Pepsi HIV hoax circulates via text, internet

The Pepsi HIV hoax which circulated through texts, email and social networking sites sent many people to the internet to seek the truth, some just laughed it off.

A sample message, according to Con-Slayer.com, goes:

Important message....for d next few days, do not drink any product from pepsi company like pepsi, tropicana juice, slice, 7up , coca cola, etc,,as a worker from the company has added his blood contaminated with HIV. watch NDtv ...please 4ward this 2 every 1 u care about.....please spread!

Another one reads:

To all my fellow facebook friends n family please do not drink pepsi from tha bottles a company worker has put his contaminated HIV blood in some of tha bottles thanks

A netizen that goes by the name "Vasu" says:

First of all HIV can spreed only by 3 ways
1. Blood Transmission , Transfusion
2. Unsafe Sex with an HIV positive.
3. Through birth from HIV positive mother.(wich is 70% preventable now)
Even a mosquito bite cant spread it. HIV virus cannot live in external cosmos. Its only survival habitat is blood If the blood comes out and gets frozen or dissolved before entering another body the HIV virus dies.

More facts and reader comments are available at Con-Slayer.com.

PepsiCo in its website's FAQ page vehemently denied the allegation that Pepsi bottles and Tropicana packs were contaminated with HIV infected blood saying the story is "absurd" and "an attempt to malign the company's reputation."

While assuring the public that "Pepsi and Tropicana are 100% safe," "made in automated plants," and "untouched by hands," the company urged recipients of such fraudulent messages to ignore and not forward it.

PepsiCo made an appeal to receivers to avoid sharing the hoax message "as it may lead to spreading of baseless rumours causing unnecessary worry amongst consumers and may attract legal action for maligning the company's reputation."

We are uncertain if those texts or similar messages reached the Philippines, but for us, spreading it is clearly a waste of time and resources.

Read More @ Source

The Con 2007 Movie trailer

Trailer

Video Rating: 4 / 5

The Con

From acclaimed director Lasse Hallstrom comes the unbelievable true story of Clifford Irving, the writer who faked the authorized autobiography of reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes and came close to pulling off the media scam of the 20th century. Irving's elaborate attempts to substantiate his claims – forgery, plagiarism, and falsifying legal documents – spark a media frenzy and take Irving down a neurotic spiral as he begins to suspect a vast conspiracy including the U.S. government and corporate empires are plotting against him.The Con is a happy surprise. Surprise because, for once, having a film's release date bumped back half a year didn't mean it's a dog. Happy because Lasse Hallström's dancing-on-eggshells comedy about a notorious literary scandal of the 1970s is bounteously entertaining, with more solid laughs and certainly slyer wit than, say, the latest Will Ferrell romp.

The subject is the world-shaking con an unsuccessful writer named Clifford Irving (Richard Gere) ran on some supposedly sharp cookies in the highest echelons of Manhattan publishing. Irving persuaded McGraw-Hill and Life magazine that ultra-reclusive tycoon Howard Hughes had selected him to transcribe his memoirs. It's pure balderdash, a desperate improvisation by a glib-talker who's perennially one jump ahead of the repo men. But the epic audacity of Irving's scam, the quicksilver way he weaves imaginary and accidental real-life details into beguiling patterns, and the legendary self-isolation of his supposed subject all conspire to keep the fiction afloat ... for a while.

This story isn't new to cinema, though few reviewers seem aware of that. In 1973 Orson Welles told it as part of F for Fake, a kaleidoscopic meditation on art, forgery, and the slipperiness of media, in which the real-life Irving was a semi-witting participant. But there's no need to beat up on The Con for being inferior to that postmodern masterpiece. Hallström and a deft cast do a killer job on the skyscrap! er corpo rate world where there are always more people in the room than there are useful purposes for them to serve (see especially Hope Davis, Stanley Tucci, and Zjelko Ivanek); Marcia Gay Harden summons up a daft Viking serenity as spouse Edith Irving, a.k.a. "Helga R. Hughes"; and Alfred Molina rates a supporting Oscar nod for his balletic suspension between bemusement and panic attack as Dick Suskind, Irving's researcher accomplice and conscience-in-default. As for the con artist in chief, Richard Gere dials back the narcissism of previous performances to limn a schmuck just suave enough to seduce even himself. --Richard T. Jameson

List Price: $ 9.99 Price: $ 2.70

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