Search Results for: America

BY MARK ROWE
IT may have taken riots in Seattle and Genoa but the World Trade Organisation has finally come out all compassionate. The theory is simple. Most of the world’s poor are in developing nations. Many of those in greatest poverty are farmers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FOR years, the US government has played Mary Poppins on agricultural subsidies, claiming that its handouts do not encourage farmers to overproduce when prices are low. Now it is not really trying to pretend.

The mask has not just slipped, it has been casually pulled off and tossed aside.…

BY PHILIP FINE, in Montreal

LOW-FARE airlines are gaining a greater presence in north America, but according to the President and CEO of The American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA) they still have along way to go before taking on the major airlines.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED States Farm Bill, which has passed through the US Congress, will not only potentially depress meat prices by boosting subsidies to American farmers, but also introduce mandatory rules of origin for meat products for the first time.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
INSURANCE companies are being unnecessarily exposed to risk through employment accident policies because of the estimated two million workers who die annually through job-related accidents or diseases, eighty per cent of which are preventable, the International Labour Organisation has claimed.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
MOVES are underway to restructure the Ukraine’s airline industry, with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development planning to fund consultants who would advise the country’s two main commercial players on how they could successfully merge their services.…

BY MATTHEW BRACE
SYDNEY is the “defamation capital of the English-speaking world” according to a British legal expert working in Australia’s largest city. Based on his research, figures show that one writ is served for every 79,000 people in the state of New South Wales; a higher rate than England, (one writ per 121,000 people), and much higher than the United States, where the proportion us one writ per 2.3 million people.…

BY PHILIP FINE

THE COST of improving America’s post-September 11 airport security may top US$6 billion, more than triple what has been budgeted. The Bush administration will ask Congress for an additional US$4.4 billion for the new Transportation Security Administration, created after 9-11, citing greater manpower needs, more expensive bomb detection equipment at airports and other factors.…

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.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
IN an interesting recent analysis of the problems facing livestock and other food producers in Europe, the European Union agriculture commissioner Franz Fischler suggested that one way forward could be through contract farming.

Instead of producing in the traditional way for the open market, he said, producers might consider linking with retail groups or the meat processing industry and delivering precisely what was needed in terms of both quality and quantity.…