US cigarette makers stopped from misleading descriptions
While the tobacco industry in the US is relieved that it would not have to spend billions of dollars on campaigns to stop people smoking cigarette makers will have to stop describing their products as "low tar," "light," "ultra light" or "mild," according to the decision of a long-running legal battle with the US Government.

US District Judge Gladys Kessler, said she could not force the tobacco makers to pay for $14 billion (£7.4 billion) of anti-smoking remedies because of an appeal ruling in a separate case that limited their financial liabilities. However, tobacco companies like Philip Morris USA, RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company and British American Tobacco, will have to change their labels, put all the documents used in the seven-year case on their websites until 2016 and take out television and full-page newspaper advertisements to explain the changes.

Judge Kessler said she found that the companies deliberately set out to "increase and perpetuate addiction. She said the big tobacco companies had systematically tried to hide the true effects of smoking from consumers, particularly through the marketing of so-called "light" cigarettes so as to discourage smokers from quitting. She said they suppressed research, destroyed documents and manipulated the use of nicotine so as to increase and perpetuate addiction.

The companies pursued profits "with little, if any, regard for individual illness and suffering, soaring health costs, or the integrity of the legal system," Judge Kessler said.

The ruling was the culmination of a civil case brought by the Department of Justice in 1999 after massive settlements made by the American tobacco industry to individual states in the 1990s. The cigarette firms paid about $246 billion (£130 billion) in compensation for deceiving customers about the harmful effects of smoking. The Government had prosecuted the companies under the Rico Act, anti-racketeering legislation introduced in the 1970s to extract large financial penalties from gangsters.

Officials at the Department of Justice had originally advised that the tobacco industry should pay $130 billion (£69 billion) to fund a national campaign to reduce the size of America's smoking population. Prosecutors had also wanted the court to impose fines on big cigarette companies if youth smoking rates failed to fall.
However, Judge Kessler ruled that she was bound by a February 2005 ruling of the US Court of Appeals that decided that the Government could not force the tobacco industry to pay any more for its bad behaviour in the past. Instead, the companies will just have to pick up the Government's estimated legal bill of around $140 million (£74 million).

In late afternoon trading, shares in Altria, the parent company of Philip Morris, gained over 3 percent, Reynolds rose over 2 percent, while Carolina Group, the owners of Lorillard Tobacco, another of the defendants, was up over 1 percent.
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Ryanair threatens to sue British Gov't
London: UK Budget airline Ryanair Holdings Plc has threatened to take legal action against the British government unless it meets its demands for relaxing airport security and improving staffing at overstretched airports within the next seven days.

Ryanair which cancelled many flights and registered a 10 percent drop in weekly bookings because of the terror alert that raised security levels on Aug. 10 wants the government to return passenger search requirements to pre-alert levels. It also wants the government to restore the hand luggage allowance for passengers leaving British airports and an assurance that military and police personnel would be released to help with airport security checks next time there is a major security alert. Ryanair said the alert had so far cost the carrier "a couple of million" euros in canceled flights and lost bookings. The government initially banned all hand luggage on flights out of Britain after it announced on Aug. 10 that it had thwarted a plan to blow up as many as 10 trans-Atlantic flights. It has since eased that ban, but some restrictions remain.
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