From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1998:

Former Fox TV reporters
Steve Wilson and Jane Akre, a husband-and-wife
team who worked out of
WTVT-TV in Tampa, have reportedly
sued the station for breach of contract,
alleging that they were forced off the job
in November 1997 by the ongoing
refusal of management to air an investigative
report pertaining to the use of
bovine growth hormone to stimulate
cows to produce more milk. The report,
quoting scientists who have associated
BGH use with increased risk of cancer
in milk-drinkers, was originally to have
aired on February 24, 1997, and had
already been promoted to viewers.
According to Joseph A. Davis, senior
writer for Environment Writer, newsletter
of the National Safety Council
Environmental Health Center, the
investigative report was killed by a
February 21, 1997 letter from an attorney
representing Monsanto Inc., the
major producer of BGH, to Fox News
CEO Roger Ailes. Wrote Davis, “The
last paragraph began, ‘There is a lot at
stake in what is going on in Florida, not
only for Monsanto, but also for Fox
News and its owner,” Rupert Murdoch,
who had purchased the station just a
month earlier.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1998:

SALT LAKE CITY– –Douglas Joshua
Ellerman, 19, who pleaded guilty in February to
three of 16 felony charges filed against him re the
March 1997 pipebombing of the Fur Breeders
Agricultural Cooperative building and trucks at
Sandy, Utah, has reportedly not been seen since
April 30. Ellerman was to appear in court on May 6
to receive a sentencing date.
“In a plea bargain designed to spare him
from a possible life sentence,” wrote Joe Costanzo
of the Deseret News, “Ellerman agreed to cooperate
with investigators who are working to identify others
involved in the bombing. Prosecutors were prepared
to recommend that Ellerman receive less than
the minimum five-year sentence. But word of his
cooperation reached members of the Animal
Liberation Front, who [according to family members] apparently scared Ellerman into flight.”

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1998:

Humane enforcement

The Suffolk County SPCA
on May 3 arrested Thomas Capriola,
27, of Islip Terrace, New York, after
learning from an informant that he produced
so-called “squish” videos under
the business name Foot Fetish Films.
“He has girls wear high heel shoes and
crush mice, rats, guinea pigs, lizards,
and turtles. Either the girls do it, or he
dresses as a girl himself and does it. He
advertises for models. They just don’t
realize what is involved until they get
there,” SC/SPCA detective A d a m
G r o s s told Tom Demoretcky of N e w
York Newsday. Raiding Capriola’s
home, police and the SC/SPCA investigators
reportedly confiscated 36 videotapes,
a small amount of marijuana,
eight weapons, and 10 white mice. U.S.
humane investigators and Scotland Yard
had been investigating Internet distribution
of “squish” videos allegedly sold by
Capriola and one Jeff Vilencia, of
Squish Productions in California, for
approximately one year. Royal SPCA
inspector Martin Daly recently told
Cassandra Brown of the London
Sunday Telegraph that the video purchasers
have frequently also turned out
to be buyers of child pornography.

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