Many years ago, inspired by Chinese-American contributor RR, we owned a dairy and baby-milk-powder stock, American Dairy, which despite its name produced milk on the plains of Inner Mongolia. It is now renamed Fiehe but still uses the ticker symbol ADY. It went private via a bunch of Cayman Islands companies funded by Morgan Stanley last year.
Shazaam. Now Jack Ma, chairman of Alibaba Group, the Chinese e-commerce site whose ipo is eagerly awaited, via a sub has taken a stake in Inner Mongolia Yili Industrial Group, a dairy firm. Yili 2 years ago had to recall its branded mercury-tainted infant formula. I am not quite sure how the businesses connect. Maybe Chinese parents can buy on-line formula guaranteed by Alibaba to not be contaminated with mercury or (an earlier scandal) melamine. It will be delivered to their homes not with a drone but with a magic carpet.
Inspired by the yachts on the East River, we walked a mile north via the riverside esplanade yesterday to an Italian grocery formerly in our East Midtown neighborhood but now in the Upper East Side. Then, laden with fresh produce, we walked back home along hospital row. First we saw a woman in full hijab buying halal food from a street vendor, and I wondered how she would be able to eat it; then a woman in a gorgeous pink and yellow sari; and then a bearded rabbi in full kit. All par for the course.
But next a surprise: a duck and a drake high-stepping it in shrubs along the edge of the sidewalk beside a high-rise apartment house, over 3 blocks from the river. They seemed okay so we walked on. Wildlife in Manhattan.
More follows from Canada, Britain, Israel, Qatar, Pakistan, China, Mexico, Spain, The Netherlands, Africa, Ethiopia, and Russia.
*Teva‘s Parkinson’s disease drug Azilect/Agilect won US FDA okay for expanded use. From being used alone or with levodopa, it now can be used as an adjunct to dopamine agonists as well as with other meds. This expands its brain and neurological drug franchise well beyond multiple sclerosis.
