CRAFT BEER TRENDS GIVES NEW LIFE TO HOPS GROWN IN B.C.

Hops were a popular crop in B.C. during the 1950s, 60s, and 70s

 

 

Breweries in B.C. generally use imported hops to make craft beer these days, but one agricultural expert is hopping to turn back the clock and trigger a revival amongst farmers and have them start growing the once popular crop.
During the 1950s, 60s, and 70s B.C. hops used to play a big role in the beer industry, according to Tom Baumann, an agriculture professor at the University of Fraser Valley.
But local farmers turned away from the crop about 30 years ago because of disease, pests, and a growing international supply, he says.
Baumann hopes to convince farmers the growing popularity of craft beer, and an emphasis on local organic agriculture, is giving the B.C. hops industry new life.
"It's worthwhile growing and this is what we're going to look at during that seminar...is there a market for it? The answer is yes."
Baumann is giving a seminar for farmers interested in capitalizing on this trend at the Pacific Agriculture Show in Abbotsford on Saturday.

Hoppin' hops

Beer is made using four ingredients: water, grains, yeast and hops, he notes.
"The hop itself is one of the few ingredients that, according to the German purity law for beer, makes the beer."
Hops are used used to give beer its bitter, tangy flavour, which can vary widely depending on how they are dried and where they were grown, according to Baumann.
They also help preserve the beer with their anti-microbial properties.
And here's a little known fact: hops are classified under the Cannabaceae family, which includes the cannabis plant.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HIGH PRODUCE PRICES CREATE 'A CHAIN' OF RISING COSTS, DISTRIBUTOR SAYS.

Price for a single box of broccoli has more than tripled, Toronto-area produce distributor says

Produce distributor William Chou says he usually charges his customers $18 to $20 for a case of broccoli, but high produce prices means he now buys the same product for up to $65 a case. (Justin Li/CBC) 

William Chou has been a produce distributor since 1992.
As the owner of Scarborough-based Tai Ton Trading, he delivers fruits, vegetables, dry goods and disposable utensils to around 300 restaurants and smaller distributors throughout southern Ontario — travelling as far west as London and as far north as Sudbury.
Chou has been around the block more than a few times, but when it comes to the recent surge in produce prices, he says he's "never seen anything like this before."
"Normally, we sell a case of broccoli to restaurants for a reasonable price, maybe $18 or $20," says Chou.
Now, he says, the price he has to pay for a single case has risen to $65, before he marks it up and sells it to his customers.
Chou says he usually marks up items about 20 percent, so something he buys for $25 will be sold for about $30.
But Chou says he has significantly lowered his mark-ups — sometimes to the single digits — in order to keep his customers going.
He says many of his restaurants already have razor-thin profit margins and fixed prices on their menus, so high produce prices place an enormous amount of pressure on their budget.
Restaurants either have to eat the higher costs and pay the difference out of their own pockets, or charge more and risk losing patrons.

Chou says restaurants are ordering and stocking less produce in hopes that prices will soon drop. (Justin Li/CBC)

Chou blames the weak loonie and exchange rate.
"Only paper products like tissue paper haven't increased [in price] yet because they're made in Canada," he said. "Everything else has."
He also thinks the low value of the Canadian dollar means people are eating out less, which affects the business of his clients, and in turn means they're ordering less from him.
"It's a chain," says Chou. "Restaurants are now only ordering a few bunches of celery or a half case instead of a full case. They are not stocking up much, only enough for maybe one or two days. They are hoping that tomorrow prices will drop."
"We aren't losing money, but it's tough," he adds. "If this continues for more than six or eight months, many restaurants could close up."

Weather bears brunt of blame

Although the weak Canadian dollar and exchange rate has some effect in the recent surge of prices, some produce wholesalers and vendors say the weather — especially in places like California, where Ontario gets most of its produce — is the main culprit.
"Weather is the main reason for shortages and high prices," says Rick Ashford, vice-president of mentoring and training at wholesaler Gambles Ontario Produce.
"California, Mexico, parts of Texas and Florida, where most of our vegetables are grown in the winter, have been experiencing poor growing conditions," he said.
Ashford gives the now-infamous example of cauliflower.
He says the vegetable is primarily grown in Salinas, Calif., during the spring and summer months before switching further south to Yuma, Ariz., during the fall and winter.
However, Ashford says crops finished early in Salinas due to very hot and dry weather, well before conditions in Yuma were ready for growing.

Without the usual overlap, cauliflower saw a sudden supply shortage.
"Around American Thanksgiving, you saw prices [for cauliflower] increase dramatically," Ashford said.
Chris Streef, general manager of Streef Produce, a vendor within the Ontario Food Terminal, says California's ongoing drought has also affected the volume and supply of cauliflower, which in turn raises prices.
"Drought affects supply," says Streef. "If a yield of cauliflower only produces half of what it's supposed to, prices are jacked up to make up the difference."
"The produce industry is just supply and demand," he adds. "All we can hope for this year is the weather to be better and the yields to be good."

The Ontario Food Terminal distributes over one million tonnes of produce annually, according to its website. (Justin Li/CBC)

CLINTON'S EMAIL CORRESPONDENCE CONTAINED 'TOP SECRET' MATERIAL : THE STATE DEPARTMENT.

 

Seven of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private email chains will be withheld from public release because they have been found to contain top secret information. (Reuters)

The State Department acknowledged for the first time Friday that “top secret” information has been found in emails that passed through the private email server Hillary Clinton used while leading the agency, elevating the issue in the presidential campaign three days before the hotly contested Iowa caucuses.
The information was contained in 22 emails, across seven email chains, that were sent or received by Clinton, according to a State Department spokesman. The emails will not be disclosed as part of an ongoing  release of Clinton’s email correspondence from her years as secretary of state, even in highly redacted form.

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The finding is likely to complicate Clinton’s efforts to move past the controversy, which has dragged down her poll ratings in her bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. And it comes as her potential Republican rivals have called for Clinton to be prosecuted for what they say was her mishandling of national secrets.
In responding Friday, Clinton’s campaign took the unusual step of criticizing the intelligence community, accusing  spy agencies of engaging in “overclassification run amok.” Some Clinton allies suggested that intelligence officials were politically motivated.
Clinton’s spokesman, Brian Fallon, presented the findings as the latest turn in an ongoing struggle between government officials over whether to retroactively classify emails that were not marked as sensitive when they were sent and that Clinton thinks should be made public.
“After a process that has been dominated by bureaucratic infighting that has too often played out in public view, the loudest and leakiest participants in this interagency dispute have now prevailed in blocking any release of these emails,” Fallon said. “This flies in the face of the fact that these emails were unmarked at the time they were sent, and have been called ‘innocuous’ by certain intelligence officials.”
Fallon told MSNBC that withholding the emails from view in their entirety made it impossible for the public to independently judge the validity of the State Department’s conclusion.
Friday’s announcement came at a politically sensitive moment for Clinton. She is locked in a dead heat in Iowa with Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, whose long-shot bid for the Democratic nomination has gained momentum in recent weeks, and the revival of the email matter could increase anxiety among Clinton supporters who had hoped that the issue would fade as the primaries began and a  general election loomed.
Some uncertainty has hung over Clinton and her campaign since the revelation last spring that she had used a private email system for official business, with the FBI conducting an investigation into whether classified information was compromised.
A U.S. law enforcement official familiar with the investigation said that prosecuting anyone involved in the case would be difficult. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations, said that investigators are looking at whether anyone knowingly mishandled classified information on the system.


The inquiry has frustrated Clinton allies and provided fodder to GOP candidates such as Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who mused in Thursday night’s Republican debate that Clinton was “disqualified from being the commander in chief” because she stored classified material on her server and “her first acts as president may very well be to pardon herself.”
Republicans were quick to chime in, with Donald Trump tweeting that it was a “disaster” for Clinton and asking, “How can someone with such bad judgement be our next president?”
Sanders appeared to dismiss the email issue in October, when he told Clinton at a debate that Americans were “sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.”
“As I said at the first Democratic debate, there is a legal process in place which should proceed and not be politicized. The voters of Iowa and this nation deserve a serious discussion of the issues facing them,” Sanders said Friday in a statement.
The Friday announcement was significant because it appeared to undercut Clinton’s argument in recent months that she was merely the victim of a bureaucratic squabble between overly strict analysts at the intelligence agencies and more reasonable reviewers at the State Department.
The intelligence community’s inspector general had previously indicated that he thought that some of the emails contained top secret material. Until Friday, however, the State Department had declined to concur with that assessment.


State’s reviewers had said that more than 1,300 Clinton emails contained classified material, but the vast majority were just “confidential,” a lower level of sensitivity.
Clinton has said that none of her emails were marked classified when they were sent. But it is the responsibility of individual government officials to handle classified material appropriately, including by properly marking it as classified, according to experts.
Clinton has also said that the information in question was not classified at the time the emails were sent — a point that intelligence officials have disputed.
State Department spokesman John Kirby said Friday that his agency had not yet made a determination on that key question.
Kirby also said for the first time that some emails between Clinton and President Obama have been located and will also be withheld from public release. He said there were 18 emails between the two, comprising eight email chains. He said those emails were not classified but would take longer to be released, which is standard for presidential communication.
Clinton’s position was supported Friday by Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, who said none of the emails in question originated with Clinton.
“It has never made sense to me that Secretary Clinton can be held responsible for email exchanges that originated with someone else,” she said in a statement. “The only reason to hold Secretary Clinton responsible for emails that didn’t originate with her is for political points, and that’s what we’ve seen over the past several months.”
Another Clinton ally, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, told MSNBC that Friday’s announcement suggested an effort to hurt Clinton ahead of Monday’s voting in Iowa.
“The timing of it is quite suspect,” said Vilsack, a former Iowa governor.
Steven Aftergood, who heads a project on government secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists, said he thought the attention to Clinton’s emails was overblown, partly because similar classification disputes are common across government.
Still, he called Clinton’s public squabble with the intelligence community unusual.
“I think this is a unique set of circumstances in which a presidential candidate is engaged in a debate with an intelligence agency over her own record as a former official,” he said.
The State Department’s conclusion came as it has worked to process 55,000 pages of Clinton’s correspondence for public release, including about 1,000 pages that were released Friday night. Clinton has said that she deleted 31,000 additional emails in 2014, deeming them purely personal.
The State Department has been under a court order to release the documents in batches, once a month, as part of a lawsuit filed by reporter Jason Leopold of Vice News, who sued after the department failed to respond promptly to his request for the public documents.
A judge had ordered the department to release all of the emails by the end of January, but attorneys for the department said this week that they would miss the deadline, and requested another month.
That means the last of Clinton’s emails will not be released until the end of February — after the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary — and just before Super Tuesday, when voters in 11 states will cast ballots.
Clinton, who held three campaign events across Iowa on Friday, has encouraged the State Department to release her email as quickly as possible.
“I think it’s great. Let people sort them through,” Clinton said at a town hall sponsored by CNN in Iowa this week. “And as we have seen there is a lot . . . [of] interest. But it’s something that took time to get done.”
Although in September she said her decision to use the private account was a mistake, at the town hall this week she said she did not believe it amounted to “an error in judgment.”

APPLE MAY OWE IRELAND $19 BILLION, BUT IRELAND DOESN'T WANT THE MONEY.

(Angel Navarrete/Bloomberg)

Depending on the outcome of an official investigation, Apple may face a bill that is estimated at between $8 billion and $19 billion for underpaid taxes to the Irish government. The Irish government really, really doesn’t want to get this money and is fighting as hard as it can to avoid receiving it. That may sound weird to ordinary people, who assume that governments want to squeeze individuals and businesses for as much taxes as they can get. But if you understand the politics of international corporation tax, it all makes sense.

Apple wants to avoid paying U.S. taxes
As Gabriel Zucman argues in his book on international tax evasion and avoidance, “The Hidden Wealth of Nations,” many U.S. firms locate as much of their activities as possible in low-tax jurisdictions like Ireland to minimize their tax bills. This is often easier for sophisticated technology firms, since so much of their profit is tied up in intangible activities and assets such as design. Hence, they can structure their operations so that much of the profits go to subsidiaries based in Ireland, Luxembourg and elsewhere, minimizing their U.S. tax exposure and deferring the point at which they have to pay U.S. taxes. Apple has approximately $200 billion salted away overseas. Businesses like Apple have also sought individualized tax “rulings” from countries like Ireland and Luxembourg that legitimize their specific tax arrangements. Critics describe these rulings as sweetheart deals, while defenders say that they assure long-term confidence and stability.


Apple’s tax ruling has come under fire
Other European countries are very unhappy with the low tax rates in Ireland, Luxembourg and other corporate tax havens. They believe that these countries are deliberately trying to lure business and investment away from them. However, under E.U. law, they haven’t been able to do much about it. Corporate taxation policy is mostly left to the discretion of individual European countries, providing few angles of attack for countries or officials who don’t like tax havens.
However, the European Commission, the executive and administrative body of the European Union, has recently come up with a clever new legal argument. Even if E.U. law doesn’t really cover corporate tax laws, it does allow the E.U. to act against “state aid” — arrangements under which E.U. member states provide specific help to businesses in ways that distort market competition. If the European Commission treats tax rulings for individual firms as forms of state aid, it may be able to undermine them. This is what is happening to Apple. The European Commission is investigating whether Apple’s special tax deal with Ireland is a form of state aid. If it concludes yes, as everyone expects it to, it can make Ireland stop its special treatment for Apple and force Apple to pay whatever taxes to Ireland the commission thinks it should have paid.


Ireland isn’t happy
You might expect that Ireland — a country with heavy debt emerging from a serious recession — would be delighted to get its hands on up to $19 billion of unanticipated tax revenue. It isn’t. If Apple is forced to pay these taxes to Ireland, then Ireland will seem much less attractive to other footloose multinationals looking to minimize their tax liability. For example, Google too uses Ireland as a haven to minimize tax payments. The Irish government has clearly decided that the long-term economic costs of getting the money will outweigh the short term boost to revenues, and is lobbying against a large tax settlement.

The U.S. isn’t happy either
Every presidential election sees a lot of political rhetoric aimed at low tax jurisdictions overseas that are tempting U.S. businesses to locate their activities outside America. You might think that U.S. officials and legislators would be delighted to see these low-tax jurisdictions running into trouble. Again, you’d be wrong. The Senate Committee on Finance has just announced that it considers the European Commission’s investigation to be a “direct threat” to U.S. interests. The likely reasons are twofold. First, companies like Google and Apple have a lot of political clout on Capitol Hill. Second, and likely more important, if Europe succeeds in forcing U.S. companies to pay more taxes, Uncle Sam will probably have to foot much of the bill. The affected companies are likely to claim tax credits in the United States for taxes that they have to pay overseas, leaving the U.S. government and U.S. taxpayers worse off.

 REPUBLIC OF IRELAND PLAYERS SET FOR EURO 2016 QUALIFICATION BONUS.


 


The Republic of Ireland players that gained qualification for the upcoming EURO 2016 finals in France have come to terms with the FAI on a bonus package.
The deal was agreed following negotiations between the FAI and the players' representatives, Ciarán Medlar.
He heads up the Sports Unit at BDO Ireland, which advises many of Ireland’s leading professional sportspeople on all aspects of their financial and commercial planning.
John O’Shea and Robbie Keane acted on behalf of the Ireland players. The package includes payments to players who helped Ireland to qualify for EURO 2016, as well as a bonus structure for future successes at the Championships this summer.
John Delaney, FAI CEO, said: "I want to thank Robbie Keane and John O'Shea, as captain and vice captain, who acted on behalf of the players, and to all of the players themselves for bringing this matter to a successful and speedy conclusion, and for their professionalism throughout this short process.
“We can all now look forward to EURO 2016 together as Ireland get set for what will be a great occasion for the team and for our millions of supporters around the world.”
Robbie Keane today thanked the FAI for bringing the matter to a successful outcome.
"I would like to thank the Football Association of Ireland and John Delaney on behalf of all of the players," he said.
“We are pleased to have finalised this agreement quickly and cordially with the FAI through our representative, Ciaran Medlar.”
“The players are all very focused on preparing the tournament. We are delighted to have reached the EURO 2016 finals and really looking forward to an exciting group. It will be a tremendous honour to represent the country in France.”

ABOUT $4 BN STOLEN FROM MALAYSIA.

 Malaysia 1MDB scandal: Investigators say about $4bn stolen from fund

 

 

About $4bn (£2.8bn) may have been stolen from a fund owned by the Malaysian state, a prosecutor says.

The 1MDB fund was set up in 2009 to pay for major new economic and social developments in Malaysia.
Last year, Swiss authorities opened an investigation into 1MDB after it amassed more than $11bn (£7bn) of debt.
Switzerland's attorney general said on Friday there were "serious indications that funds have been misappropriated from Malaysian state companies".

Some of the money, the office of Michael Lauber said, had been transferred to Swiss accounts held by Malaysian former public officials and current and former public officials from the United Arab Emirates.
"To date, however, the Malaysian companies concerned have made no comment on the losses they are believed to have incurred," the attorney general's statement said (in German).
Mr Lauber called on Malaysian authorities to give full judicial assistance to their Swiss counterparts.
A Swiss investigation into 1MDB was opened last year, citing "suspected corruption of public foreign officials, dishonest management of public interests and money laundering".
Malaysian officials and 1MDB have not commented on the latest allegations.

Allegations about 1MDB have also hit Prime Minister Najib Razak

 

The fund's advisory board is chaired by Prime Minister Najib Razak, who launched 1MDB soon after taking office in 2009.
Last July, Malaysia's then-attorney general Abdul Gani Patail linked a donation of $681m (£478m) made to Mr Najib's account with companies and bodies with ties to 1MDB.
Mr Patail was replaced, and, after an investigation, his successor said on Tuesday that the money was a personal donation by the Saudi royal family. Most of it was returned, he said.
Malaysia's anti-corruption commission said it would seek a review of the decision.

 

 

 

PROTON CANCER THERAPY 'PROVES EFFECTIVE'

 Proton beam cancer therapy has 'fewer side effects'

 

 

Proton beam therapy for cancer causes fewer side effects than conventional radiotherapy, research suggests.

The study, published in The Lancet Oncology, suggested the therapy is also as effective as other treatments.
It pointed to similar survival rates and a lower impact on heart and lungs.
In 2014 the therapy was at the centre of a controversy over NHS care for children when the parents of Ashya King took him out of hospital in Hampshire to obtain the treatment abroad.
Their actions led to a police operation to find them.
Ashya, then aged five, is now cancer free, his family said last year.
The study, which was led by Dr Torunn Yock from the Massachusetts General Hospital in the US, looked at 59 patients, aged between three and 21, between 2003 and 2009.

'Alternative therapy'

All the patients had the most common kind of malignant brain tumour in children, known as medulloblastoma.
After five years, their survival rate was similar to that of patients treated with conventional X-ray radiotherapy, but there were fewer side effects to the heart and lungs, the study found.
The paper said: "Proton radiotherapy resulted in acceptable toxicity and had similar survival outcomes to those noted with conventional radiotherapy, suggesting that the use of the treatment may be an alternative to photon-based treatments."

What is proton beam therapy?

 

It uses charged particles instead of X-rays to deliver radiotherapy for cancer patients.
The treatment allows high-energy protons to be targeted directly at a tumour, reducing the dose to surrounding tissues and organs.
In general, it gives fewer side effects compared with high-energy X-ray treatments.
It can be used to treat spinal cord tumours, sarcomas near the spine or brain, prostate cancer, lung cancer, liver cancer and some children's cancers.
Sources: NHS England, Cancer Research UK

Independent expert Prof Gillies McKenna, who is the head of the department of oncology at the University of Oxford, said the research suggested that the "side effects are indeed dramatically reduced" with proton beam therapy.
"There were no side effects seen in the heart and lungs and gastrointestinal tract, which are almost always seen with X-rays, and no secondary cancers were seen at a time when we would have expected to see them in X-ray treated patients," he added.
Proton beam therapy is currently only available in the UK to treat eye cancers, but patients with other forms of cancer can apply for NHS funding for the therapy abroad.
However, the Department of Health has said that from April 2018 the treatment will be offered to up to 1,500 cancer patients at hospitals in London and Manchester, following investment worth £250m.

 

 

Two years ago a dispute about the use of the treatment prompted Brett and Naghemeh King, of Southsea, Hampshire, to remove Ashya from a hospital in Southampton against his doctors' advice.
The parents had wanted their son to undergo proton beam therapy in Prague, which had not been recommended by his care team in Southampton.
Their actions sparked an international police manhunt, and the couple were later arrested and held in a prison in Madrid.
They were eventually released and Ashya's therapy took place, with the NHS later agreeing to pay for it.
A spokesman for University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, said that medulloblastoma was not currently on the list of tumours approved for this treatment on the NHS.
"However, we welcome any update to the existing clinical evidence on cancer treatments and will follow any expansion of the current national criteria," a spokesman added.

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Key events for Ashya's treatment

• Ashya had surgery for a medulloblastoma brain tumour at Southampton General Hospital in July 2014
• His parents, Brett and Naghemeh, removed him from the hospital on 28 August and sparked a manhunt when they travelled to Spain
• They were arrested but later released and Ashya was flown to Prague, Czech Republic, for proton beam treatment
• He had six weeks of proton beam therapy, which cost between £60,000 and £65,000, according to the treatment centre, and which was paid for by the NHS
• Ashya returned to hospital in Spain
• In March 2015, Brett King announced his son was free of cancer