Cigarette Packaging: Not Kool anymore

Marlboro Box Defaced in Australia Where Future Is Now - Bloomberg: "Well, the future of cigarette packs is on display in Australia, and it’s not that pretty: large, graphic images of gangrenous limbs and cancer victims, with brand names printed in a uniform font on a background legally defined as “drab dark brown.”
Tobacco products complying with the world’s first plain- packaging laws have started arriving in stores, as an Oct. 1 manufacturing ban on the country’s A$10 billion ($10 billion) tobacco industry comes into force, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its Oct. 8 issue. While a U.S. court in August blocked the first change to that country’s tobacco health warnings in more than two decades, more stringent plain- packaging rules like Australia’s are already being examined in the U.K., New Zealand, Turkey, and the European Union."

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India:bye bye bicycles

Bicycle are eco-friendly and cheap, but Indians won’t swap cars for them - The Economic Times: "There are now reports that Italians are even resurrecting rusty models from their garages and getting them all spruced up rather than buying a second car. If the famously car-crazy Italians are opting for La Bicicletta instead of more racy accoutrements of La Dolce Vita, the world may well be wheeling round to a different mode of living, not merely transport.

But not India. Despite the unhappiness over inexorably rising fuel prices, the chances of a bicycle movement taking off as an alternative here, however, are far slimmer than the average potential buyer. Though India is the world's second-largest producer of bicycles, no matter how you peddle it, long commutes to work and leisure places, not to mention frequently inclement weather and road conditions, will stack up convincingly against the advantages of self-propelled two-wheelers, even in these somewhat straitened times."

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B Corp: the certification details

Are B Corps redefining business for the 21st century? | Guardian Sustainable Business | Guardian Professional: "Individuals have ideas. The good ones attract followers. The right followers generate a movement. The transition from one to another is not always easy to identify, and harder still to explain.

Has the B Corp idea arrived? It's impossible to say for sure, but Andrew Kassoy must be quietly confident. More than 620 companies have signed up. Some, such as the clothing retailer Patagonia, are seriously big players. Even global statesmen are singing B Corp's praises.

"We don't know him or anything", says Kassoy, in reference to former US president Bill Clinton, who recently waxed lyrical about the B Corp concept during a speech at Oxford University. "I guess someone must have been talking to him about us."..

B Corp, or B Corporation to give it its full name, is a response to this sea change. At its most basic, it's a certification scheme. Companies sign up, undergo a self-assessment and have their social and environmental credentials independently verified. If their policies and performance pass muster, they are allowed to join the B Corp club.

Kassoy, who came up with the original B Corp idea five years ago with two course mates from Stanford University, accepts that there's already "an alphabet soup of certifications" out there. Isn't this just another? He insists not. His, he says, is "comprehensive".

Kingfisher difference between beer and airline: beer is the one flying high

Kingfisher Airlines declares partial lockout, suspends flights till Thursday - The Economic Times: "MUMBAI: Kingfisher Airlines, late Monday evening, declared a "partial lockout with immediate effect", ascribing the move to a series of "protracted and unabated incidents of violence, criminal intimidation, assault, wrongful restraint" by a section of non-management engineering staff.

The email from Chief Executive Officer Sanjay Agarwal, sent out at 10 pm to his colleagues, said the "illegal actions", including the strike, has forced the airline to ground all its aircraft. "The partial lockout is declared with immediate effect in respect of the non-management employees belonging to the engineering and flight operations departments," Agarwal said in his email. "

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