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The World Health Organization FCTC took another step forward in May at the second meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB 2). At the beginning of the week, the prognosis was gloomy. Tobacco control activists and experts alike were shaking heads about elements of the negotiating text prepared by the chair of the process in January, Mr Celso Amorin. A proposal to ban advertising targeted at under 18s drew especially hostile fire. The text also conflicted with the findings of a WHO expert meeting on product regulation in several places and there was excessive focus on youth prevention measures and weak anti-smuggling provisions. On top of that, the text proposed that “health” should carry the burden of proof in case of “trade” conflicts—subordinating the FCTC to the World Trade Organization agreements. How such a departure from the evidence base could find its way into a document central to the global development of tobacco control remains unexplained. During the meeting non-governmental organisations (NGOs) made representations to the WHO's director general, …

Objective—To describe the extent of the tobacco industry involvement in establishing international standards for tobacco and tobacco products and the industry influence on the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Methods—Analysis of tobacco industry documents made public as part of the settlement of the Minnesota Tobacco Trial and the Master Settlement Agreement. Search words included “ISO”, “CORESTA”, “Barclay”, “compensation and machine smoking”, “tar and nicotine deliveries”, and the name of key players, in diVerent combinations. Results—It is clear that the tobacco industry, through the Cooperation Centre for Scientific Research Relative to Tobacco (CORESTA), play a major role in determining the scientific evidence and suggesting the standards that are eventually adopted as international standards for tobacco and tobacco products in several areas, including the measurement of cigarette tar and nicotine yield. Conclusions—ISO’s tobacco and tobacco products standards are not adequate to guide tobacco products regulatory policies, and no health claims can be made based on ISO’s tobacco products standards. There is an urgent need for tobacco control advocates and groups worldwide to be more involved with the work of the ISO, both directly and through their national standardisation organisations. (Tobacco Control 2001;10:96‐104)

Redheads are the largest selling brand of matches in Australia. The famous red haired woman logo first appeared on their matchboxes in 1946 and has gone through several incarnations since. The Australian manufacturing company was taken over by the tobacco company Swedish Match in 1998. Swedish Match's website (http://www.swedishmatch.com/eng/) shows the company manufactures nasal and oral snuff, and cigars, pipe tobacco, and matches. Redheads, the largest selling brand of matches in Australia. The manufacturers launched …

In the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement, the tobacco industry agreed to halt all marketing and promotion activities directed at children in the USA. Recently, however, Philip Morris may well have found a clever way to circumvent the spirit of this agreement. The Philip Morris Youth Prevention programme has been used as a vehicle through which to expose potentially 28 million school children to the name of Philip Morris on a daily basis—within the safety of their own classrooms. Since spring 2000, Philip Morris has been a partner in the distribution of colourful book covers to schools around the USA (elementary, middle and high schools). The Philip Morris covers …

Mitarbeiter stellen heute eine wichtige Wissensquelle im Unternehmen dar, indem sie nicht nur Wissen dokumentieren, sondern auch anderen Mitarbeitern direkt bei der Problemlösung helfen. Infolge von Dezentralisierung oder Unternehmensvernetzung zum Zweck der Kooperation von Unternehmen verringert sich die Transparenz im Unternehmen, welche Mitarbeiter Experte in welchen Gebieten sind. Zweck von IT-Systemen zur Expertensuche ist es, Mitarbeitern einen einfachen Zugang zu Experten in bestimmten Themenfeldern anzubieten. Dieses Paper beschreibt das am Fraunhofer IPA entwickelte Xpertfinder-Verfahren, das zur Erstellung der Expertenprofile explizite Wissensformen wie z. B. E-Mail-Kommunikationsdaten oder News angemeldeter Benutzer analysiert. Im Gegensatz zu den bekannten Verfahren bietet Xpertfinder die Möglichkeit der Expertensuche in Kooperationen. Über die Vereinbarung von Kooperationsthemenfeldern lassen sich die Gebiete definieren, in denen eine unternehmensübergreifende Expertensuche stattfinden soll. Maßnahmen zum Schutz personenbezogener Daten sowie zukünftige Forschungsfelder werden angesprochen.

The story so far: BAT's the John Player Gold Leaf , a sailing boat bearing the name of a cigarette brand, having sailed from London on a “voyage of discovery” (otherwise known as a massive and cynical cigarette promotion, showing utter disdain for the health of people in some of the world's poorest countries), failed to dock at one of its Sri Lankan destinations following demonstrations there by health advocates (see Tobacco Control 2000; 9 :9–10), and turned northwest for Bangladesh. But here, too, the sponsors were in for a big surprise. In June, health advocates in Bangladesh were alarmed to see advertising for the “voyage of discovery”, BAT's huge multinational promotional campaign for its John Player Gold Leaf cigarette brand. A development group, Working for a Better Bangladesh, realising that this campaign was too big for any one organisation to tackle alone, called a meeting of organisations known to work in tobacco control. The National Non- Smokers' Forum attended, and the two groups agreed that a coalition of anti-tobacco groups be formed to address the issue. In August and September, more groups came forward and attended meetings to discuss what to do about the voyage, and possible collaboration in other areas of tobacco control. Outrage at the advertising campaign was universal, perhaps matched only by a sense of impotence in dealing with the multinational tobacco company, which in 1996 bought the controlling share of the former Bangladesh monopoly, …

The world's largest tobacco company, Philip Morris, came under fire once again towards the end of last year, this time for listing itself in a corporate promotional brochure as sponsoring the Red Nose Day Foundation, Australia's largest research charity supporting research on sudden infant death syndrome …

To make the public in general and shareholders in particular aware of the true character of tobacco companies is an important part of a comprehensive tobacco control strategy. This report describes an activity carried out in May 1997 at the annual shareholders’ meeting of the Swedish Match company. We owe the idea to an Australian ‘Tobacco Company Alternative Report’ of 1987.