November 2003 Edition
TEQUILA
To deserve the name of tequila, it must be distilled only from the sap of the Mexican blue agave plant. Tequila has become a favourite spirit in the US which now accounts for half of the world's tequila consumption. Last year US consumption was 7.2 million nine-litre cases worth US$2.8 billion in retail sales. Until now, 83 per cent of tequila sold in the US was imported in bulk and bottled locally. Now, the Mexican government wants to ban bulk shipments requiring that it be bottled in Mexico which will move bottling jobs south of the border.
PRICES
Commodity prices are strengthening. Copper, often seen a harbinger of economic trends, is trading in the futures market at 30-month highs. The formally boring nickel market is at a three-year high. The price of platinum is at a 2-year peak and gold is fetching more than it has for seven years.
SOYABEANS
In soyabean production, Brazil is a superpower. Within five years it could become the world's biggest producer according to the US Department of Agriculture. Soya products already account for five percent of Brazil's total exports despite a ban on genetically modified (GM) crops. In the US, 80 per cent of the soya products are GM. Under a new decree, Brazil has now announced that it will allow the planting and sale this year of a herbicide-resistant variety of soyabeans.
SANDWICHES
The right thickness of cheese to put in a sandwich has been discovered with the help of a technique to analyze aromas released as food is chewed. The study, sponsored by the British Cheese Board, shows the optimum thickness varies according to the cheese: 7mm for wensleydale; 5mm, cheshire; 4.5mm, caerphilly; 3mm, blue stilton; 2.8mm cheddar and 2.5mm for double gloucester.
SINGAPORE
Talks are continuing with a view to having a free trade agreement between Canada and Singapore within a year. Substantial progress has been made on areas such as market access in goods, financial services and government procurement. Singapore, a resource-poor island economy, has made free trade agreements a cornerstone of its economic policy--inking bilateral deals with the U.S., Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.
CONSTRUCTION
A campaign has been launched to combat the British construction industry's skills shortage by encouraging more women to join the trades. The project hopes to recruit 1,400 women to help fill the 8,000 new hires a year that the industry will need until 2006.
SHOPLIFTING
More than US$4.7 billion was lost to shoplifting and employee theft in just 25 U.S. retail companies in 2002, with only 2.43 per cent of those losses resulting in a recovery. A survey shows over half a million apprehensions taking place in 25 large retail companies, representing 10,243 stores with combined 2002 annual sales exceeding US$396 billion. One in 30 employees was apprehended for theft.
SINKING
Shanghai authorities are to limit the rate at which some of the world's tallest buildings are being built after the sheer weight of the skyscrapers was found to be causing the city to sink into the sea. Geologists have found that the city subsided more than an inch last year. Two of the world's tallest buildings are in Shanghai.
MIGRATION
Statistics Canada has now published data on the number of individuals who moved from July, 2001 to June, 2002. There were 1.65 million individuals who moved in this period, up from 1.51 million in 2000\01, a 9 per cent increase. Of these, more than 290,000 changed provinces or territories, up 8 per cent from 2000\01. Nearly 991,000 moved from one census division to another within their province or territory, up 12 per cent.
DIRTY
At a party to launch Zambia's revolutionary new banknotes, guests were quick to notice the unsightly red and black stains on their fingers--the serial numbers on the new bills were rubbing off. The notes, which are made of a thin plastic polymer, are supposed to last longer, stay cleaner and be more secure than traditional paper currency. Zambian bank officials expected the plastic bank notes to save them C$5-million over the next five years. The manufacturer told the bank the ink on the bills had not been given enough time to dry.
COMMUTING
According to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation, the average daily one-way commute to work in the U.S. takes just over 28 minutes. The average commuting time reported has not varied significantly in the past three years. Only six per cent of workers spend more than one hour commuting. The longest reported commute was three hours and the shortest was one minute.
SUNSCREEN
A new British study has found that sunscreen lotions may not protect against skin cancer. They have found that some of the leading brands fail to stop the sun's damaging rays from penetrating the skin.
WEALTH
In the second quarter of this year, Canadian net wealth, the country's worth in homes, cars, business inventories and fixed capital, less what is owed to foreigners, hit C$3.9 trillion or C$129,000 per capita However, Canadians owed the equivalent of one year's pay each in consumer and mortgage debt. Canada's total non-financial assets were worth C$4.1 trillion before foreign liabilities were subtracted.
SIZE
Giant avocados, large enough to make three gallons of avocado soup or two ponds of guacamole are about to go on sale in Britain. Fourteen inches in circumference and as large as a water melon, the naturally grown pears are eight times the size of normal avocado and will feed a family of six. The monster fruit are all descended from a single ancient tree in South Africa's Northern Province.
TREES
U.S. cities have lost more than 20 per cent of their trees in the past ten years, due primarily to urban sprawl and highway construction. According to a study by American Forests, the vast tree loss contributes to environmental and health problems that have cost an estimated US$234-billion. The four-year study examined 448 urban areas using satellite imaging to compare with a similar study 10 years ago and found 21 per cent less tree canopy.
SPEED
South Korea holds a large lead over the rest of the world in the percentage of inhabitants who have high-speed Internet connections. Between 60 and 70 per cent of all households have a broadband connection. At the start of 2003 there were around 63 million broadband subscribers in the world compared with 1.13-billion fixed-line users and 1.16-billion mobile phone users. Hong Kong was second with Canada in third place. However, Japan, currently 10th, is moving up fast because it is offering the world's fastest speeds and lowest prices. The U.S. is in 11th place.
DUST
Disposable cleaning cloths and dusters tout their ability to attract dust but the same properties may be found in washable microfibre cloths in which the fibres are split to create an electrostatic charge. Lambswool dusters have a similar dust-attracting property, and genuine ostrich feathers are famous for their ability to hold dust rather than scattering it.
CALIFORNIA
Rice growing in California has become a US$500-million industry that is second only to Thailand in exports of premium rice. The roughly 500,000 semi-arid acres, or 202,000 hectares, in the Sacramento Valley make up a microclimate, one of three in the world, where japonica rice flourishes; the others are in Japan and Australia. California rice production now outpaces the long-established long-grain rice industry in Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana.
ACRYLICS
Over 120 big aquariums across the world from New York and Barcelona to Shanghai and Riyadh have something in common. They all use acrylic glass made by Nippura, a Japanese firm with 60 employees which has won around three-quarters of the global market for these panels. Nippura made the world's biggest panel for the Okinawa Aquarium which opened last November. The panel is 27 feet tall and 75 feet wide and provides a view into a 1.7-million tank.
PACKAGING
Sales of private label consumer packaged goods (CPG) in the U.S. are growing much faster than branded products. According to an ACNielsen study, since 1997, private label products have grown from having a presence in 69 per cent of categories tracked to 75 per cent, entering 88 new categories in that time. In 2002, private labels had the dollar volume share lead in 25 per cent of categories in which it competed, up from 21 per cent in 1997.
INSURANCE
The likelihood that genetically-modified (GM) crops will be farmed in the UK was greatly reduced after it emerged that farmers may not be able to obtain insurance cover for the potential risks of GM farming. None of the five main British insurance underwriters are willing to offer cover to farmers considering growing GM crops, or to non-GM farmers wanting protection from GM crop contamination.
NEWSPAPERS
More Canadians read community newspapers than the daily papers in the same market according to a new nationwide survey. The study, which was conducted among more than 24,000 English-speaking Canadians in 400 newspaper markets over the past few months, suggests that local papers are surprisingly well read. Of those surveyed, 69 per cent said they had read the last issue of community paper while only 47 per cent read a daily paper from the previous day. Only in Quebec and Ontario were there more readers of daily newspapers.
WOMEN
The Business Development Bank of Canada has created a new $25-million fund targeted to women entrepreneurs. Today, firms led by women are not only increasing at twice the national average in number, they are also moving into manufacturing, construction and new economy industries. Close to 150 companies in Canada headed by women entrepreneurs are producing revenue of $2-million or more and will show significant growth in the years to come.
SATELLITES
The world's over-farmed soil is sick and getting sicker. Heavy modern farm equipment is killing the soil through repeated compaction and tilling which in turn worsens salinity that kills crops. However, a new world of automatically steered tractors, guided by satellites, will allow them to run on pre-determined tracks and lessen impact on the soil.
LAZY
Austrian scientists have provided a flock of lazy rare birds with a car and driver because they are incapable of migrating on their own. Ornithologists spent more than two years breeding the Northern Bald Isis but had to drive the birds to their winter quarters in northern Italy after discovering the birds were unable to make the 500-mile trip by themselves.
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