Archive

BY MONICA DOBIE
A VANCOUVER-based bookseller is claiming the Canadian government is violating a supreme court decision on obscenity by continuing to allow customs officials to seize gay sado-masochistic publications bound for its shop. Little Sister’s Book and Art Emporium returning to court to challenge a particular seizure of adult comics called The Meatmen.…

BY PHILIP FINE

EMPLOYEE pension fund managers from three US states (including New York) have used their shareholder voting rights to press 10 North American oil companies to share their business plans on climate change. They have targeted Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco, Anadarko Petroleum and Devon Energy, for instance.…

BY PHILIP FINE

NATIVE Americans, cattle ranchers and environmentalists are trying to limit oil and natural gas drilling in New Mexico’s San Juan Basin, taking the US government to a Washington DC federal district court. BP, El Paso and Burlington hope to increase production after federal officials recently said they would permit nearly the sinking of 10,000 new wells over the next two decades.…

BY PHILIP FINE

ECOLOGICAL damage from oil spills is more long-term than most experts have assumed, according to University of North Carolina academic Charles H Peterson, who examined studies of the 1989 Exxon Valdez clean-up for the journal Science. He found oil has persisted in submarine reservoirs and species mortality rates have increased, even from usually non-lethal amounts of oil.…

BY PHILIP FINE

"HOT Ice No. 1," a US government-industry collaboration looking for methane hydrates in Alaska, has wrapped up without any extraction of the otherwise abundant gas. However, the partners, the US Department of Energy, Anadarko Petroleum Corp., Maurer Technology Inc.,…

BY PHILIP FINE

AT LEAST no one in today’s America has to contend with Carry Nation. She was the late-19th century Kansas reformer who crusaded against the sale and consumption of alcohol. Known as the original saloon smasher, she would burst into bars and cause as much damage as she could to drinking establishments.…

BY PHILIP FINE and KEITH NUTHALL

AMERICAN farmers are calling for the US to comply with a WTO ruling ordering the abolition of foreign trade corporations offering American exporters illegal tax breaks, after the EU started applying retaliatory duties on ham, boneless pigmeat and lamb, horsemeat and pork products.…

BY PHILIP FINE

PATHOGENS such as listeria, E. coli O157:H7 and salmonella in poultry might soon be better controlled on the abattoir line thanks to a new aerosol spray that has just received American regulatory approval. The product, called Cecure, is based on cetylpyridinium chloride (CPC), the active ingredient in mouth

rinses and throat lozenges.…

BY PHILIP FINE

AMERICAN farmers says recent European Union (EU) trade actions will cost them millions of dollars and are urging their government to bring US laws into compliance with World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules. The American Farm Bureau Federation says that escalating sanctions on raw agricultural products and processed foodstuffs put US producers in a double bind: higher tariffs on several commodities that only apply to US products and competition from products exported by other countries with lower tariffs.…

BY PHILIP FINE

FEELING grouchy? Your low-carb diet could be to blame, according to two Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers who have looked at carbohydrates and brain chemistry. Husband-and-wife researchers Judith and Richard Wurtman have discovered that after a person consumes sweet or starchy carbohydrates, with little protein, the brain makes serotonin, a chemical that elevates mood.…