Free Republic

Today the Federal Trade Commission published a Federal Register notice seeking public comments on “marketing activities and expenditures of the food industry targeted toward children and adolescents.” Last November, Congress ordered the FTC to prepare a report on this subject by July 1 of this year. The FTC is now seeking “empirical data” and other relevant information for use in the report. A public comment request is unremarkable and generally unobjectionable. But the FTC's notice also states that [t]he FTC is interested in receiving publicly available information that can be used to prepare the report. However, because it is unlikely...

First commercial Moon landing gets go-ahead Small step for commercialization of Moon surface. The first private Moon landing has won government authorization. The decision opens the door to the commercialization of the Moon's surface. The US State Department and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have granted TransOrbital, Inc. of La Jolla, California, permission to send its TrailBlazer probe to map the surface of the Moon and photograph Earth. The launch is scheduled for June 2003 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. "The Moon is ripe for commercial development," says Dennis Laurie, head of TransOrbital. "It's a lot closer than...