Author: Scott Davidson

PepsiCo has been sued by New York state for plastic pollution along the Buffalo River that is allegedly contaminating the water and harming wildlife. According to the lawsuit, PepsiCo is the single largest identifiable contributor to the problem. PepsiCo’s spokesperson has told the BBC that it has been “transparent in its journey to reduce use of plastic”. Last week Coca-Cola, Danone and Nestle were accused of making misleading claims about their plastic bottles. PepsiCo, maker of Pepsi, Doritos and other snacks, is the world’s second biggest food company after industry leader Nestle. The American giant is the latest major corporation to face a lawsuit by local…

London (06/11 – 58) France and the United Kingdom (UK) have jointly made a request in favour of Sri Lanka to the court of the Southern District of New York, for a six-month freeze on any litigation in the Hamilton Reserve Bank case until Sri Lanka’s external debt restructuring is completed, the Financial Times reported. Accordingly, last week the two countries filed a joint “amicus curiae” to the New York judge hearing the case, arguing in favour of Sri Lanka’s request for a six-month freeze on any litigation. The co-signatories in their “amicus curiae” want the judge to grant Sri…

NEW YORK — A state appeals court judge on Thursday temporarily lifted a gag order that barred Donald Trump from speaking about the staff of the judge overseeing an ongoing $250 million civil fraud trial against the former president. Within hours of the ruling, Trump seized on the new leeway and denigrated the trial judge’s principal law clerk on social media. “Considering the constitutional and statutory rights at issue an interim stay is granted,” Associate Justice David Friedman of the Appellate Division, First Department wrote in a brief order. Friedman’s order also paused a gag order that barred the lawyers involved…

Fighter jets roared off the aircraft carrier’s flat top into the night, their afterburners glowing. The scene aboard the USS Carl Vinson – visited recently by Radio Free Asia journalists – came during recent joint exercises by American and Japanese naval vessels in the Philippine Sea that included two U.S. aircraft carriers and one Japanese helicopter carrier. It was a show of force in a patch of ocean where Chinese provocations have increased, including a collision last month between Philippine fishing boats and a Chinese coast guard ship. Naval officers aboard the ships said the exercises were simply meant to…

Returning to the stand in his family’s civil fraud trial in New York, Donald Trump Jr described his father as “an artist with real estate”. The younger Mr Trump made the case for the Trump Organization that the ex-president was a “genius”. He was the first defence witness in the trial, in which he is a co-defendant along with his father and brother Eric. A loss in court threatens the Trump real estate empire, which could be banned from doing business in New York. A judge has already ruled Trump significantly inflated the value of his properties by more than…

The US and Qatar signalled on Sunday that they were edging closer to a deal to release a significant number of civilian hostages held by Hamas in the besieged Gaza Strip. Any breakthrough is expected to lead to a multi-day pause in Israel’s offensive on Gaza and an increase of urgently needed aid into the coastal enclave that is enduring a deepening humanitarian crisis. US deputy national security adviser Jonathan Finer said Washington believed it was “closer than we have been to reaching a final agreement”, adding that many areas of difference that “previously existed have been narrowed”. Source :…

Toronto, Alaska (16/11 – 50) Our lives are being maneuvered and we are being manipulated by unelected, insidious forces, toward objectives not necessarily in the people’s interest. Now that the so-called “pandemic”, declared by the mysterious self-appointed World Health Organization, and followed obediently by governments everywhere, has been decreed “finished”, we should devote a moment to introspection, considering who is running the show and for whose benefit, as governments gaily abdicated their vested responsibility to govern. Pandemic is over? I hope they told those killer viruses who destroyed the population of Europe and North America. What? Oh, just 1% mortality?…

North Korea on Monday denounced the United States’ potential sale of missiles to Japan and South Korea, calling it a dangerous act that raises tension in the region and brings a new arms race, state media reported. In a statement carried by the KCNA news agency, the North’s defence ministry said Pyongyang will step up measures to establish deterrence and respond to instability in the region, which it said was caused by the United States and its allies. Japan plans to buy 400 Tomahawk missiles from the United States, part of its biggest military build-up since World War Two. The…

Vietnamese coconut growers and businesses are excited to expand production to meet the domestic and foreign demand which is expected to increase in the coming time as the US officially opened its market for Vietnam’s fresh coconut in August this year, and China is considering to allowing official coconut import. Bui Duong Thuat, Director of the Mekong Fruit Export Ltd.Co in Chau Thanh district, the southern province of Ben Tre, said that the US market is the second-biggest coconut importer in the world, just after China as it imports approximately 2,000 containers of fresh coconut yearly. Meanwhile, Vietnamese companies export…

London (15/11 – 67) Colombo Supreme Court rules that former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his brother, former Prime Minister Mahinda, were among several government officials whose conduct contributed to Sri Lanka’s worst economic crisis in decades. The court was ruling on a petition filed against 13 former officials by rights group Transparency International Sri Lanka (TISL) which said the Rajapaksa brothers and others were responsible for the crisis. “Their actions, omissions and conduct contributed to the crisis,” the ruling said. The court did not order any punishment, according to a statement by TISL. The two Rajapaksa brothers, two former central…