Ideas Galore

Counterfeiting of consumer goods has gone beyond the leading brands of bags or sneakers and now includes batteries, light bulbs and extension cords.

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Anyone who has the business acumen in food production or exportation are duly encouraged to capture a share of a huge global halal market and trade estimated between $580 billion to $1.20 trillion. The halal business is becoming more lucrative but at the same time more complex and challenging.

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The world’s poorest nations are most vulnerable, particularly the urban poor in food importing countries, and will require increase humanitarian aid to stave off hunger and undernourishment, a joint agricultural outlook by the Organized for Economic Cooperation and Development and the UN Food and Agricultural Organization sites.

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The internal demand in China and its imposition of higher export taxes on magnesium oxide and bauxite, two sensitive materials needed by factories in their manufacture of refractory products. Industry sources has said, that the higher taxes slapped on these products would directly affect the steel, cement and ferro-alloy sectors, which rely mostly on refractory materials to operate their plants.

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A plan to regulate of what is called an unfair or deceptive billing practices by credit card companies is in the offing. The US Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) who has approved the plan, made a proposal that would generally prohibit credit card companies from increasing the annual percentage rates on a customer’s outstanding balance it has said in a statement.

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A study from a watchdog group on Washington lobbying, corporations, unions and other interests spent a record setting 2.79 billion US dollars in 2007. The Center for Responsive Politics said spending in 2007 eclipsed the previous record in 2006 by 200 million dollars with health care interests, wall street, the real estate industry and insurers are the biggest spenders.

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