People queue up outside a public supermarket’s doors in Ciudad Bolivar, Venezuela, in April 2015. (iStock/Getty Images)

World Food Programme starts distributing food in Venezuela

Reuters — The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) said Wednesday it had begun distributing school meals to children in Venezuela, where some seven million people require humanitarian assistance after years of economic collapse in the once-prosperous OPEC nation. The WFP’s first take-home rations were distributed for children under six years old at some 277 schools […] Read more

(DarcyMaulsby/iStock/Getty Images)

Potash partnership with BHP ‘not our focus,’ Nutrien executive says

Prices surging on rising demand, Belarus sanctions

Winnipeg | Reuters — Canadian potash producer Nutrien is not focused on any potential collaboration with miner BHP Group, a senior Nutrien executive said Tuesday in the company’s first public comments about reports of possible co-operation. BHP has for years been constructing a potash mine at Jansen, Sask., near Nutrien’s six mines in the province. […] Read more


File photo of a bridge over the Yalu River boundary between China and North Korea. (Tarzan9280/iStock/Getty Images)

U.N. expert says ‘some are starving’ in North Korea

Estimated 40 per cent of North Koreans need humanitarian aid, WFP says

Geneva | Reuters — A United Nations human rights expert voiced alarm on Tuesday at “widespread food shortages and malnutrition” in North Korea, made worse by a nearly five-month border closure with China and strict quarantine measures against COVID-19. Tomas Ojea Quintana, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, […] Read more

Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou leaves B.C. Supreme Court on a lunch break during her extradition hearing in Vancouver on Jan. 22, 2020. (Photo: Reuters/Jennifer Gauthier)

Huawei executive loses key court argument in fight against extradition

Toronto/Vancouver | Reuters — Huawei’s chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou has lost a key aspect of the trial on her extradition to the United States, a Canadian court announced on Wednesday. Meng, a Chinese citizen, was arrested in December 2018 in Vancouver on a warrant issued by U.S. authorities, who accuse her of bank fraud […] Read more


Iraqi men carry a coffin of a demonstrator, who was killed during anti-government protests, to bury at the cemetery in Najaf, Iraq on Oct. 7, 2019. (Photo: Reuters/Alaa al-Marjani)

Iraq replaces state grain agency’s chief

Baghdad/Dubai | Reuters — Iraq, a major Middle East wheat and rice importer, has replaced the head of its state grain buying agency, government sources and a document showed on Tuesday. Naeem al-Maksousi was replaced by Hassanein Mahdi Elwan, a document reviewed by Reuters showed. The reason for the replacement, which comes after a week […] Read more

(Dave Bedard photo)

Oil sanctions on Venezuela could benefit Canada

How Canada benefits from the oil sanctions the United States plans to place on Venezuela is contingent on the country’s ability to move its Western Canadian Select crude oil to U.S. refineries, said two oil industry experts. As part of an effort to effect regime change in Venezuela, U.S. President Donald Trump announced this week […] Read more


(BritishCheese.com)

Russian cheese lovers find way around import ban

Moscow | Reuters — An entrepreneur has found a way to supply Italian parmesan, Dutch Gouda and British Cheddar to cheese connoisseurs in Russia, sidestepping a ban on importing European food that the Kremlin imposed in the fallout from the conflict in Ukraine. Russia’s government banned wholesale imports of fresh food products from the European […] Read more



Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich (l) and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. (Government.ru)

Russian PM says can change list of banned imports

Moscow | Reuters –– A list of Western products that Russia has banned could be changed according to the state of relations with the European Union and other countries, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday. Medvedev told a government meeting he had approved an order, initiated by President Vladimir Putin, to extend a […] Read more

Russian President Vladimir Putin meets Wednesday at the Kremlin with government officials and announces plans for a one-year extension of Russia’s ban on agrifood imports from Canada, the U.S., the EU, Australia and Norway. (Kremlin.ru)

Putin adds another year to ban on Western food imports

Moscow | Reuters –– Russian President Vladimir Putin has extended the country’s ban on food imports from the West by one year, longer than had been expected, in retaliation to the extension of European sanctions against Moscow over Ukraine. The ban, which prohibits most food imports from the U.S., the European Union, Australia, Canada and […] Read more