Tokyo / AFP Customers like Shigeaki Yamaguchi may be the last hope for McDonald’s Japan as it battles slumping sales in the wake of an embarrassing string of food scandals. At a location in Tokyo’s busy Shinjuku district, Yamaguchi munched on the chain’s newest culinary offering — french fries drizzled in brown and white chocolate syrup. “Delicious,” the 37-year-old proclaimed ...

Paris / Bloomberg Algeria has awarded UK-based Amec Foster Wheeler the front end engineering design (Feed) for three green-field refinery projects, which are estimated to have a total budget of around $6bn. A statement issued on 16 February by the state-controlled energy company Sonatrach said that the design contract for the three refineries has been “provisionally awarded to the tenderer ...

Paris / Bloomberg Equate Petrochemicals, a joint venture between US-based Dow Chemical and the Kuwaiti government, has commissioned a $70m carbon dioxide plant in Kuwait. The carbon dioxide-recovery facility has a capacity of 280 tonnes a day. The gas will be produced by existing Equate petrochemicals plants. It will filter and purify the carbon dioxide, then liquefy it, making it ...