they earned, they should respond, “I don’t remember, because sometimes I work more hours and sometimes less.”

The instruction sheet told the workers that if they were asked, “What is your hourly wage?” they were to answer, “Not sure, but always over $7.75 depending on the job complexity.” Even though the workers were paid at a fixed rate per piece of work performed and partly in cash, they were told to answer that they were always paid by the hour and through direct deposit.

You may be wondering how you can enforce your own anti-sweatshop policy when shopping, but of course without strict oversight from the big apparel companies, you're not left with many choices. One thing you can do is try to shop from companies that have taken a strong anti-sweatshop stance, such as American Apparel, or from companies like Busted Tees that use American Apparel shirts. Other than that, you have to rely on "made in ___" labels—Dana Thomas from Newsweek tells NPR that in general, U.S. labeling laws are far stricter than European and can be trusted more, but the Queens factory proves that's not always the case. You can also demand stronger oversight from officials and apparel companies—although how you "demand" such a thing is a rather good question.

"Apparel Factory Workers Were Cheated, State Says " [New York Times]
(Photo: Getty)

PREVIOUSLY: Pet Food Companies Agree To $24 Million Settlement Over Killer Pet Food
(Photo: Ariana Lindquist)

(Thanks to glugory!)

If you've seen the "Bodies" exhibit at the South Street Seaport in New York City, you're entitled to a refund (click here for info) according to a new agreement between New York's Attorney General's office and Premier Exhibitions, Inc. When "Bodies" first opened here over two years ago, some opponents questioned whether the Chinese cadavers were legally obtained—or whether they were Chinese political prisoners who hadn't consented to being plastinated, flayed, and displayed by a private for-profit company. At the time, Premier Exhibitions' president said all the bodies were documented: "Although he said he was not allowed to keep copies of documents, officials at Dalian University in northern China showed him papers attesting to the origin of the remains," wrote the New York Times in 2005. Then ABC's news show "20/20" aired an investigative report this past February that showed otherwise.

From ABC News:

Premier Exhibitions says that the "unclaimed" bodies on display were legally obtained from Dalian Medical University.

ABC News' "20/20" reported earlier this year that the bodies did not come from the university but instead from a private, for-profit lab about 30 miles away. "20/20" interviewed someone who said he was a former participant in the black market, in which, he said, bodies were sold to that lab for $200 to $300 each. Dalian Medical University told ABC News that it severed its ties to the plastination lab several years ago.

Premier's former CEO Arnie Geller, who is still on the company's Board of Directors disputed the allegations on "20/20." He said that his suppliers assured him that "these are all legitimate, unclaimed bodies that have gone through Dalian Medical University."

"20/20" also reported that the inventor of plastination, Dr. Gunther von Hagens (who has touring body shows that are not related to Premier Exhibitions or their exhibits), claimed he stopped using Chinese-sourced bodies entirely because of his suspicions that they were unethically obtained:

Von Hagens says he had to cremate several bodies he received in China after detecting injuries that led him to suspect they had been executed prisoners. He says those bodies were given to him by a medical school in China to plastinate for teaching models. He said he only used Chinese bodies, all of which he received from the Chinese university, for teaching models, but has never put Chinese bodies on public display.

"There is now no way for me any more to work with specimens in China," said von Hagens, who says his company in China now only deals with animal specimens.

Oddly, there are no customs restrictions in the U.S. with plastinated corpses at the present, writes ABC News:

U.S. Customs has said that since the plastination process changes the nature of the human remains, plastinated body parts can be imported as plastic objects, not as human bodies.

This is why 21 members of Congress have sponsored a bill that would prohibit the importation of plastinated cadavers entirely.

WNYC reports that as part of the agreement, Premier Exhibitions will have to post a warning now that some of the bodies may be those of executed Chinese prisoners, which we imagine would put a damper on any future visits.

We can't find any details yet on how to request the refund, so if someone finds out, please send us a tip. Thanks to Brian and Melt for the refund contact info!

"'Bodies' exhibit avoids a stiff penalty" [Daily News] (Thanks to Alex!)

RELATED
"Cadaver Exhibition Raises Questions Beyond Taste" [New York Times]
"Exclusive: Secret Trade in Chinese Bodies" [ABC News]
"Lawmakers Call for Crackdown on Bodies Exhibits" [ABC News]
H.R. 5677 [GovTrack.us]
"State Reaches Settlement with Bodies Exhibit" [WNYC.org]
(Photo: jemsweb)

After a two-week delay to make sure the language of the settlement met U.S. and Canadian law, about 30 pet food makers have agreed to pay out $24 million to customers whose pets were killed or injured in the tainted food fiasco a year ago. Victims will be reimbursed for expenses, including vet and burial/cremation bills. Additionally, "pet owners can request reimbursement for the cost or fair-market value—whichever is higher—of a deceased pet or one purchased in replacement. Owners who don't have documentation of expenses can get as much as $900 each. All claims are subject to review."

If approved, this will pretty much wrap up the saga of the melamine-tainted pet food, and teach pet food companies a hard lesson about enforcing stricter standards on their Chinese suppliers. According to the Wall Street Journal,

Among the companies settling the suit are Menu Foods Income Fund; Procter & Gamble Co., which makes Iams pet food; Colgate-Palmolive Co., maker of Hill's; Nestle SA, maker of Purina; and Mars Inc., maker of Pedigree. Retailers including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Target Corp., Petco Animal Supplies Inc. and PetSmart Inc. were also part of the suit.

The settlement has to be approved by a judge, and the court date is set for Friday, May 30th.

"Legal settlement reached in tainted pet food case" [Reuters UK]
(Photo: faster panda kill kill)

FDA's working hypothesis is that this was intentional contamination, but this has not been proven.

"The complexity of the global drug supply chain creates new and emerging risks that call for new ways of thinking about, identifying and addressing vulnerabilities, and that resting on old standards - even ones that have worked for decades - is no longer enough.

From Slate:

Reading McTeague's comment over coffee yesterday morning, I couldn't help but think of an advertisement I'd seen a few months ago while on a reporting trip to China. I was walking from my Beijing bed-and-breakfast to a nearby subway station when I was stopped in my tracks by a billboard that made the controversial 1990s Calvin Klein underwear ads look artistic by comparison. Staring down at the throngs of shoppers on Beijing's Xinjiekou Nandajie Avenue, a busy commercial thoroughfare about a mile west of the Forbidden City, was a white girl who looked all of 12, reclining in a matching bra-and-panties set adorned with Disney's signature mouse-ear design. In a particularly creepy detail, the pigtailed child was playing with a pair of Minnie Mouse hand puppets. In the upper left-hand corner was the familiar script of the Disney logo.

Not believing my eyes, and on an assignment that touched on images of Westerners in the Chinese consumer's imagination, I snapped a photo:

After reading of the Cyrus flap, I e-mailed my photo to Disney's McTeague. I was curious: How did the company square its position on the Liebowitz photo with its risqué billboard in China?

McTeague passed on commenting and forwarded the image to Gary Foster, a spokesman for Disney's consumer-products division. He called me from a business trip (to China) to disavow the ad. "It has caught us totally by surprise," Foster told me by phone from Guangzhou. He explained that Disney contracts with a host of licensees, who produce and market products for the Disney brand. Foster said that licensees are contractually bound to clear all advertising with Disney's corporate offices. "We have literally hundreds of licensees making our products. They are supposed to submit any kind of imagery to us before it is used, but it's hard to enforce that sometimes," he said.

Mickey Mouse Operation [Slate]
(Photo: Daniel Brook )

"Inevitably there would be an increase in the cost of the products that is passed on to the consumer," Cal Dooley, the group's president and a former Democratic lawmaker, told a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee. "You are further compounding the rapid increase in food prices, the likes of which we haven't seen in recent years."

With the legislative changes, "you would get safe food from places like China, where they sell all manner of crap," Dingell told Dooley.
 
Under the proposal, food producers would have to pay annual registration fees of $2,000 per facility, generating $600 million for FDA food-safety activities, more than doubling the current budget. The FDA would be required to conduct inspections every two years of both domestic and foreign makers of drugs and medical devices.

The researchers freeze-dried the heparin and used a combination of nuclear magnetic resonance imaging and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry to analyze its structure. In addition to a known impurity of heparin called dermatan sulfate, they found that contaminated lots contain a molecule that looks similar to heparin and showed it was almost certainly oversulfated chondroitin sulfate.

China says their tests show that only some of the Heparin that caused the problems contained the contaminants, so it therefore must be something else:

They said other contaminants, problems with the device used to inject the drug or health factors with the patients who used the drug could be to blame.

Estimates suggest more than 80 percent of all active ingredients used by U.S. drug manufacturers come from abroad. But the FDA only inspects foreign drug plants about once every 13 years, compared to every two to three years for domestic plants, according to the Government Accountability Office. The GAO finds that China's drug plants are inspected once every 30 to 40 years.
 
The FDA plans to establish permanent overseas offices in numerous countries, including China, to help address the problem. More foreign plant inspections than ever were conducted by the FDA in 2007, dedicating about $10 million to the process. But GAO analysis said it would cost the FDA $67 to $71 million each year to inspect the thousands of foreign plants on the agency's priority list.
 
Still, von Eschenbach told the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations that in heparin's case, even if the Chinese plant had been inspected years ago, "we would not have detected that contamination" because the test to detect it was just developed.

The authorities said they believed the goods were sold at flea markets, street fairs and other places in the region. They added that they were still investigating the operation, which they said they believed had links to China. The police said they seized records of money transferred to banks in China.

From the Washington Post:

The companies are liable for distributing the tainted product even if they had no direct knowledge of the risk because they were negligent in not ensuring the toothpaste was safe, Supervising Deputy City Attorney Jerry Baik said.

Ghermezi said he had not seen the charges but was shocked by the filing. All the adulterated toothpaste was voluntarily pulled from shelves and from his Vernon, Calif., company's inventory eight months ago and destroyed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last month, he said.

"Everything we had was destroyed by the FDA," Ghermezi said. "I thought the file had been closed."

Ghermezi said he supplied the toothpaste to Vernon Sales, also based in Vernon. He said his company never knowingly sold adulterated toothpaste and thought the product had FDA approval.

"We didn't know of the ingredients of the toothpaste," he said. "We don't [have] any intention of hurting people."

(Thanks to dsavlin!)

"Charges filed against LA importers over toxic Chinese toothpaste" [Chicago Tribune]
"Criminal Charges Filed Over Poisonous Toothpaste" [Washington Post]
"Los Angeles City's Chief Prosecutor, Along With FDA, Files Criminal Charges Against Two Local Companies For Toxic Toothpaste Import " [RTT News]

RELATED
"Man Who Discovered Tainted Toothpaste Located, Interviewed"
The saga of the tainted toothpaste on Consumerist
(Photo: Janmi_)

The Columbus Dispatch says that an estimated 7 million dental appliances in the U.S. come from foreign labs, and make up about one-fifth of the market. A Columbus television news station decided to test a few:

Working with a Columbus dentist, WBNS ordered eight supposedly identical dental crowns from four labs in China, the source of a growing number of dental implants used by U.S. dentists. The labs are regular advertisers in industry publications distributed in the United States.

A certified testing facility in Cleveland found that the porcelain veneer of one of the crowns contained lead — 210 parts per million.

Until the results are available, the ADA says patients with concerns might want to ask their dentists these questions:

• Do you make your own crowns, bridges, etc., or buy them from a dental laboratory?
• Where is the lab located?
• Does the lab outsource crowns or bridges to a foreign country?
• If the lab is in a foreign country, does it provide written documentation that it is registered with the FDA?
• Does the lab provide written documentation that it uses FDA-approved materials?
• Have you noticed any problems with the crowns, bridges or other items produced by this lab?

Any dentists or dental lab techs lurking? Have you heard anything about this topic?

(Thanks to Cassandra!)

"Lead might be lurking in dental work" [Columbus Dispatch]
(Photo: greefus groinks)

According to the L.A. Times, the Sino-Italian job takes three forms:

• Straight up counterfeiters who slap brand names on cheap knockoffs.
• Importers who ship shoes and bags from Asia to Italy for an extra buckle and the "Made In Italy" label.
• Factory owners who use illegal Chinese workers to make nominally Italian goods.

For the big-name clothing labels, Chinese-staffed workshops provide an important way of keeping costs down by supplying cheaply and quickly made purses, shoes and other products. It helps the fashion houses compete and, many argue, it's better than the alternative: moving all production offshore.

But for legions of Italian craftsmen and -women who try to maintain painstaking but costly old-style practices, the cheaper Chinese labor is deadly.

"It's a crazy competition. In fact, you can't compete," said Andrea Calistri, whose third-generation family business has been making handbags for top designers from voluptuous leather and buttery suede for more than half a century.

" 'Made in Italy,' " he said, "means tradition, know-how and standards. . . . It means not only made in Italy, but made in the Italian way."

The 'Made in Italy' label: Read the fine print [L.A. Times]
(AP Photo/Greg Baker)

"Our customers have voiced concerns about products from this region and we have listened," Trader Joe's spokeswoman Alison Mochizuki said in a statement.

"All single ingredient food items sourced from mainland China are scheduled to be out of our stores by April 1," she said.

"We will continue to source products from other regions until our customers feel as confident as we do about the quality and safety of Chinese products."

US store chain cuts sales of food from China [Yahoo!]
(Photo:Payton Chung)

From Reuters:

The FDA's proposal for a China office appeared in U.S. President George W. Bush's budget proposal for fiscal 2009, which was released on Monday.

It underscores the administration's belief that it "cannot inspect its way" to safe food across the country. The FDA now inspects only a tiny share of the food under its authority.

Under the president's budget proposal, FDA food safety spending at the FDA would grow by less than 10 percent, focusing on heading off problems with contaminated or otherwise unsafe food before it enters the marketplace.

FDA looks for "boots on the ground" in China [Reuters]

China's Inflation Hits American Price Tags [NYT]
(Photo: DCvision2006)

Many Chinese companies were unfamiliar with the concept: One furniture maker asked for kosher certification, drawing a polite rebuff. Another facility asked to get certified as kosher even though it was smoking eel on site, a kosher no-no. The company was turned down; it is now building a separate, kosher-only facility.

And many companies weren't ready for the grilling the rabbis gave them on their first visits to their plants, seeing it as a sign of distrust. "In China, everything works on relationships," said Grunberg of the Orthodox Union, which certifies more than 400,000 products worldwide.

Whether kosher foods are actually less likely to be contaminated with, say, E. coli bacteria remains up for debate. While research is scant in this area, experts say it makes sense that kosher food could be safer because it's more closely monitored. "Jews aren't allowed to ingest bugs, so produce must go through a thorough washing and checking to ensure that no bugs are found within the leaves or on the surface of the fruit or vegetable," says Moshe Elefant, a rabbi and chief operating officer of the Orthodox Union KOSHER, a kosher certification organization based in New York. But bacteria can remain even after this type of washing, so consumers can't assume they're less likely to get food poisoning with bagged spinach marked kosher than with a conventional bag.

The same caveat applies to poultry and beef. A salting process that removes blood from the meat has antibacterial effects, but salmonella and E. coli can still survive, says Joe Regenstein, a professor of food science who teaches a course on Jewish and Muslim food laws at Cornell University. Kosher beef, though, is much less likely to contain the misshapen proteins that cause mad cow disease, rare as that is, probably because the animals are slaughtered young, before the disease sets in.

Health-conscious consumers put their faith in kosher certification [The Globe and Mail via BarfBlog]
China going kosher after recalls [Mercury News]
(Photo: nicasaurusrex)

But cadmium batteries can be hazardous to make. In southern China, Wang Fengping worked for years in plants that produced cadmium batteries for the likes of Mattel Inc., Toys "R" Us Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Like hundreds of her colleagues, Ms. Wang regularly inhaled the toxic red cadmium dust that filled the air in the plant.

Now, at 45, Ms. Wang is often too weak to walk. Her kidneys have failed, and her doctors have identified cadmium poisoning as the likely culprit. About 400 other workers at her former employer, Hong Kong-based GP Batteries International Ltd., have been found to harbor unsafe levels of cadmium, a toxic metal like mercury and lead that can cause kidney failure, lung cancer and bone disease.

Some toy-makers, like Hasbro, have eschewed the use of cadmium in their products because of their toil on the environment and the health of the workers who manufacture the batteries. Mattel, however, still uses cadmium batteries, claiming that they have "performance advantages." Walmart says it doesn't buy or use cadmium batteries produced by the manufacturer that employed Ms. Wang, but declined to comment further.

Toxic Factories Take Toll On China's Labor Force [Wall Street Journal] (Thanks, Aaron!)
Ms. Wang's Blog [Yahoo!]

The measure, effective June 1, eliminates the flimsiest bags and forces stores to charge for more durable bags, making China the latest nation to target plastic bags in a bid to cut waste and conserve resources.

Beijing residents appeared to take the ban in stride, reflecting rising environmental consciousness and concern over rocketing oil prices.

"If we can reduce waste and save resources, then it's good both for us and the whole world," said college student Xu Lixian, who was buying tangerines out of cardboard boxes at a sidewalk stall.

Using reusable bags is a good idea. Banning them. Um. Not really our thing.

Your thoughts?

Shoppers: It's BYO as China bans plastic bags [USAToday] (Thanks, Rob!)
(Photo:amyadoysie)

Luckily for all of us, United Airlines responded with the following (emphasis ours):

"We are taking this matter seriously and have begun a full investigation with the authorities to determine how this happened and ensure it is resolved."

"China scurries to contain mice on U.S. flight" [Reuters]
"Live mice found on U.S. flight to China" [Xinhua]
(Photo: Getty)

We were kicked off the 747-400 because they refused to allow a car seat on board and my two year old son was incapable of staying in his coffin-like seat. We were told we were a security threat, threatened to be left behind and accused of not following crew instructions.

We were flying back from China on a vacation that was business related. I had my wife, Christine, our baby sitter Kathleen and our two boys, Max, age five (5) and Rex age two (2). We flew to China by Cathay Pacific. We took on our child's FAA approved car seat and with Rex strapped in he slept the entire way to Hong Kong. Such was not be the same on the way back.

We flew business class. I paid nearly $20,000 just for the tickets. Full fare each way. So we get aboard the new 747-400 and the seats are arranged in a herringbone pattern. Walls separate each seat from each other like little coffins. I put the car seat in and began to get Rex in his seat when I am told no car seats allowed. I explained that Rex is 2. He does not have the mental capacity to sit alone and the seats that they have would strangle him or allow him to unbuckle himself. There is a three point harness on the 747-400 that is at the right level to strangle children. When I had no luck in demonstrating that the seat was FAA approved and was the only safe way to fly, two fellow passengers stepped in: an attorney from Fulbright & Jaworski and another passenger who heads a hedge fund came to our aid to negotiate with the airline. I took the car seat out as they requested and then sat Rex in his seat - as if right on cue, he reclined the entire chair flat and unbuckled himself - we did this three times.

First class seats that had forward facing chairs were not offered to us.

After 30 minutes the captain eventually comes down and seemed to agree that the car seat was the safest. Yet his crew told him the rules, the rules must be followed (I guess that is what you get in a communist country) so faced with a crew who refused to allow us to use the car seat - the captain takes a vote of his crew - they kicked us off.

We are taken from the plane and not told of making any new arrangements. My wife is crying, my son Max who loved the seats was traumatized. Rex was loving the attention and I was left feeling helpless. I was, as father the guy who remains calm, who has the answers and relies on logic and reason - yet, here I was thousands of miles away from justice and a bill of rights and totally at the mercy of the Cathay Pacific manager, Andrew Man. I was essentially alone and had to put up the face of cool, calm and collect Jim Daily. It was all that I could bear. I stood at the window looking out at the 747 as it pulled away while surrounded by Cathay Pacific employees.

The Airport Duty Manager, Mr. Andrew Man was introduced to us. In our conversation he threatened my wife and I. He told us we were a security threat - that we had violated an order of the crew (he never told us what since we followed everything they asked us to do) He told us we were not going to get on any other flights and continued to claim we were somehow a threat -to date we know of no order that we failed to follow.

I believe that people need to know that the Boeing 747-400 is unsafe for travel by children. That the airline has no capability of providing for a toddler and no answer to the problem of an incompetent individual sitting aboard their plane. The airline allowed our son to fly in his car seat from the USA - they sold our son the ticket - then without our knowledge, without any input from us or warning to us at anytime, they refused him the only safe way to fly. Further they had all sorts of rules, but no common sense.

Threatening my family because they had no answer - how does a toddler fly if not on his car seat strapped in so he cannot let himself out?

Here is the e-mail I wrote while in their custody awaiting another flight...they did get us out on another aircraft that had all forward facing seats.

Dear Mr. Man:

Thank you for speaking to me after our my wife Christine, son Maxwell age (5), son Rexford age (2) and our baby sitter, Kathleen D. were told to disembark from the plane because our son Rexford would not be able to sit in his car seat and risked injury to himself and others by his being placed into his seat unattended.

You have advised me that I, my wife, our sons or our baby sitter violated a safety regulation by not following the instructions of captain or crew. The actual allegation of what we did or did not do was not clear to me.

Nevertheless I disagree with any such claim and would appreciate a copy of any such report of the incident so that I may address such claim directly.

Please forward a copy of any such report to my office. I reiterate that we followed all directions from the crew. When they told us to stow the car seat, we did. The delay, if any, was that our son kept getting out of his seat. This did not make us feel that our child was safe in such situation and we addressed that with your crew and the captain. Our son Rex sat alone in the seat and unbuckled himself no less than three times while your crew was there. We were never informed before boarding that car seats were not allowed and we do not believe that your plane was designed for children age 2 to sit in business class - the seats are unsafe at any speed. A child is subject to strangulation or decapitation by sitting in such seat. Car seats are the safest seat for them. Your company should revisit its policy in this regard.

We look forward to an uneventful flight out. The entire affair has left us exhausted, stressed and saddened by the entire experience. We hope that some good will come of this.

Please contact me if you are interested in any further information concerning this matter. Our home phone number is [redacted]

Best Regards,

James D.

The U.S. also enjoys far greater access to the Chinese market than the other way around:

When it comes to foreign direct investment — or the corporate presence of the U.S. in China versus China's presence in the U.S. — the U.S. enjoys an overwhelming advantage over the mainland. In 2006, for instance, U.S. foreign investment in China on a historic cost basis totaled $22.2 billion, a figure well in excess of China's investment stakes in the U.S. The latter totaled just $600 million last year — a fraction (2.7%) of U.S. investment in China.

Read all ten facts about Chinese-U.S. trade at Kiplinger.

"The Top 10 Things Every Investor Should Know About U.S.-China Relations" [Kiplinger]
(Photo: Getty)

Chinese Pringles are usually made in mainland China, and are potassium bromate free; there's no information on how these U.S. ones made it to their docks.

We're curious to see what China will come up with for the next round of the Toxic Import War. Don't mess with us, China—we have Twinkies, which our top scientists are still struggling to chemically decode.

"Pringles taken off sale in Hong Kong in cancer scare" [Earthtimes.org] [Thanks to Nathan!]
(Photo: jetalone) (We know the Pringles can is probably not using the right ideograms for Hong Kong supermarkets, but the point is that it says "Devil" on it, and we are talking about a U.S. product.)

Automakers are currently required to achieve fuel efficiency of 27.5 mpg for cars, and 22.2 mpg for light trucks, minivans, and SUVs. The Senate voted to raise fuel efficiency standards in June, but opposition from Detroit's favorite spokesman, Michigan Congressman John Dingell, delayed House assent until now.

The package nearly fell apart this week when Mr. Dingell insisted on leaving sole authority to regulate automobile mileage standards with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, an arm of the Transportation Department. That would have weakened the power of the Environmental Protection Agency and the states, led by California, to regulate auto emissions of carbon dioxide, which are in large measure a function of the amount of fuel burned.

Federal court rulings this year have decided this so-called pre-emption issue in favor of the E.P.A. and the states, decisions that Mr. Dingell hoped to undo by Congressional action. The traffic safety administration has had authority over fuel-efficiency standards since 1975 but has not imposed any significant increase since 1985. The E.P.A. is currently writing rules to comply with a Supreme Court ruling this year that gave it the authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions and is weighing an application by California and 14 other states to set their own emissions standard.

The authority of the E.P.A. to regulate tailpipe emissions and the right of California and other states to set their own, higher standards were considered deal-breakers by Ms. Pelosi and her fellow California Democrat, Senator Dianne Feinstein. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Republican governor of California, weighed in late in the week to tell negotiators that he would oppose the bill if the Mr. Dingell's preemption language stayed in.

Mrs. Pelosi and Democratic leaders in the Senate rejected Mr. Dingell's preemption effort, but softened the blow by agreeing to allow the car companies to retain a credit for vehicles capable of running on a blend of gasoline and ethanol. That credit was set to expire in 2008 but now will begin to decline in 2014 and be eliminated entirely by 2020.

Lawmakers Set Deal on Raising Fuel Efficiency [NYT]
(Photo: *USB*)

This doesn't end the heavy scrutiny China faces in the EU for its shoddy safety record—the EU says it will continue to expect detailed reports every 3 to 4 months.

"To be honest we didn't expect such a positive response from the Chinese authorities," another Commission official said.

"But it just shows that the carrot and stick approach works. You cannot just go around banning everything from China. It would be ludicrous for both the industry and consumer, who would end up having to pay more in the run-up to Christmas.

"The two significant moves by China have been to increase their checks 10-fold, right down to regional level and the withdrawal of thousands of export licences," the official added.

China Daily says that used condoms are being recycled and sold as hair bands in China. The condom bands are cheaper then bands that were not formerly prophylactics. The recycled condoms are quite popular, but risk infecting users with the diseases that they were meant to prevent.

"People could be infected with AIDS, warts or other diseases if they hold the rubber bands or strings in their mouths while weaving their hair into plaits or buns," the paper quoted a local dermatologist as saying.

That's just nasty. We wonder if this story will turn out like the cardboard food scandal.

Used condoms winding up in people's hair [News.com.au via Digg]
(Photo:Amyadoyzie)