Archive

BY PHILIP FINE

THE COCA-COLA Company has launched a chocolate-flavored dairy drink Nestlé Choglit; it’s Coke’s first entry into the milk-based beverage segment in the United States and is being rolled out initially in the north-east and south-east of the country.…

BY PHILIP FINE

US automakers have hit a setback in their attempt to stave off soaring

legal

costs over thousands of asbestos-related lawsuits.

An appeals court in Philadelphia has thrown

out a request by several companies to be named as ‘related parties’

in the bankruptcy of auto-parts maker Federal-Mogul Global Inc.…

BY PHILIP FINE

AN IMPROVED restraint system for new child safety seats has been made

mandatory in American cars since last week (Sept 1, 2002). The restraints,

a top tether and a lower set of attachments, operate independently of the

vehicle seat belt and adapt to recent government-mandated safety changes to the main body of cars.…

BY PHILIP FINE, in Montreal

A CALF’S destiny has long been dictated by two agricultural businesses: beef or dairy.

But there’s now a third industry that requires animals for its growing appetite: the pharmaceuticals sector.

As the latest scientific headlines have shown, farmyard animals – cows, goats and pigs – are now being employed for purposes other than providing us with filet mignon, goat cheese and bacon.…

BY PHILIP FINE

ARTHUR Andersen LLP has all but shut its doors, after the former accountancy powerhouse relinquished its licence to practice auditing in every American state. The US member firm of Andersen Worldwide, which was once the fifth largest auditing firm in the country, told the US Securities and Exchange Commission it would cease auditing public companies.…

BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKA
SRI Lankan glove manufacturer Dipped Products Ltd has acquired a controlling interest in its European distributor ICO Guanti Spa, of Genoa, Italy. The payment of shares valued at US$855,000 (SL Rupees 81 million) is being funded from the company’s export earnings, Dipped Products told the Columbo stock exchange.…

BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKA
RETALIATORY duties hitting shoe and fashion accessory imports from the United States may be postponed or never imposed because of concessions made by the US regarding controversial steel safeguard duties that provoked the European Union into planning reprisals.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN ITALIAN leather manufacturer appears to have lost an international legal struggle to prevent a former German company from using a trade name similar to its own to market furniture upholstered with leather bought from alternative suppliers. In a test case at the European Court of Justice, Italian Leather, of Bironto, Italy, has failed to establish that a ruling that it secured at Bari District Court should overrule a decision made earlier at the Regional Court, Koblenz, Germany.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union is channeling Euro 2 million into a legal aid and reform programme in Kosovo, to build an effective judicial system in this war-torn and UN administered Balkan province. Money will be directed to the Kosovo Chamber of Advocates, which received aid last year to establish a legal aid system for the poor.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Bank is lending El Salvador US$18.2 million to improve the effectiveness, efficiency and accessibility of its judicial system. The central American country is emerging from a long civil war, which was marked by human rights abuses and a lack of due process.…