January 2010 Edition
WATER
China has postponed a plan to raise the Three Gorges reservoir to its ideal height of 175 metres due to a lack of water. There has been less water than expected flowing into the reservoir from the upper reaches of the Yangtze river. The reservoir needs to be 175 metres deep for the project to fully meet its roles of providing electricity, preventing floods and ensuring navigation. So far only 11 of the scheme's 26 hydropower generators are operating.
TICKETS
The average price for a ticket to a National Basketball Association game has fallen for the first time in eight years, as a weak economy continues to affect U.S. sports leagues. The average price has fallen 2.8 per cent to US $48.90, the biggest drop ever for the league and the first decline since the 2001-02 season. The NHL had a 7.5 per cent drop in 2005-06 season following a season-long lockout.
NEWSPAPERS
Last October, the Audit Bureau of Circulations found that the Los Angeles Times had lost 11 per cent of its paying readers in the past year. Circulation at the Boston Globe tumbled by 18 per cent and at the San Francisco Chronicle, it fell by 26 per cent. Daily sales of the New York Times fell by 7 per cent but circulation at the Wall Street Journal, which includes paying online subscribers, rose to more than 2 million, making it America's biggest paper.
CARE
Boasting a highly skilled work force of medical practitioners and top notch private health care facilities, India is actively vying for a bigger share of the estimated US$60-billion spent by Canadians and others on medical procedures in foreign countries each year. The global medical tourism industry is expected to grow to $100-billion by 2011. India is competing with more than 35 countries including Mexico, Cuba, Thailand and Singapore.
ABROAD
An estimated 2.8-million Canadians live abroad with naturalized Canadians leaving the country at a rate three times higher than those born here. 57 per cent of all overseas Canadians live in the United States, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom or Australia. Foreign-born Canadians from Taiwan had the highest rate of return to their country of origin at 30 per cent, followed by emigrants from Hong Kong at 24 per cent.
TASTE
A new report shows sales of ethnic foods in the U.S. have climbed steadily since 2004 and reached a record high of US$2.2-billion last year with solid growth forecast of nearly 20 per cent from 2010 to 2014. The demand for ethnic products and their projected increase is being fed by U.S. Census reports that the fastest-growing populations in the U.S. continue to be Asians and Hispanics. Since 2005, one million foreigners have become legal permanent residents in the U.S. each year.
CLAIMS
A US$250,000 compensation claim has been made against Saudi Arabia's oil giant Saudi Aramco for causing the death of a prized camel which fell into a large hole dug in the desert to store oil. The camel had been entered in one of the regions popular beauty pageants.
GIVING
Statistics Canada reports that Canadians donated C$8.19-billion to charities in 2008, a 5.3 per cent drop from the previous year, as the recession led people to contribute a little less to good causes. It was the lowest annual donation figure since 2005's $7.9-billion. However, the number of people whose tax returns reported charitable giving went up by 7.4 per cent in 2008 to almost 5.8-million. Manitoba was the province with the highest rate of donors. The statistics do not take into account the millions of hours of volunteer work that Canadians give to charities.
REMITTANCES
Unemployment has hit migrant communities in the United States so hard that a startling new phenomenon has been detected: instead of receiving remittances from relatives in the richest country on earth, some down-and-out Mexican families are scraping together what they can to support their unemployed loved ones in the U.S. Statistics measuring what experts are calling reverse remittances are hard to come by but they appear to be on the rise. At one bank in Chiapas that used to see money flowing in from the U.S., more money is now going out than coming in.
SIZE
Russia, the world's largest country, has grown even bigger, thanks to an earthquake and volcanic eruption in its seismically active far eastern regions. 4.8-square kilometres was gained from a 2007 earthquake on Sakhalin Island and from lava flows last summer on Matua Island which gained another 1.5-square kilometres. Both are close to Japan.
CHEESE
Cheddar cheese eaten in Britain is now more likely to come from Latvia that from the area of Somerset from which it takes its name. British dairy farmers, who are quitting the industry at the rate of about 14 per week, argue that the country of origin on cheddar packaging would encourage consumers to buy British and would help to revive the sector. The UK imported 136,938 tonnes of cheddar last year, a record amount. The largest exporter is Ireland but cheese is also shipped from New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the U.S. as well as several European countries, including Latvia.
DEFORESTATION
The level of deforestation in the Amazon has dropped by 45 per cent and is the lowest on record since monitoring began 21 years ago. According to the latest figures from the Brazilian government, just over 7,000 sq km was destroyed between July 2008 and August 2009. The government wants to see an 80 per cent reduction in the deforestation rate by 2020 and is proposing that half of a 40 per cent cut in Brazil's carbon emissions would come from reducing deforestation.
B&W
Almost 30,000 people across the UK still tune into their favourite programmes on black and white TV sets. The figures were released by TV Licensing to mark the 40th anniversary of the first colour transmissions in the country. The 28,000 black and white license holders included 1,950 in Scotland. The figures show that the black and white sets have not yet been consigned to history despite the rise of flat screen colour TVs.
ENERGY
According to the International Energy Agency, energy demand in the OECD countries is expected to fall slightly by 2015. In 2007, these nations used around 5.5-billion tonnes of oil equivalent, compared with 6.2-billion tonnes in non-OECD countries. That gap is expected to widen because the annual rate of growth of non-members' energy use is predicted to be more than ten times that of member economies between 2007 and 2030. China's energy demand will overtake that of the U.S. by 2015. By 2030 China and India together are expected to account for almost a third of global energy use.
GOLD
Global gold production is in decline despite record prices and efforts by mining companies to find fresh sources of ore in remote spots. Global output has been falling by roughly 1-million ounces a year since the start of the decade. Exploration budgets have tripled in recent years with disappointing results so far. Ore grades have fallen from around 12 grams per tonne in 1950 to nearer 3 grams in the U.S., Canada and Australia. South Africa's output has halved since peaking in 1970.
GIFTS
Gift cards are profitable because retailers receive money up front for them and around 10 per cent are never redeemed. Also, when people do use them, they often spend more than the amount given, on products with high margins. But sales of gift cards in the U.S. were down by around 6 per cent last year, to about US$25-billion. Bargain hunters are flocking to websites to buy discounted second-hand gift cards for their own use. Some are discounted as high as 40 per cent. eBay is rumoured to sell around 100,000 gift cards every month.
LABELS
Consumers may no longer have to deal with those annoying little adhesive stickers tacked on to fruit and vegetables thanks to new laser etching technology. The technology uses a low-energy carbon dioxide laser beam to label or etch information directly onto a fruit's peel or skin. It has been approved for use in Canada and many other countries, including the EU, and is in the final stages of approval in the U.S. However, Florida researchers have questioned whether laser etching will cause fruit to deform or rot more quickly.
COKE
Coca-Cola has introduced a new bottle that is 30 per cent derived from plant-based waste material. The new bottle, marketed under the name PlantBottle will be sold throughout the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter games. PlantBottle packaging is made through a process that turns sugar cane and molasses, a by-product of sugar production, into a key component of PET plastic (Polyethylene terephtalate).
MISSING
A beverage company has asked a team to drill through Antarctica's ice for a lost cache of some vintage scotch whiskey that has been on the rocks for over a century. Two crates of McKinlay whiskey were shipped to the Antarctic by British polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton as part of his 1909 expedition.
SPEED
China has now become one of a handful of nations to own one of the top five supercomputers in the world. Its Tinhe-1 computer, housed in Tianjin, was ranked fifth on the bi-annual Top 500 supercomputer list. The machine packs more than 70,000 chips and can compute 563-trillion calculations per second (teraflops). It is used for petroleum exploration and engineering tasks such as simulating aircraft designs. However, the fastest machine is the U.S.-owned Jaguar supercomputer, which now boasts a speed of 1.759-petaflops. One petaflop is the equivalent of 1,000-trillion calculations per second.
GMO
Japan has found genetically modified flaxseed, which has not been approved by Japan, in imports from Canada. In Japan, the bulk of flaxseed is used to produce oil for industrial uses such as the production of paint, with the waste from that process used for animal feed and some food for human consumption. Japan imported 11,713 metric tons of flaxseed in 2008, all of which came from Canada. The same GMO material has also been found in the European Union from Canadian flaxseed shipments.
WINE
The 7-Eleven convenience store chain has announced that it is getting into the value wine business, releasing two low-priced proprietary wines in the U.S. and Japan. Sold under the Yosemite Road label, the California wines, a chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon, will retail for about US$3.99. Bargain wines have been booming in the U.S. as budgets have shrunk. Some brands such as Two Buck Chuck, named after the $1.99 price in California, have attracted near cult following.
FARMING
The Republic of Congo has signed an agreement to lease 200,000 hectares of land to South African farmers. Congo's agriculture minister said it will bring expertise to the country and reduce its dependence on imports. Under the terms of the agreement, South African farmers will lease the land in Congo for 30 years to produce food and fibre, mainly for the domestic market.
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