KFC drags down May results for Yum! Brands in China.

Honest Tea predicts over $100 million in sales in 2013.

Myspace runs first TV ad in revival bid.

Airbus takeoff of A350 pressures Boeing.

Amazon's Kindle debuts in India. 

Apollo Tyres of India buys Cooper Tires for $2.5 billion.

Audi develops "road frustration index" as it sees new sedan variant becoming best-selling version of its A3.

BMW is sued by US over criminal background checks in hiring.

Burger King faces PR mess in razor-blade mishap.

Cosi CEO resigns.

ESPN pulls plug on 3-D channel.Continue reading...

P&G makes race to succeed Lafley clearer with executive moves.

Apple plans to sell audio ads on rumored iRadio.

Verizon sees US government track phone records of its customers, report says.

Chili's is pleased with rollout of pizza and flatbreads.

Disney puts seven Radio Disney stations up for sale.

Edmunds.com launches price guarantee for online shoppers.

GM rejoins S&P 500 as US Treasury plans to sell more shares.

General Mills gets OK reception for potentially "controversial" ad for Cheerios.

Kimpton Hotels holds pet photo contest.

McDonald's experiments with breakfast and dinner after midnight.Continue reading...

Following global anti-GMO marches and the discovery of unapproved GMO wheat in an Oregon field, the latest blow to Monsanto has been dealt by its own governance. The company, which manufactures genetically-modified organisms announced that it would cease its GMO lobbying efforts in Europe as it faces increasing opposition from the European Union and local farmers. 

"We are no longer working on lobbying for more cultivation in Europe," said Brandon Mitchner, representative for Monsanto’s European branch, Tageszeitung in an interview, according to RT.com. "Currently we do not plan to apply for the approval of new genetically modified crops. The reason is, among other things, low demand of the farmers.” Monsanto Germany spokeswoman Ursula Luttmer-Ouazane added, "We've understood that such plants don't have any broad acceptance in European societies. It is counterproductive to fight against windmills."  

Most recently, Austria, Bulgaria, France, Greece, Hungary, Luxembourg, Poland and Italy have joined the EU in wanting to ban the cultivation of GM crops, invoking an environmental protection provision knows as the "Safeguard Clause." Monsanto competitors Bayer CropScience, BASF and Syngenta have already pulled out of the German market due to widespread opposition.Continue reading...

Zynga cuts staff to pre-IPO level.

Lululemon brings back yoga pants.

Monsanto plans to quit lobbying on GMO issues in Europe.

Apple is accused by prosecutors of helping drive up e-book prices.

Birchbox rebrands its beauty and lifestyle subscription service. 

Cadillac posts biggest sales surge since 1976.

Chipotle expands ShopHouse Asian concept.

Dunkin' Donuts to roll out glazed-doughnut sandwich nationwide.

eBay forms partnership with India's Snapdeal.

FedEx parks jets sooner to cut costs as economy slows.Continue reading...

The US Department of Agriculture is investigating the appearance of unapproved genetically engineered wheat plants on a farm in Oregon. The seeds, developed by Monsanto, are resistent to Roundup herbicide and were tested in large swaths across the US from 1994 through 2004 but are not approved for mass production. 

The farmer in Oregon tried, unsuccessfully, to kill the wheat that was growing like a weed in all the wrong places. Mindboggled, he later sent samples to Oregon State University for testing, which found the Roundup-resistant gene. The resistant strain apparently escaped the protocols set up by US regulators to control it, which has set off concern among environmentalists and consumers alike as the US is currently embroiled in a controversial GMO labelling battle. 

"These requirements are leaky and there is just no doubt about that. There is a fundamental problem with the system," Doug Gurian-Sherman, scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists told Reuters. Indeed, a 2005 report by the Office of Inspector General for the USDA criticized government oversight of field tests of GMO crops and listed 21 "major incidents of noncompliance" from 1995 through 2011, five of which involved Monsanto.Continue reading...

When Tami Canal created a “March Against Monsanto” Facebook page back in late February, she would have been happy to get a couple of thousand people to come out and make some noise against the seed-manufacturing giant that has been under fire for creating genetically modified plants. 

Instead, hundreds of thousands of Camal’s compatriots came out to march in over 52 different countries to show their displeasure with Monsanto, according to the Associated Press. They dressed up as bananas and devils and carried signs with slogans such as “Real Food 4 Real People” and the punning “Give Bees a Chance.”

It was also a sign that Canal's movement had arrived with global support for Occupy Monsanto as a brand-specific off-shoot of the Occupy Wall Street brand of activism.Continue reading...

Three companies control most of the seed business in the world and one of them is Monsanto, the Missouri-based agricultural company infamous for producing genetically-modified crops and genetically-engineered seeds. The company's resistant seeds were of top concern in a recent patent lawsuit against an Indiana farmer. Not surprisingly, the Supreme Court came down on the independent farmer and declared Monsanto a win. 

The farmer, Vernon Hugh Bowman, purchased Monsanto soybean seeds that are resistant to weed killer and planted them one year. It was his actions after that year that got him into trouble. “Bowman v Monsanto revolved around what Bowman contended was a legal loophole in his license agreement with Monsanto: farmers are allowed to sell the second-generation seeds to grain elevators, which, in turn, are permitted to sell a mixture of undifferentiated seeds as ‘commodity grain,’” Forbes reports. “In other words, he maintained he was legally allowed to buy Monsanto’s seeds cheaper from a grain elevator rather than directly from the company.”Continue reading...

The United States is currently the world's largest market for genetically modified organisms (GMO)—foods including soy milk, soup and breakfast cereals (made with soybeans), corn and other biotech crops manipulated to make them more resistant to insects and pesticides. 

The debate over GMO labeling for organisms genetically engineered by introducing changes into their DNA structure continues to grab the attention of consumers and brands, exacerbated by the November 2012 defeat of Prop 37, a mandatory labeling initiative introduced on the California ballot. Large corporations including PepsiCo and Monsanto spent millions of dollars against Prop 37 and it was defeated. 

Now Whole Foods Market is picking up the gauntlet and committing to full GMO transparency. Whole Foods—which made the announcement at the Natural Products Expo West—has committed to labelling all products in its U.S. and Canadian stores that contain genetically modified organisms by 2018.Continue reading...