Search Results for: Canada

BY MONICA DOBIE

INTRODUCTION

IN 1534, Jacques Cartier the founder of Canada, swapped knives for animal skins with natives off the shores of Quebec, and soon a burgeoning fur trade attracted 1000’s of European settlers. Fur has since become unpopular, a luxury based on cruelty, some say.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Food Safety Authority (EFSA) may work with private food health alert services, after reviewing how it discovers and combats emerging risks. In an assessment paper, EFSA admitted it "will need to devote new internal resources for the work with emerging risks", which have recently ranged from fresh foot-and-mouth disease outbreaks, to dioxin contamination and new diseases such as SARS.…

BY MONICA DOBIE, in Ottawa

SCIENTISTS have gathered in Quebec City, Canada, to discuss ways of fighting plant diseases that threaten to destroy cocoa production. At the Cacao Diseases: Important Threats to Chocolate Production Worldwide symposium members of the American Phytopathological Society, Canadian Phytopathological Society, and the Mycological Society of America listened to experts warn of the grave threat to cocoa plants posed by three deadly diseases: black pod, frosty pod, and witches’ broom.…

BY MONICA DOBIE, in Montreal

CANADIAN distributors of US imported books have slashed prices by as much as 20% because an outdated currency conversion from American to Canadian dollars has now been adjusted.

For example, ‘The Glass Castle’ by Jeanette Walls had been priced at CDN$19 – which was 36% higher than the American price of US$14, reflecting the average exchange rate before 2005.…

BY MONICA DOBIE

INTRODUCTION

IN 1534, Jacques Cartier the founder of Canada, swapped knives for animal skins with natives off the shores of Quebec, and soon a burgeoning fur trade attracted 1000’s of European settlers. Fur has since become unpopular, a luxury based on cruelty, some say.…

BY PAUL COCHRANE, in Damascus

CLASSES at all of Lebanon’s universities have been cancelled and international students and faculty are being evacuated following Israel’s air and sea bombardment of the country.

The American University of Beirut’s (AUB) provost Peter Heath announced Sunday that all classes for the summer semester were cancelled until further notice.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

AN EXPERT report from the world’s top anti-money laundering body has shown how organised criminals are exploiting the global metal trade to conceal the origin of their ill-gotten gains. The annual ‘typologies’ report from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) looks at how world-trading systems are abused by money launderers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE MULTILATERAL Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), of the World Bank, is guaranteeing US$2 million in risk for a project to convert El Salvador landfill methane to carbon dioxide, a less powerful greenhouse gas. The project will generate carbon credits for sale on world markets, in MIGA’s first Kyoto Protocol-linked guarantee, which will be made to investor Biothermica Energy Inc, of Canada.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

URBANISATION in developing countries will inflate demand for meat and processed foods generally from this year to 2015, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has predicted. In a new ‘Agricultural Outlook’ written with the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the OECD says "growing market opportunities in certain developing countries" (notably Brazil, China and India) will cause a "shift in production and export of farm commodities away from [developed] OECD countries and more towards other developing economies".…

BY MONICA DOBIE, in Ottawa

INDIGO Books & Music, Canada’s largest book chain, has announced it will launch a new website in November of this year. At the company’s annual general meeting held in Toronto, the bookseller’s president, Heather Reisman said the site will focus on a "user friendly" approach to customer service, offering book reviews, staff recommendations and book suggestions for consumers.…