By Chris Burritt

Altria Group Inc., the world’s largest tobacco company, may announce plans this week to spin off its international unit, bowing to investors who favor faster overseas growth and reduced exposure to smokers’ lawsuits.

The odds are seven in 10 that Altria’s board will decide to split off Philip Morris International after directors meet Aug. 29, Filippe Goossens, a Credit Suisse analyst in New York, wrote in a note to investors last week.

“The best case is to spin Philip Morris International,” Cambiar Investors LLC President Brian Barish said Aug. 10. The Denver-based firm managed $10 billion, including 3.1 million Altria shares, as of June.
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By JIMMY SETTLE

Dry, hot weather over the past couple of weeks allowed area farmers to make good progress with topping and harvesting tobacco, according to surveys from the Tennessee Agricultural Statistics Service.

The annual tobacco harvest was progressing on schedule to a week ahead of last year, with the crop rated in mostly fair-to-good condition, state officials said.
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By ALAN BAVLEY

Ever find yourself lounging in your nonsmoking hotel room when you get the urge to light up?

Or how about those times when you’ve been in that rooftop pool overlooking the Hollywood Hills, where it’s hard to keep your cigarettes lit?

According to the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., those are perfect occasions to break out the Camel Snus, a new tobacco product being test-marketed in Kansas City.
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By Chris Torres

HARRISBURG, Pa. — Tobacco companies have been ordered to compensate Pennsylvania and Maryland farmers millions of dollars in lost profits as a result of a recent court judgement in North Carolina.

The ruling marks the end of nearly three years of litigation, which started as a result of a Congressional act passed in 2004 that tobacco companies argued excluded them from making compensatory payments to Pennsylvania and Maryland tobacco farmers.

Under the 1999 Tobacco Growers Trust Agreement, three major tobacco companies; Philip Morris, USA, Inc., R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, and Lorillard Tobacco Company, agreed to compensate tobacco farmers in 13 states, including Pennsylvania and Maryland, for lost profits as a result of a decline in cigarette consumption.
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Trading standards bosses in Preston are cracking down on counterfeit cigarettes.

Officials say a large number of fakes are flooding the UK market and more than half the illegal cigarettes that are seized by trading standards officers are counterfeit.

Imitations of well-known brands of cigarettes and rolling tobacco are not regulated and imported in almost identical packaging which can be almost undetectable to the smoker.

Fake cigarettes can have up to three times the legal limit of tar and nicotine found in genuine cigarettes, as well as many unknown substances including arsenic.
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Illinois Supreme Court denied requests that would have reopened a case filed by the state’s smokers of “light” cigarettes against Philip Morris USA, according to a court document.

The 4-2 ruling, posted on the court’s Web site on Wednesday, stamps out efforts by plaintiffs to resurrect the failed case against the largest U.S. cigarette maker, a unit of Altria Group Inc.

Plaintiffs in the case had sued the company on behalf of Illinois residents who bought light cigarettes since the introduction of Marlboro Lights in 1971.
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A woman accused of stealing 30 cartons of cigarettes from a local convenience store while a friend distracted the clerk faces criminal charges in Olmsted District Court.

Lourella Denice Mcghee, 42, 1903 17th St. S.E., No. A311, is to appear in court Sept. 27, where she is charged with felony theft.

The complaint says that she and a man are seen on store surveillance video from the SuperAmerica store at 919 37th St. N.W.
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Cigarette makers will have to start selling so-called “fire-safe” cigarettes in North Carolina under a bill signed into law by Gov. Mike Easley Friday, though it won’t take effect until 2010.

The bill requires that cigarettes sold in the state be made with special paper that includes two bands of material that smother and extinguish burning tobacco unless someone is actively puffing on the cigarette.

Advocates of the self-extinguishing cigarettes say they are a major source of fires and the leading cause of fatal fire deaths in North Carolina. Three medical professors at UNC Health Care led the effort, starting in December 2006, to lobby for the law.

In a news release, Easley said that as many as 50 fire-related deaths could be prevented each year by the new law.

Twenty-one other states have adopted similar laws, and North Carolina became the second major tobacco producing state to adopt such measures. Kentucky enacted a “fire-safe” cigarette law in March.

The N.C. law takes effect Jan. 1, 2010.

By Dylan Welch

A man has been savagely bashed with an iron pipe and a knife overnight, suffering a broken shoulder and arm, stab wounds and facial injuries - and all his attackers took was a cigarette lighter and cigarettes, police say.

The 21-year-old Waratah man was walking along Vere Road in Adamstown, near the junction of Narara Road about 10.50pm when he was approached by four men.

According to police the man’s recollection of the attack is vague, but he told police little was said before the four men set upon him with an iron bar and a knife.

He was hit several times on the head and arms with the iron bar and received at least one stab wound to his left arm, police said.

Once the attack had finished the four men took the lighter and cigarettes from the victim and left. They were last seen getting into a vehicle in nearby Brunker Road.

Police were called and the man was taken to John Hunter hospital and treated for a suspected broken right shoulder, a broken left arm, stab wounds and head and facial lacerations.

By Janie Har

Big tobacco will spend big money trying to persuade Oregon voters to reject a cigarette tax increase this fall that would insure more needy children in what looms as one of the priciest ballot measure campaigns in state history.
Cigarette maker R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company filed papers Friday with the state Elections Division to form the “Oregonians Against the Blank Check” committee opposing Measure 50 on the Nov. 6 ballot. Philip Morris USA, which makes Marlboro products, also registered its “Stop the Measure 50 Tax Hike” campaign. (more…)