Search Results for: America

BY MONICA DOBIE
FOR many people, Europeans in particular, Canada represents wide-open spaces, pristine wilderness teaming with wildlife, a high standard of living and a country tolerant of other cultures.

And Canadians are generally a happy bunch, who smugly cherish their social differences with their neighbours south of the border, notably that their high taxes are fair because the money creates social programmes and a national health care system that their American counterparts do not enjoy.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
WAL-MART Canada Corp is consulting its lawyers after the retail chain was told to accept union recognition at a Quebec store, only the second time this has happened in the whole of north America. The Quebec Labour Relations Commission has certified workers at the Saint-Hyacinthe store, 60 km east of Montreal, as belonging to and represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers Canada (UFCW).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is forecasting a “moderately positive” outlook for European Union (EU) meat and poultry markets, with the industry recovering from its recent BSE, bird flu and Food and Mouth Disease scares. Its ‘Prospects for agricultural markets in the European Union 2004-2011’ report says that the sector is also being helped by Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform, favourable world market conditions and an assumed future return to a stronger US dollar.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE MULTILATERAL Investment Guarantee Agency, or MIGA, is the international organisation companies turn to when they want to invest in a jurisdiction where their assets might not be that safe. Mining companies have long used MIGA to cover risks that are too tasty for the private insurance industry, and the agency has issued 58 guarantees for the sector since it was formed in 1988.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE LATEST BSE discovery in Canada has inspired the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund (R-CALF)/United Stockgrowers of America organisation to sue the US Agriculture Department to prevent imports of Canadian cattle and beef products.

R-CALF says Canadian imports pose health risks to people and cows, costing American producers up to US$3 billion in lost demand.…

BY MONICA DOBIE and KEITH NUTHALL

TIME was when Canadians focused a significant proportion of their habitual condescension towards their American neighbours through beer. US brands were dismissed as weak in alcohol, tasteless and generic. But today, even though the big US beer labels taste the same as they ever did – much to the relief of many consumers around the world, of course – Canadian beer tastes are changing, especially among the young.…

BY MONICA DOBIE

A NEW genetic test that can detect devastating clam disease QPX has been developed by American scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), in Cape Cod Massachusetts. They claim the test is sensitive enough to detect the QPX organism not only in clams, but also in seawater and sediment.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

ONLY comparatively recently have the world’s anti money laundering agencies come to grips with alternative remittance systems (ARS) and even today the scale of the systems and the degree of infiltration by criminals is still not fully known.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

COSMETICS, perfume and personal hygiene companies in the Mercosur region of South America will have to stage annual health inspections of their manufacturing systems under a resolution agreed by member states Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. These will have to demonstrate that companies are following prescribed Mercosur standards of good practice, with written reports being produced by in-house laboratories, detailing results and any reforms that are required.…

BY RICHARD HURST, in Johannesburg
SOUTH Africa is an emerging economy, neither fully developed, nor fully developing. As a result, there are some rich pickings for commercial criminals, who can operate more freely than in Europe and North America. Richard Hurst reports from Johannesburg.…