WINNIPEG — Cellphone ringing, table texting and laptops on tables are a growing annoyance for restaurateurs, according to Maureen Scurfield of the Winnipeg Free Press.

“[Restauraters] are powerless to stop the trend,” she writes. “If they prohibited people from using their electronic devices, they'd lose half their customers.”

WINNIPEG — Cargill, a Winnipeg-based grain handler, is the first company to enter into an alliance with the revamped Canadian Wheat Board (CWB).

The partnership will help the Wheat Board offer its products and services to farmers’ and customers’ market pool and cash contracts and provide a grain-delivery facility.

WINNIPEG — A fire erupted at the Maple Leaf Foods plant in Winnipeg at Lagimodiere Boulevard, yesterday, Nov. 9, reports CBC News.

According to the paper, the firefighters were dispatched, while employees of the plant were evacuated to the city busses. The cause of the fire is unknown.

WINNIPEG — Federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz has dismissed the results of the Canadian Wheat Board vote, where 60 per cent of wheat growers and 51 per cent of barley growers voted in favour of maintaining the Board's monopoly.

"No expensive survey can trump the individual right of farmers to market their own grain," Ritz said in a statement.