Say it ain’t so! Whole Foods Market, the top U.S. organic foods retailer, has announced a recall of all the fresh ground beef it sold between June 2 and August 6 due to potential E. coli contamination. This significant event threatens to undermine the promise of the Whole Foods brand – that is, consumers may pay more for its products but can expect food that is fresher, healthier, and safer in return. Whole Foods said the ... Read More

With everyone putting down their daily newspapers and turning to the Internet as the primary source for news and information, world leaders, celebrities and corporations alike must find new avenues to capture people’s attention. Simply put, a high-profile placement in The Times is no longer enough to shape stories and change perceptions. It seems that Jordan’s Queen Rania has learned this lesson well – as she is the leading world leader in utilizing new media to ... Read More

They say that three’s the charm. Not for Australia’s Qantas Airways. Three widely reported safety incidents in as many weeks have passengers and Qantas employees concerned and Australian safety authorities on alert. Qantas is actually among the world’s safest air carriers, with not a single fatal accident in almost 90 years of commercial operation. But that was yesterday. Now, with three emergency landings one after another putting Qantas in the news, outgoing CEO Geoff Dixon admits ... Read More

The latest wave of disappointment in Apple’s iPhone 3G saga came with the launch of MobileMe a few weeks back. As users reported server outages and lost e-mails, Apple remained quiet – issuing a terse, one-sentence statement online and eventually sending an apology e-mail to subscribers a few days later. To date, the company still has not answered the increasingly angry demands for information from its loyal customers and has stiff-armed inquiring news media. As a ... Read More

With serious consumer-product recalls occurring in the United States seemingly every day, Congress is passing stricter regulations on everything from children’s toys to grandma’s walker, along with the toughest penalties in history for companies that violate them. The House and Senate are poised to approve the bill and President Bush is expected to quickly sign it. The measure bans lead in toys and requires the Consumer Product Safety Commission to hire more workers. The CPSC will ... Read More

As anyone who has been following the presidential campaign this year already knows, there is no bigger media superstar than the presumptive Democratic nominee, Barack Obama. While Obama’s superstar status may not translate into an election-day victory – John McCain played the role of media darling in 2000 and it didn’t help him beat George W. Bush – it is odd that on the same day the McCain campaign was complaining about press coverage, a feature ... Read More