Archive
International News Services archives articles supplied to clients one year or more after initial publication. These articles are protected by a password and not made available to readers without permission from clients. They are used as a background resource by agency journalists. Upon client requests, International News Services will remove such articles from the archive or not upload them in the first place. They are included to demonstrate the breadth of topics undertaken by the agency and also to help promote clients’ coverage.
ORGANIC FOOD
BY PHILIP FINE
THE U.S. Department of Agriculture has picked the organisations that will put seals of approval on American organic practices, farms and distributors and the products that they sell. In the department’s goal of coming up with a national ‘organic’ definition, all of the country’s agricultural products labelled organic must, by this autumn, originate from farms or handling operations certified by a
USDA-accredited agency.…
KENTUCKY CHICKEN
BY PHILIP FINE
AN ENVIRONMENTAL group is taking the world’s largest poultry company to court for allegedly failing to take care of noxious releases on one of their contracted farms. The Sierra Club alleges that the US’s Kentucky-based Tyson Foods failed to report releases of ammonia on four large ‘chicken houses.’…
HEALTH REPORT
BY PHILIP FINE
YES, whole oat products and foods containing psyllium will lower cholesterol levels and reduce heart disease, says the American Council on Science and Health. In a new booklet that takes most of the health claims for functional foods to task, they also agree that soy foods and foods made with soy protein have shown the same health benefits.…
US WINE PRICES
BY PHILIP FINE
SURPLUSES and high quality imports seem to be causing a slide in US wine prices. "There is a lot of wine out there to sell right now," Gladys Horiuchi, spokeswoman for San Francisco’s Wine Institute, told the Los Angeles Times.…
FORD PALLADIUM
BY PHILIP FINE
FORD has confirmed in its annual report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission that it will be reducing its stockpile of the precious metal palladium, following a substantial decline in world prices. The vehicle manufacturer lost US$1 billion last year on its stocks of palladium, which is used in catalytic converters.…
FORD PAYOUT
BY PHILIP FINE
DONALD Winkler, the Ford Credit chairman and chief executive, who was abruptly dismissed last year, has received a US$962,500 (GBPounds 669,000) severance payout. He received the equivalent of 15 months of salary and, among other benefits, was allowed to keep a Jaguar company car.…
IRS REFORM
BY PHILIP FINE
AMERICA’S National Automobile Dealers Association is applauding a ruling by the country’s Internal Revenue Service that will allow car and truck dealers to use replacement cost to evaluate their year-end parts inventory.
"This is a huge victory for dealers," said Bill Newman, NADA’s chief operating officer of Public and Legal Affairs, who said his organisation had spent eight years lobbying the IRS for the time and money-saving change.…
TEXTILE JOB LOSSES
BY PHILIP FINE
US textile manufacturers are anxious to tell US Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill how his department’s high dollar policy has contributed to devastating job losses for the country’s textile and apparel workers.
American Textile Manufacturers Institute spokesman, Cass Johnson, says his organisation would be attending O’Neill’s senate banking hearings on May 1st and will also lobby federal officials on how propping up US currency has translated into his sector losing 13 per cent of its workforce in one year.…
BOTOX
BY PHILIP FINE
BOTOX can now be sold as a temporary wrinkle remover in America, after the popular injection received approval as a cosmetic by the US Food and Drug Administration. The product, which short-circuits electrical messages from the brain to facial nerve endings, is derived from a purified form of the toxin that causes botulism.…
GASIFICATION
BY PHILIP FINE
THE USA’S Environmental Protection Agency is promoting the production of chemical gases from waste materials by reclassifying these currently "hazardous" toxins and allowing them to be used in gasification programmes, a process that puts materials under high temperatures to convert them into a so-called syngas.…