International Business

A group of former Nokia employees who quit over the Finland-based company's decision to scrap the planned MeeGo operating system in favor of teaming up with Windows has unveiled their own smartphone on Monday, and are hoping to rival the smartphone sector giants.

The smartphone, which is so far just called Jolla, is entirely intuitive and features absolutely no physical buttons. It also has a 4.5-inch touchscreen and features two different colored halves that together form the phone. It is due to go on sale to the public in the fourth quarter, and will retail for 399 euros ($513 USD).

The Jolla smartphone runs on its own operating system called Sailfish OS, which is a successor to MeeGo and is compatible with some Android applications. They are offering Sailfish products to retailer and operator partners for the medium price range.

Jolla is hoping to compete in markets in China, Europe and North Africa, but has no plans to enter the United States' market. Jolla has already signed two distribution deals, one with the largest smartphone retailer in China, D.Phone, and another with the Finnish operator DNA.

It could be this summer, it could be this fall. Either way, the iPhone 5S is coming and will be available to consumers in advance of next year's holiday shopping season. It's pretty much a given. It may be coming sooner rather than later, if the latest rumors are true. Foxconn, which makes many of the components for Apple's products, particularly the iPhone, is said to be ramping up production on the iPhone 5S and is starting to hire more workers to handle the increased production.

Specifically, the Zhengzhou factory in China saw an increase in workers, with recruiting having begun in February. This factory alone employs between 250,000 and 300,000 workers.

Researchers in New Jersey say that they have discovered potentially dangerous levels of lead in white rice that has been imported to the United States from various locations around the world.

Dr. Tsanagurayi Tongesayi, an environmental chemistry professor at Monmouth University, said that his team's findings are especially worrisome for Asian-Americans who consume large amounts of rice, and infants and children who are more sensitive to the effects of lead.

Tongesayi added:

"Such findings present a situation that is particularly worrisome given that infants and children are especially vulnerable to the effects of lead poisoning. For infants and children, the daily exposure levels from eating the rice products analyzed in this study would be 30-60 times higher than the FDA's provisional total tolerable intake (PTTI) levels."

The researchers analyzed samples of rice imported to the U.S. from Asia, Europe, and South America, and found that the rice contained between 6 and 12 milligrams per kilogram of lead. This surpasses the Food and Drug Administration's allowable levels.

The highest levels of lead were found in rice imported from Taiwan and China. Significantly high levels of lead were also found in rice imported from the Czech Republic, Bhutan, Italy, India, and Thailand.

A new study has found that global warming will make it difficult to raise grapes in traditional wine country, which will force production to shift to other regions. The study has found sharp declines in wine production from Bordeaux, Rhone, Tuscany, California's Napa Valley, and Chile by 2050 as warming climates make it harder to raise grapes in traditional wine country.

Researchers are now predicting a two-thirds fall in production in the world's premier wine regions due to climate change, with the biggest decline expected in Europe. However, they also anticipate that wine production will make a large push into areas that were once considered unsuitable for wine making, which could mean a greater variety from northern Europe, the northwest U.S., and even the hills of central China.

Lee Hannah, a senior scientist at Conservation International and an author of the study, says:

"The fact is that climate change will lead to a huge shakeup in the geographic distribution of wine production."

Researchers are anticipating huge changes in the regions that produce good grapes. Hannah notes:

"It will be harder and harder to grow those varieties that are currently growing in places in Europe. It doesn't necessarily mean that [they] can't be grown there, but it will require irrigation and special inputs to make it work, and that will make it more and more expensive."

One of the most finicky varieties of grapes are white grapes, which are sensitive to very subtle temperature shifts, rain, and sunshine.

Multiple arms of the publishing industry, including the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, are formally opposing Amazon.com Inc.'s request to own new domain name names.

The groups argue that allowing Amazon to own domain that end in the suffixes like ".book", ".author", and ".read" would be a threat to competition.

Barnes & Noble Inc. has also opposed Amazon's request for the new domains.

Two North Carolina mothers concerned about the effects of artificial coloring used in Kraft's Mac & Cheese are petitioning the food maker to change its formulation to eliminate the additives - yellow dye 5 and yellow dye 6 - which they say add nothing to the flavor and may even be dangerous to children's health.

Lisa Leake and Vani Hari, both food bloggers, did some investigating and discovered that in the United Kingdom, Kraft makes the same Mac & Cheese, but due to the country's stricter regulations regarding additives, it does not use dye for its yellow color. Instead, Kraft uses natural beta carotene and paprika in the U.K. to make it nearly the same color.

Leake and Hari both also tasted the U.S. version and the U.K. version of the mac and cheese on camera, and said that they did not taste any different. They claim that the yellow dye used in the U.S. variety only serves "aesthetic purposes", and worry that food colors have been associated with a host of problems in children, including hyperactivity, allergies, migraines, and because yellow dies are petroleum-based, maybe even cancer.

They've posted a petition on Change.org asking Kraft to use the same formulation for mac and cheese that they use in the U.K. in the U.S.. So far, the petition has over 25,000 signatures, and continues to grow.

Another horse meat scandal is now unfolding overseas at a fast food chain familiar to Americans. Food safety officials say that they've found traces of horse meat in ground beef sold by fast food restaurant Taco Bell in the United Kingdom, where the chain has just three locations.

According to the UK's Food Standards Agency, horse DNA was also found in Birds Eye spaghetti Bolognese and beef lasagna, as well as spicy minced beef skewers from catering supplier Brakes.

Horse meat has recently been found in a variety of beef dishes throughout Europe, ranging from frozen foods at the supermarket to even school and hospital meals. Earlier this week, Ikea recalled its Swedish meatballs and wiener sausages in a number of European countries after traces of horse meat were discovered.

Earlier this week, Czech food inspectors found traces of horse meat in Ikea's famous Swedish meatballs, prompting the do-it-yourself home furnishing company to pull the meatballs from store shelves in 21 European countries, Hong Kong, Thailand, and the Dominican Republic. On Wednesday, Ikea announced that it would also be pulling wiener sausages made by the same supplier after its own tests confirmed "a few indications of horse meat."

Ikea said that it would pull the sausages from stores in France, the United Kingdom, Spain, Ireland, and Portugal. According to the company spokesman, other stores were getting their sausages from other suppliers.

Stores in other countries, including the United States and Canada, are not effected by either the Swedish meatball recall, or the wiener sausage recall as they receive their foods from a different supplier.

Do-it-yourself furniture retailer Ikea says that it has halted all sales of meatballs in Sweden after Czech authorities said that they detected horse meat in frozen meatballs that were labeled as containing beef and pork.

On Monday, Ikea Sweden said on its Facebook page that it will not sell or serve any meatballs at its stores in Sweden out of concern for "potential worries among our customers."

Launched in 2009 in South Korea, the Kia Cadenza (or Kia K7 in S. Korea) will finally be made available to North American consumers beginning with the 2014 model year to go on sale beginning in the second quarter of 2013. It's not available to purchase yet, but you can check it out at the Cleveland Auto Show, which is going on now at the International Exposition Center in Cleveland, OH. It's also been on display at other auto shows across the country. Unlike many of Kia's other model vehicles, the Cadenza is aiming for the North American premium sedan market and the buyers who are looking for a car that's somewhere between mainstream and luxury.

The launch of the Kia Optima and Sorento cross-over has helped slowly move Kia up the ranks and away from their start as an economy automaker. The launch of the new Cadenza will only help to move them along further towards that goal of being seen as more than just a cheap automaker. Kia describes the Cadenza as having elements of European design, which will help in defining itself in the higher-end market. It will also be available with Kia's most powerful V-6 engine.

The Cadenza features 3.3-liter, V-6 engine and six-speed automatic transmission that includes a manual shift model as well as paddle shifters on the steering wheel. Designed to run on regular unleaded gasoline, the Cadenza produces 293 horsepower.

Kia is launching the Cadenza with some premium features that they've never before made available with their vehicles here in the U.S. Standard features on the Cadenza include leather seats, a navigation system, Kia UVO, alloy wheels and Bluetooth. Some of the premium features being offered with the 2014 Cadenza include a backup camera and warning system and a 550-watt 12-speaker audio system, amongst other options. For example, one of the premium packages includes a 7-inch LCD instrument cluster, premium leather seats, and a full-length panoramic sunroof.