Planet Business

Image of the week: Rice crisis

There’s a global rice shortage, or there will be, not that you can tell from this photograph taken at a food warehouse in Quezon City, in the Philippines. It’s all the fault of El Nino, everybody’s least favourite weather pattern, which has brought droughts to India and Southeast Asia, and has been blamed for damage to some 299,558 metric tons of rice in the Philippines alone. A bad monsoon season now would be disastrous, while Bloomberg’s January headline, “El Nino is So Last Year, Here Comes La Nina to Bring Havoc” doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

Photograph: Taylor Weidman/Bloomberg

In Numbers: Ice Cold in Starbucks

14

Ounces of fluid allegedly found in a Starbucks iced coffee advertised as having 24 ounces. It's being sued by one Stacy Pincus, a Chicago woman who says the coffee giant is misleading consumers.

$5 million

Amount for which Starbucks is being sued, with the chain accused of fraud, negligent misrepresentation and unjust enrichment. It also seeks class-action status, which could allow it to cover up to a decade’s worth of disappointing iced coffees.

29

Number of pages in the lawsuit, described by Slate magazine as “a classic first-world problem lawsuit”. Starbucks, for its part, said ice was “an essential component” of any iced beverage.

The Lexicon: “Bin Ladens”

In Spain, purple-hued €500 banknotes have been nicknamed "Bin Ladens" for their elusiveness, while over at Europol they have been declared the "currency of choice" for criminal and terrorist networks. Presumably one never sees a crumpled "Bin Laden", only an array of crisp, fresh-from-the-vault notes, perfect for storing in the freezer. Now the European Central Bank wants to phase them out and stop printing them altogether. "Bin Ladens" have their defenders, however, and they include economists from Germany who are aggrieved at what they believe to be the beginning of a dastardly ECB ploy to abolish paper money. The good news for money launderers is that the €200 banknote lives on. A Google image search reveals it to be yellow.

Getting to know: Don Guardian

The splendidly named Don Guardian is the mayor of Atlantic City, which sounds like an interesting job, and Don Guardian has the misfortune to live in interesting times. His boardwalk empire is on the verge of bankruptcy because its biggest taxpayer, the casino industry, has fallen victim to the rise of online gambling, leaving the city in dire financial straits. On Monday, it scraped together the $1.8 million (€1.5 million) it needed to make a bond payment and avoid becoming the first New Jersey city to default on its loans since the Great Depression. The scrabbling was likened by the bowtie-wearing Guardian to hunting for change down the back of the sofa. "Financially, we're running on fumes," he says. On the bright side, the mess might help distract Guardian, a gay Republican, from the whole Trump situation.

In Numbers: Ice Cold in Starbucks

“Big Tobacco” has failed in its bid to block new European Union laws on the sale of tobacco products, which will now take effect across Europe, clearing the path for the planned introduction of plain, brand-free packaging in Ireland. So what are the rules?

1 Warnings

Picture health warnings, like those graphic horrors straight out of torture movies, will have to cover 65 per cent of the front and back of cigarette cartons. (Originally, the proposal was for 75 per cent.)

2 “Lipstick” packets

All packs must have at least 20 cigarettes in them, to allow space for the health warnings, with a ban on “slimline” packs that apparently resemble lipsticks.

3 Vape clampdown

The advertising of e-cigarettes will be restricted on the basis that vaping is a gateway drug to conventional cigarettes.

4 No relativity

Cigarette companies can’t say their product is “less harmful than other brands”.

5 Menthol cigarettes

A ban has been upheld, after a challenge by Poland, on the basis that menthol has a “pleasant flavour” and makes tobacco more attractive (notwithstanding the estimated 700,000 premature deaths across the EU linked to smoking).