Bits And Pieces

THE UGLY AMERICANS. Del Monte, Campbell's, Carnation, United Brands, Castle & Cooke, and other based agribiz giants are "warring with the landless peasants of the Third World", according to the Pacific News Service. The PNS reports that the monster corporations are expanding their $30 billion investment in overseas operations, forcing hundreds of thousands of peasants off the land . . . and then hiring the displaced people back as field hands and farm workers at artificially low wages. Guatemala, Honduras, the Philippines, and Mexico are specifically named as countries in which this activitywhich includes intimidation, political payoff, and "bulldozing people right off the land"—is now taking place.

THE SUN is as big as a million earths, the gas at its center is 8 times denser than gold, and this "average star" gives off energy equivalent to a million million megaton atom bombs every second. And that's just a few of the facts attractively presented in the new Hall of the Sun, at the American Museum-Hoyden Planetarium, 81st St. and Central Park West, New York, N.Y. 10024. Stop in and see it if you can.

IT COSTS $100 AN ACRE when men with hand tools clear firebreaks through California's Cleveland National Forest, $30 per acre when heavy machinery and herbicides are used . . . but nothing when goats are allowed to eat their way through the offending mountain mahogany and other undergrowth. The U.S. Forest Service now has 1,200 of the animals handling the job.

LAETRILE, WHICH SOME PEOPLE CLAIM CAN CURE CANCER, has long been outlawed in the United States by the Food and rug ministration. As of June 21, 1976howeverthe ban on the controversial B-17 treatment was lifted in at least one stateAlaskawith the passage of H.B. $81. Alaskan Governor Jay S. Hammond, who was under heavy pressure from the medical establishment to veto the bill, allowed it to become law without his signature. It remains to be seen, however, whether or not Laetrile is ever sold legally in the Last Frontier State: The substance still must be approved by the Alaska Medical Board.