The Federation of Quebec maple syrup producers (FPAQ) tries to control their product’s price almost the same way as OPEC does with oil. All syrup producers in the province must belong to FPAQ (otherwise, their production will be confiscated). The organization’s members are limited by specific output norms, or quotas. Any surplus of syrup comes into FPAQ warehouses. Farmers are paid only when the...

Bitcoin’s rally is coming to an end. After a meteoric rise in recent months, the cryptocurrency’s quotations began to decline, not less rapidly. Although bitcoin’s quotations are significantly higher than they were a month ago, the fall in the last days is too pronounced and have already caused a lot of noise. Losses from the highs reached almost 40%. In general, the cryptocurrency’s movement...

46 new molecules have been registered worldwide in 2014. This is is 17 times more than the year before, according to the report of Thomson Reuters CRM International Pharmaceutical R&D, published in August 2015. These molecules are new original drugs that have passed all stages of clinical trials and have been approved by regulators. Office of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last year...

Facebook users began to place original content less frequently, limiting themselves by comments. This has already become a threat to the business model of the world's largest social network, writes The Wall Street Journal, citing the results of a GlobalWebIndex’s survey. The survey showed that in the III quarter of 2015, only 34% of the social network’s users updated statuses, and 37% shared...

US pharmaceutical industry has got a new trend - rising prices for vouchers. Companies like AbbVie and Sanofi are buying them up to accelerate introduction their medicines on the market. These vouchers do not guarantee that US authorities will approve new drugs, yet their value amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars in the secondary market. Office of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)...

Norway's oil revenues are falling, despite devaluation of the Krone and ramping up raw materials production. Oslo is preparing to dive into National Welfare Fund. Politicians demand the country to stray from the resource development model. Net profit of the Norwegian government from its oil and gas assets decreased by 13% in January-September 2015, compared to the same period last year - from...

In the footsteps of Amazon and Google, Wal-Mart is preparing to launch the goods delivery using UAV. Commercial use of drones can bring $ 82.5 billion to the US economy in 10 years. Yet, so far the new industry have been stumbling across state regulators. Last week, the world's largest retailer Wal-Mart ($ 485.65 billion turnover by the end of 2014) asked for permission to test unmanned aerial...

Last batch of statistics on Eurozone’s consumer confidence proved to be very diverse and presented a lot of surprises. The composite index of business and consumer confidence in the Eurozone in October was at the level of 105.9 points against 105.6 points a month earlier, according to the European Commission. The October value of the indicator was the highest since June 2011, as in the previous...

This year, China may overtake Germany and become the world's largest installer of solar panels. However, as companies increasingly need to expand land plots for solar farms, they have to turn to innovative solutions: everything is grown beneath solar-cell arrays - from plants to hairy crabs. This helps companies get around government restrictions on the conversion of agricultural land, enlist...