LONDON (AFP) ― A poll out Sunday found that almost a third of adults in Britain have stopped eating ready-meals as a result of the horsemeat scandal, while seven percent have stopped eating meat altogether.The ComRes survey, for the Sunday Mirror and The Independent on Sunday newspapers, found that 31 percent have given up eating ready-meals as the discovery of equine flesh in products labeled beef spreads across Europe.The poll also found a 53 percent to 33 percent majority in favor of banning

DETROIT (AP) ― BMW is recalling almost 570,000 cars in the U.S. and Canada because a battery cable connector can fail and cause the engines to stall.The recall affects the popular 3-Series sedans, wagons, convertibles and coupes from the 2007 through 2011 model years. Also included are 1-Series coupes and convertibles from 2008 through 2012, and the Z4 sports car from 2009 through 2011.The cable connectors and a fuse box terminal in the cars can degrade over time, and that can break the electric

The price, smell and color should have been clear tipoffs something was wrong with shipments of horsemeat that were fraudulently labeled as beef, French authorities said Thursday. The government pinned the bulk of the blame on a French wholesaler at the heart of a growing scandal in Europe.Police in the U.K., meanwhile, announced the arrests Thursday of three men on suspicion of fraud at two meat plants inspected earlier this week by the country's Food Standards Agency.The two separate developme

Unemployment in Greece rose to a record 27 percent in November as separate surveys on Thursday showed the country remains stuck in recession and predicted nearly a third of the population would be in poverty by the end of the year.The Statistics Agency said unemployment increased from a rate of 26.6 percent in October and 20.8 percent in November the previous year. More than 30,000 people lost their job in November, the agency said, with the jobless rate accelerating from earlier in the year.Wor

The recession across the economy of the 17 European Union countries that use the euro deepened in the last three months of 2012 as Germany faltered in the face of anemic demand across the debt-ridden region.Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, said Thursday the eurozone economy shrank by 0.6 percent in the final quarter of 2012 from the previous three-month period. The decline was bigger than the 0.4 percent drop expected in markets and represented the biggest fall since the first quarter of 20

BRASILIA (AFP) ― Regulators in Brazil on Wednesday rejected Apple’s application to register its iPhone trademark in the country, having already recognized a local manufacturer’s claim to the name.The Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) “denied Apple registration of the iPhone trademark,” the institute’s press office told AFP. The decision was officially published by the INPI.Apple had applied for exclusive rights to the iPhone name in Brazil in 2007 when it launched the wildly popular smartp

DALLAS (AP) ― American Airlines and US Airways will merge and create the world’s biggest airline. The boards of both companies approved the deal late Wednesday, according to four people close to the situation. The carrier will keep the American Airlines name but will be run by US Airways CEO Doug Parker. American’s CEO, Tom Horton, will serve as chairman of the new company until mid-2014, these people said. They requested anonymity because the merger negotiations were private. The merger caps a

BRUSSELS (AFP) ― Europe has made real progress in setting up a single bank supervisory system but it is only a first step and provisions for winding up failed lenders and protecting depositors are urgently needed alongside it, a report prepared for the International Monetary Fund warned Wednesday.In December, the eurozone agreed to set up a Single Supervisory Mechanism under the oversight of the European Central Bank as a first step toward a wider banking union, aiming to prevent any repeat of t

Trade talks seen starting by June; deal could boost GDP by 0.5% in EU, 0.7% in U.S.

First, there was “pink slime.” Then horsemeat. Most recently? “Desinewed meat.”Recent revelations that such products have reached dinner tables, including horsemeat falsely labeled as beef in Europe, have cast an unappetizing light on the global food industry.Critics say the widening horsemeat scandal in particular is a result of a food supply chain that has become too complex to be safe. Others say we are stuck with the system: In today's world, foodstuffs are highly mobile commodities, while c

The EU's executive called in Europe's law enforcers and urged bloc-wide DNA food testing at crisis talks held Wednesday to restore consumer confidence in a horsemeat-tainted processed food scandal."We do not know exactly what has gone wrong," British food and environment minister Owen Paterson told reporters as he prepared to drive to the headquarters of the Europol law enforcement agency in The Hague."We have to get to the bottom of these cases," he said at the close of emergency Brussels talks

BRUSSELS (AFP) ― European farming ministers and the European commissioner for health were due to meet in Brussels Wednesday amid growing anger and recriminations over mislabeled meat products.The EU meeting comes a day after British police searching for the source of horsemeat in kebabs and burgers raided two meat plants, the first such operation since the scandal spread across Europe.The Brussels meeting takes place amid suspicions of links to organized crime and public fears over health, and a