Free Republic

A Chinese Restaurant Operator is in big trouble after he laced his noodles with Opium drugs in an attempt to keep customers coming back. Chinese Guangxi Province-based restaurant intended to get patrons addicted and increase the chances of them coming back for more. The restaurateur’s dirty trick was uncovered by mistake, after someone who ate at his local in Sanjiang Dong Autonomous County tested positive for morphine, the active component in opium, during a police inspection. The shocked man insisted that he had not willingly taken drugs, and told investigators that the only thing he had ingested that he couldn’t...

Shipwreck Could Hold Thousands of Litres of Rum • Sunken British warship the Lord Clive could hold “treasure worth millions”, including “vast stocks” of 250-year-old rum which will be recovered later this year. The wreck, which sunk off the coast of Uruguay, was discovered in 2004, but the Uruguyan government has only given permission for its recovery this year. Salvage of the ship, which was sunk by Spanish cannons in 1763, will require cranes, excavators and around 80 workers and is expected to begin within two months. The ship, which was constructed in Hull for the Royal Navy and was...

MUMBAI: Over 400 years after it was first established, the East India Company has relaunched in a new avatar — a luxury goods brand. At its peak, the company was responsible for 50% of global trade, employed a third of the British workforce and ruled much of India. Now, the brand will sell luxury gift sets, teas, coffees, jams and other goods inspired by the East India Company’s history through its new e-commerce website. The site, and the company’s flagship store in London, was launched on Independence Day. Mumbai-born owner Sanjiv Mehta, 48, says he is just a trustee of...

London, England (CNN) -- It was the world's first multinational company, a trading giant during the colonial rule of the Indian subcontinent. This week, The East India Co. is being reborn as a luxury brand -- under Indian ownership. Sanjiv Mehta, an Indian-born importer and entrepreneur, bought the intellectual property rights to the company in 2005, after they had lain dormant for a century. His goal was to create a global luxury brand. His dream is realized in a new store off London's high-end Regent Street, where the new East India Co. now sells gourmet tea, chocolate, coffee and gifts....

It was the paragon of British imperialism, set up to exploit India’s wealth of resources and ending up governing large parts the country in the process. At its height the East India Company controlled 50 per cent of world trade, bringing tea and coffee to the breakfast tables of the West and spices around the globe. Now, 136 years after it was dissolved, the business is being relaunched - by an Indian entrepreneur. And, initially anyway, it will be a rather more modest enterprise. Mumbai-born Sanjiv Mehta is opening a luxury food shop this month in Mayfair, London, under the...