Yahoo users estimated at 800 million, CEO says

SAN FRANCISCO – Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said the Internet company now has about 800 million worldwide users, a 20 percent increase since she was lured away from Google 15 months ago to steer a turnaround.

The gain disclosed Wednesday at a technology conference in San Francisco is the latest evidence of the progress that Yahoo Inc. is making under Mayer’s leadership. The Sunnyvale, Calif., company’s stock has nearly doubled since Mayer came aboard, though she and analysts say that gain primarily stems from the value of Yahoo’s holdings in China’s rapidly growing Alibaba Group.

Mayer says the figure for the 800 million Yahoo users doesn’t include the traffic that the company has picked up from its $1.1 billion acquisition of Internet blogging service Tumblr earlier this year.

U.N.: A third of food worldwide gets wasted

ROME – The U.N. food agency said one-third of all food produced in the world gets wasted, amounting to a loss of $750 billion a year.

The Rome-based Food and Agricultural Organization said in a report Wednesday that food in developing countries is wasted mostly due to poor harvesting techniques, while in high-income areas the primary cause of waste is careless consumer behavior.

The report said food waste hurts the environment by causing unnecessary carbon emissions, extra water consumption and the reduction of biodiversity as farming takes over more land. The most serious areas of waste are of cereals in Asia and meat in wealthy regions and Latin America.

Taiwan inks wheat deal worth $484.5 million

BISMARCK, N.D. – Taiwan has agreed to buy $484.5 million worth of U.S. wheat over the next two years, much of it from North Dakota, officials said Wednesday.

Gov. Jack Dalrymple and Taiwanese milling industry officials signed the agreement Wednesday afternoon at the North Dakota Capitol in Bismarck.

U.S. Sen. John Hoeven said North Dakota, Montana and Idaho will provide the bulk of the 62.5 million bushels to Taiwan.

Jim Peterson, marketing director for the North Dakota Wheat Commission, said Taiwan is the six-largest importer of U.S. wheat, purchasing an average of more than 30 million bushels annually, including 18 million bushels of hard spring wheat, North Dakota’s staple crop that’s used in making bread or blended with other wheat types for noodles.

North Dakota accounts for about half of the nation’s spring wheat crop, and the two-year deal announced Wednesday with the Taiwanese is worth about $200 million to the state’s farmers, Peterson said.