The investment to build the interconnector will amount to EUR2.8 billion, with the EIB set to contribute up to EUR400 million for the financing construction of the section within the European Union (EU).  Other financiers include the UK Infrastructure Bank, which will focus on the stretch within UK maritime and land territory, and the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC).…

It is maybe surprising that maternity support garments (MSGs) are still a niche segment, even though women of childbearing age constitute approximately one-quarter of the populations of developed countries. Indeed, tubular bands made out of cotton and elastane are still commonly used instead of MSGs across the world. …

Higher education institutions are being warned they could be a target for money laundering, with fees being financed by the proceeds of crime, including corruption, which might also buy property, cars and other items for students.

The problem has been highlighted in a series of reports.…

BRITAIN’S halal food market maybe growing, but the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union (EU) in January 2020 has been impeding the sale, production and export of such products, and the regulatory headaches may get worse in future.

Speaking to Salaam Gateway, Rizvan Khalid, managing director, of Euro Quality Lambs, a major England-based producer and exporter of halal sheepmeat, said trade red tape imposed since the UK quit the EU has imposed GBP500,000 of annual regulatory costs on his business.…

Halal experts and animal welfare activists around the world are seeking common ground on how to keep and slaughter animals in the most humane ways possible. Halal certification systems that forbid pre-slaughter stunning as haram is becoming an increasingly acute issue for countries with strong animal welfare culture traditions and growing Muslim populations.…

Researchers from England’s Lancaster University and Aston University, plus the Jožef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia, have developed a technique of making textile additives from spent nuclear fuel. They argue the system offers economic and environmental gains regarding the processing of waste, as well as substituting sodium dithionite, which can help form toxic gases.…

With its complex supply and distribution chain, the international knitwear sector fosters innovation, with commercial partners cross-fertilising technical and design ideas that span digitisation and mechanical smarts, as well as consumer-focused creativity.

One key area of innovation in the past year has been warp knitting – for instance by leading northern Italian warp seamless knitwear manufacturer Cifra (1), which last December (2020) launched an innovative and sustainable garment concept for women, spanning beachwear, athleisure bodywear and lingerie.…

INTRODUCTION

The concept of bespoke tailoring and couture has long been regarded as the apex of clothing and textile making, given that it matches a garment closely to its wearer and intended use. Until now, such personal apparel has inevitably been expensive, given runs are individualised – indeed, bespoke has been the antithesis of mass-produced fast fashion.…

WHILE the imposition of age limits on the consumption of tobacco and other nicotine products remains very much a national, and in some cases sub-national jurisdiction decision, there is no doubt that the general trend worldwide is for tighter restrictions on younger consumers, even if they are often tough to enforce.…

INTRODUCTION

In a global textile and clothing market that is increasingly integrating design with functionality, the potential of luminescent yarns is becoming ever more apparent. The focus of groundbreaking research and development, there is widening diversity in this segment from luminescent coatings on yarns to those that integrate LEDs (light-emitting diodes).…

The racism hurled at black members of the England football team following its loss to Italy in the Euro finals is a clear reminder, if one was needed, that racism remains a divisive problem in the UK.

A new important book, ‘Among the Mosques: A Journey across Muslim Britain’, by Dr Ed Husain, a former senior advisor to Tony Blair, is indeed timely, as it warns some UK-based Muslims still do not regard Britain as their home country – and this could fuel further division within the UK.…

Urban dwellers relocating to the England and Wales countryside during the Covid-19 pandemic are driving up land prices and even leading to the return of gazumping, according to land agents. Lifestyle buyers looking for farmhouses and land in scenically attractive areas are increasing demand and prices for land without much agricultural merit.…

Tunisia’s garment manufacturing industry is actively encouraging British brands to visit this key North African near sourcing hub to discover the quality and real potential of its workwear.

The campaign is building on a December 2020 webinar when Tunisian producers connected with potential British buyers within the workwear segment, to create new trading partnerships.…

Even though life has been increasingly lived online during the Covid-19 pandemic, there is still a significant market for hardware surveillance devices, including those that are covert, with recording devices hidden in everyday objects, such as pens, watches, even water bottles.…

AMERICA has long been the global policeman of international sanctions, including breaches of AML rules, but evidence suggests that the US dollar’s use in international transactions could be weakening and is having to compete with the rising power of crypto currencies.…

THE GROWING popularity of cryptocurrencies has stoked concerns that they offer a haven for money launderers. The concern focuses on the risk that crypto can be used anonymously to buy goods and services, without them being converted into fiat currencies through exchanges that are a key focus of emerging AML/CFT controls.…

New regulatory plastic waste obligations coming into force in July (this year) will force tobacco producers selling into the European Union’s (EU) 447-million-person market to take measures to reduce butt littering. The move, part of the EU’s Single Use Plastics Directive (SUPD) (Directive (EU) 2019/904), are designed to reduce the 4.5 trillion cigarette butts that end up as litter annually worldwide (according to the UN), generating 845,000 tonnes of waste, according to a New York (USA) state document.…

Lie detection is an emerging science, with technology being developed to help companies and law enforcement seek to detect fraudsters and other criminals. Artificial intelligence is a potential key development in enabling machines to screen subjects physical and audible response to questions to detect lies.…

Auditors in the UK are on the cusp of transforming their approach to fraud, pushed by a long-deliberated reform in audit guidance by the government.

It has released a white paper ‘Restoring Public Trust in Audit and Corporate Governance’ that suggests forcing more responsibility on auditors for fighting financial crime in the UK.…

Over the past year, the European Union’s (EU) dairy industry has weathered two storms: the departure of Great Britain from the EU single market and customs union, during the unprecedented lockdown measures adopted to contain Covid-19, all while EU lawmakers haggle over a major shakeup of agricultural regulations.…

THE WIDE diversity of AML laws worldwide can complicate the enforcement of AML/CFT extradition proceedings.

Financial Action Task Force (FATF) recommendations 37 and 39 say that governments should be prepared to extradite money launderers (and terrorist financiers) to another country if they both criminalise the underlying predicate offence.…

INTRODUCTION

NEW technology can deliver effective maintenance strategies to clothing and textile manufacturers, helping them go beyond reactive and proactive maintenance, moving into the more sophisticated world of prediction. The goal is to deliver an optimum maintenance strategy that enables manufacturers to get the most value out of their plant and equipment by spending the least amount of time, resources and money to deliver effective performance.…

SINGLE use plastics bans being brought in across the world may not cover all nonwovens products, but they certainly are having an impact on the industry as it parses often complex rules coming into force.

A key piece of legislation is the European Union’s (EU) so-called ‘single use plastics directive’ (1) which has deadlines passing in 2021.…

Already described by its proponents as a “wonder material” with numerous applications across the nonwovens sector, researchers now believe that graphene can play a “critical” role in the defeat of the coronavirus pandemic.

From advanced personal protection equipment (PPE) to air and water filtration systems, nonwovens manufacturers around the world have capitalised on this carbon-based material’s anti-viral capabilities to boost their product ranges.…

Anti-money laundering specialists may be focusing on how crypto-currencies and online transactions pose an increasing ML/TF risk, especially with Covid-19 encouraging ecommerce, but the reality is that cash remains the money launderers’ best instrument for moving dirty money.

That is the conclusion of Gabriel Hidalgo, a managing director at risk specialists K2 Integrity, in New York: “Cash is king for ML; it continues to be king; and on the majority of levels, illicit actors will continue to use cash,” he said.…

For a religion to be strong, it must be confident in itself: solid in its convictions and robust in its humility. While its true adherents should imbue its principles within their souls, such depth of faith should enable believers to accept others may follow a different creed.…

LANDOWNERS looking to sell holdings were hoping 2020 might be more predictable than 2019, once Brexit happened last January 31, after four years of political uncertainty. But a global pandemic and a last-minute trade deal heading off a no-deal end to a Brexit transition period this January 1 meant that last year was more unpredictable, further tightening inventory.…

LANDOWNERS looking to sell holdings were hoping 2020 might be more predictable than 2019, once Brexit happened last January 31, after four years of political uncertainty. But a global pandemic and a last-minute trade deal heading off a no-deal end to a Brexit transition period this January 1 meant that last year was more unpredictable, further tightening inventory.…

The medieval scholar Abd al-Rahman Ibn Khaldun, a famous Tunisian historian of the 14^th and 15^th centuries, created a model for the history of states, which he said had a natural life of birth, maturity and death.

His Muqaddimah, published in Arabic in 1377, written as a prelude to an ambitious survey of global history, said states went through three stages, always ending – as the adage about politics says – in failure.…

A Shanghai-based startup confectioner LANDBASE (NOTE TO EDITOR – UPPER CASE SPELLING FOR COMPANY NAME IS CORRECT) has tapped China’s competitive chocolate market though selling sugar-free chocolate, sweetened with alternative flavouring inulin, targeted at health-focused consumers.

The two-year-old company’s brand CHOCDAY and product lines ‘Dark Milk’ and ‘Dark Premium’, have been developed in China, but manufactured in Switzerland for the Chinese market, a first in China.…

Abundant levels of data created throughout the garment supply chain are increasingly being leveraged to boost sales and margins, and the more figures are crunched the better.

KeunYoung Oh, chair and associate professor of the department of fashion and textile technology at State University of New York College, in Buffalo, USA, said as a result, data analysis skills are an essential component of recruitment policy.…

SME News has the story about our agency – see Global News Agency Offers Specialist Media Outlets a Window on the World

Also see https://www.sme-news.co.uk/awards/uk-southern-business-awards/

The award panel said:

“20 years established, International News Services clearly owes its longevity and client reach within the industry to its highly experienced multilingual international team of reporters and editors, alongside its honest, upfront and trustworthy approach to its clients across the globe.

Much expertise of anti-money laundering is developed from the experience of victims and law enforcement, fed into techniques and systems fighting this crime. But ex-criminals, including those who launder illicit money, have a different perspective and can offer fresh insight and intelligence maybe not considered by AML officers.…

THE QUESTION of whether governments should charge AML/CFT levies on designated professions and financial institutions to help fund public agencies fighting dirty and terror money flows is a sensitive topic, given STR designation already imposes operational costs on such businesses. Indeed, they may also have to pay for membership of bodies who assess their AML/CFT performance and of course fund government AML/CFT work through general taxation.…

AT a time when the UK paint and coating sector is reeling from Covid-19, the industry is bracing for another shock – a possible hard or no-deal Brexit. However, while paint and coating industry experts say the industry’s confidence levels are low because of these challenges, the pandemic has nonetheless encouraged the development and sale of innovative anti-viral coatings, opening potential new makers that may persist after the pandemic has ebbed.…

Forensic linguistics is a new field, aiding detection of lies and deception within verbal and written statements, but it is developing, and artificial intelligence/machine learning offers new opportunities for this technique to become increasingly useful.

That is the view of Professor Jack Grieve, Professorial Fellow in Corpus Linguistics, University of Birmingham, UK, who sees a “great opportunity” in such work, although significant research is needed before such studies can yield useful work.…

Enormous forces act on renewable energy system’s mechanical parts when generating power from wind and water. Between the smooth operation and potential loss of multi-million-dollar investments stand gear lubricants. Lubricants are also needed for the hydraulics that pitch the blades a few degrees every time the wind, or the water current, changes. …

AS governments worldwide loosen lockdowns imposed to impede the spread of Covid-19, energy companies are assessing their health and safety policies to ensure workplaces are not new infection hotspots, protecting workers and hence production.

These changes come as energy industries downscale workloads to reflect a collapse in demand for their output.…

If there is one subsector of technical textiles that is regarded as well suited to environment-friendly materials innovation, it is surely the agricultural textile (ag-tex) sector. This is indeed the case, with research and development specialists creating clever solutions allying the functional and sustainability benefits of ag-tex with new biodegradable and naturally-sourced fibre.…

Comprised of a dry shampoo, deodorant, face moisturiser, lip balm, and more recently, body lotion, the line is sold only in North America and available in gym or travel sizes.  “For over 20 years, lululemon has been focused on solving athletes’ needs.…

Entrepreneurship abounds across the diverse island nations of the Caribbean where small, independently-owned beauty product businesses thrive and have been successfully vying for space alongside major international brands in pharmacies, boutiques and family-owned stores alike.

What many manufacturers lack in start-up capital, they make up for in innovation and close proximity to a wealth of organic, raw materials that are finding new favour with modern, discerning consumers at home, with an eye to developing export sales.…

The fact that auditors are struggling to conduct due diligence at companies during the Covid-19 crisis, given a lack of access to documents, offices and staff, is highlighting a key debate that was launched before the pandemic hit – just what standard auditors should target when seeking to prove accounts do not hide wrong-doing or crime.…

Innovative textile materials are proving to be a game changer in the auto industry’s drive towards sustainability, electric transmission and autonomy. Experts have noted how the amount of textiles used in the automotive sector have been growing and will continue to do so: up from 20kg in a mid-size car on average in the year 2000 to 26kg in 2020, said the chair of a ‘Textile Opportunities in a Changing Automotive Industry’ conference, held in Birmingham, England, at the Jaguar Experience centre.…

THE USE of paint and coatings by airlines is far more than the choice of an elegant trip for tail fins and fuselages. High tech coatings help aircraft operate efficiently and play an increasingly important role in helping planes fly smoothly, reducing drag and hence carbon emissions.…

Global production of fibreglass is predicted to soar over the coming decade, as appreciation grows of its utility and cost effectiveness in expanding materials manufacturing sectors.

Driven by a push to increase reliance on renewable energy sources to help tackle the climate crisis, manufacturers of wind turbines are increasingly reliant on glass – and carbon – fibres to produce rotor blades, for instance.…

THE MANY properties that have contributed to graphene being described as a ‘super material’ make it an increasingly attractive choice as an ingredient in a wide range of coatings with special functionalities say researchers and manufacturers. And, with Many of these properties offering environment-friendly and sustainable benefits, graphene is being considered as a key part of the coatings industries efforts to reduce carbon emissions and hence climate change.…

WORRIES about the future of manufacturing in Europe are certainly not being applied to the continent’s nonwovens industry, which has been growing steadily in recent years. Indeed, last year, the overall production of nonwovens in Europe in 2018 grew by around 1.3% year-on-year to reach 2.76 million tonnes, (the most recent Europe wide figures released by industry association EDANA).…

FOR rural landowners in England and Wales, the UK quitting the European Union (EU) on January 31 maybe the most important market driver in 2020. Uncertainty over Brexit has held up investment, sales and purchases, constitutional change is coming, landowners can plan with more clarity.…

There is broad consensus among energy and environmental experts that carbon capture and storage (CCS) systems built at commercial scale must play a key role if governments are to achieve their 2015 COP21 (Paris Agreement) ambitions for limiting carbon emissions. “All credible scenario modelling shows that CCS will be essential to meeting the targets set by the Paris Agreement”, commented a report co-ordinated by the International Association of Oil & Gas Producers (IOGP) for a European Gas Regulatory Forum meeting, staged last June (2019).…

The intersection between beauty products, fashion and sport has never been so mainstream. This was evident last year when popular yoga and athletic-apparel brand, Vancouver, Canada-based Lululemon Athletica Inc launched in June (2019) its own athleisure gender-neutral beauty and personal care line (BPC), called ‘lululemon selfcare’.…

The UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has revealed details of a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) Involving the disgorgement of profits worth GBP2,069,861 (USD2.7 million) reached with Berkshire, southern England-based Güralp Systems Ltd. The information was released after three individuals from the seismic device company were acquitted, meaning reporting restrictions could be lifted.…

E-cigarette manufacturers in the United Kingdom pondering a Brexit from the European Union (EU) that is currently scheduled for January 31 are hoping to benefit from looser rules than currently apply in the EU, if the UK does quit the EU.…

A harmonisation of regulatory frameworks and increased sharing of data between financial institutions may help overcome the “metronomic tension” within financial businesses balancing effective fraud detection and low user friction, say experts. With more challenger banks delivering services, real-time checks based on artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics may ensure the speed customers expect in digital transactions does not compromise security, including during onboarding.…

INTELLIGENT materials make for packaging with better functionality and security, and innovative producers worldwide are developing better protection for personal care products.

Market researcher Smithers Pira, in a January 2018 report The Future of Active & Intelligent Packaging to 2023, notes potential uses for cosmetics manufacturers includes greater levels of engagement with customers, more personalised products and enhanced security and tracking features.…

A WAVE of oil and gas structure decommissioning in the North Sea, a steady continuing flow in the USA’s Gulf of Mexico fields, and a similar longer-term challenge in south-east Asia are concentrating minds on the infrastructure needed to dismantle such equipment safely.…

As an industry much maligned for its heavy carbon footprint, the oil and gas sector is increasing its use of sustainable materials and manufacturing methods making textiles used for its protective clothing. This segment has also been focusing on improving the comfort and aesthetics of this apparel.…

WITH anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) controls becoming ever more comprehensive, strategic and widespread, the demand for trained AML/CFT professionals is growing. Salaries are increasing, as a result. This good compensation reflects the fact that AML work is becoming increasingly demanding because of regulatory requirements, said Michael Harris, director, financial crime compliance, at LexisNexis Risk Solutions.…

BULGARIA’S plastics industry has been making the most of the growing demand for supplies from major western markets. The sector has been particularly buoyant over the past five years, with Bulgaria’s comparatively low costs and occasional regulatory light touch making its plastics companies competitive with competitors in western Europe.…

Are universities and the media doing enough in the defence of knowledge when faced with the global rise of populism? This question has been debated at the third Worldviews International Conference on Media and Higher Education. Staged at Canada’s University of Toronto, speakers asked how can higher education and journalism counter the claims of elitism made against these institutions?…

WITH Brexit still looming and the government insisting that should the UK leave the European Union (EU), it will reduce the payment of subsidies to British farmers and growers, now is clearly the time that landowners should be considering diversifying their revenue streams.…

WITH Brexit still looming and the government insisting that should the UK leave the European Union (EU), it will reduce the payment of subsidies to British farmers and growers, now is clearly the time that landowners should be considering diversifying their revenue streams.…

ANTI-fraud experts understand that managers always need to be aware of the potential for their organisations to lose money to fraud and corruption. But the fact that the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/acfepublic/2018-report-to-the-nations.pdf

estimates an average 5% of public and private revenues are lost to fraud indicates that more awareness is needed.…

ANTI-fraud experts understand that managers always need to be aware of the potential for their organisations to lose money to fraud and corruption. But the fact that the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/acfepublic/2018-report-to-the-nations.pdf

estimates an average 5% of public and private revenues are lost to fraud indicates that more awareness is needed.…

EXPORTS of nonwovens products from the European Union (EU) to the rest of the world are on the rise, with in 2018 such overseas sales of nonwovens (whether or not impregnated, coated, covered or laminated) within the 28 members of the European Union (EU) accounted for EUR4.33 billion, up from EUR4.19 billion in 2017.…

Researchers at Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC) are developing facial recognition technology that can help farmers assess the emotional and physical well-being of pigs. So far, studies have demonstrated 97% accuracy in identifying individual pigs using only the face, senior researcher in animal behaviour and welfare at SRUC, Dr Emma Baxter, told GlobalMeatNews.…

THE NEED for human resources and other managers to detect potential in house and external fraudsters who may attack companies, governments and financial institutions is consistently underlined by the vast losses to fraud highlighted by research. The loss of an estimated USD7 billion to occupational fraud globally between January 2016 and October 2017, according to Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) data released last year (https://www.acfe.com/report-to-the-nations/2018/)…

GROWING consumer and regulatory demand for more sustainability in consumer markets is redefining the packaging sector, and beauty segment is no exception. As a result, airless packaging – while sometimes expensive – offers virtues such as the ability to preserve product freshness, minimal oxidisation, low wastage and efficient dispensing, that can dovetail with greening market trends.…

The president and CEO of the American Apparel & Footwear Association (AAFA) has said that he did not just expect by the Trump administration’s aggressive stance on tariffs, but that its protectionism may now start to ease as the 2020 election looms.…

British beef and lamb producers this week eyed the Japan market following the lifting of a 23-year import ban in January 2019, with a presence at Japan’s Foodex, Asia’s largest food and drink exhibition.

Producers from across the UK met Japanese importers, distributors, buyers and consumers at the Makuhari Messe conference centre, near Tokyo, on March 5–8.…

With more than 5.48 billion (see https://www.worldwidewebsize.com) pages on the internet, fraud investigators have a wealth of material at their fingertips to help trace fraudsters and link target individuals, objects, locations and events. Thankfully, there are also increasingly sophisticated sites and tools available online to make this task more efficient and less time-consuming.…

THE JAPANESE nuclear sector may have the backing of its government, but a combination of technical challenges and public unpopularity is impeding plans to restore the country’s nuclear capacity towards its generation before the Fukushima disaster in 2011.

During a news conference on January 1, Hiroaki Nakanishi, chairman of the Japan Business Federation, was pessimistic about the industry’s future.…

While the confectionery industry is traditionally associated with high sugar levels and unhealthy indulgence, market research indicates that efforts to also appeal to consumers with a growing interest in health and wellness trends are paying off. According to UK-based market researcher GlobalData, in 2016 alone USD3.7 billion worth of confectionery with functional or fortified attributes was sold globally.…

With their large financial services industries and open economies, the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland are conspicuously exposed to money laundering (ML) and terrorist financing (TF) risks.

Tough anti-money laundering (AML) and countering the financing of terrorism (CFT) policies are at the heart of their respective financial services regulations, yet both countries are regularly forced to fend off criticisms that they are not doing enough to tackle these problems.…

AS Britain approaches its Brexit date of destiny, with the country unsure what the anticipated rupture with the European Union (EU) will deliver, the rural land sector seems to be holding its breath, waiting for hard information to spur purchasing decisions.…

THE UK government has released consultatory green paper on broadening its powers over air space allocation as it looks ahead to a post-Brexit future after March 29. Aware that air space congestion, especially in the densely populated south-east of England, will worsen, the government wants to ensure airports work together to maximise the efficiency of their air space utilisation.…

THE TOTAL value of frauds committed in the UK fell 64.7% to GBP746.3 million (USD994 million) in 2018, from a record GBP2.1 billion (USD2.8 billion) in 2017, accountancy advisory firm BDO LLP announced this week. But the company’s annual FraudTrack report*, released February 25, however, shows that despite this dramatic fall in value, the number of reported fraud cases in Britain only decreased 9% – from 577 to 525 – during this time.…

AUDITORS have not received a good press in the area of combating financial fraud. Financial disasters involving fraudulent practices include the notorious collapses of Lehman Brothers and the HBOS bank. A New York attorney concluded in 2007 that “EY substantially assisted Lehman Brothers… to engage in a massive accounting fraud”.…

WITH consumers globally becoming ever-more concerned about whether the woolen products they buy, use or wear were made without cruelty to the animals from which this natural fibre was shorn, the wool industry has been working hard to improve its traceability systems.…

New smaller banks competing with established players and other payment service providers (PSPs) are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their use of fintech to addressing anti-money laundering/combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) financial crime compliance.

David Carlisle, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, told Money Laundering Bulletin that anecdotal evidence suggests that these so-called ‘challenger’ banks and PSPs are increasingly using third-party fintech suppliers to help them address know your customer (KYC) requirements, transaction monitoring, record-keeping and suspicious activity reporting.…

With different forms of fraud skyrocketing, demand for surveillance is not only growing but becoming more diverse, with companies offering services ranging from old-fashioned stakeouts to high-tech detection. A Market Guide for Online Fraud Detection, released in January (2018) by research and advisory firm Gartner Inc, forecasts that the fraud detection and prevention marketplace is expected to grow significantly by 2022.…

AS the USA continues to expand its shale gas production, environmentalists are keeping a close eye on how this increasingly large industry is managing its pollution. For the American sector is huge. The USA produced 16.86 trillion cubic feet of shale gas in 2017, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), accounting for around 62% of all US natural gas production during the year.…

The UK and Australia are poles apart geographically but share the aim of becoming leaders in using or selling hydrogen for energy. The scheduled unveiling in November (2018) of a conceptual design to convert an eighth (8.3 million) of the UK’s population to 100% low-carbon hydrogen gas between 2028 and 2035 matters.…

With lower battery and auto prices boosting the battery electric vehicle (BEV) market in Europe, the race is on to ensure there are enough fast-charging stations to satisfy demand. 

The European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) warned European Union (EU) lawmakers July 5 that plans to force a continent-wide switch to BEVs through swingeing cuts in CO2 emissions caps for manufacturers, was doomed to fail due to the lack of charging points.…

WITH inflexible rules-based transaction monitoring systems built from a range of legacy systems still dominating the anti-money laundering (AML) landscape, excessive numbers of false positives are causing “mayhem” in the financial services sector, Luca Primerano, now chief AI officer at AML solutions provider Fortytwo Data in London, has claimed.…

A SERIES of new counter-fraud initiatives will be funded by a GBP6.1 million government cash injection to the UK’s City of London Police, Britain’s national lead force for economic crime issues. A national taskforce to enhance regional work on fraud investigation will be launched and a campaign to recruit direct entrant fraud detectives – from outside the police service – will help increase skills.…

An amendment to a UK Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill requires the British government to impose such registers on its OTs by this deadline, if the local administrations have not created their own. The UK currently has the world’s only public beneficial ownership register – but it only covers England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – see http://ownershiptransparency.com/…

A VOTE by the UK parliament to insist that Britain’s overseas territories introduce publicly available beneficial ownership registers by December 31, 2020, has sparked anger and dismay within these autonomous, mainly small island, jurisdictions.

An amendment to a UK Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill requires the British government to impose such registers on its OTs by this deadline, if the local administrations have not created their own.…

TECHNIQUES for using forensic linguistics to detect fraud continue to be refined as experts debate the best and most reliable way to use such technology and practices. Indeed, specialists continue to disagree over how forensic linguistics should be used in the anti-fraud arena.…

The prospect of significant hikes in taxes and administrative red tape on Irish exports and imports travelling through the UK to and from the rest of Europe once Britain leaves the European Union (EU), has prompted Irish exporters to seek more options for direct maritime trade.…

AFTER years of sluggish growth and even contraction, the UK paint and coatings sector is set to rebound this year thanks to a booming domestic automotive manufacturing sector. However, this optimism has yet to be felt across the sector due to uncertainly the industry is facing ahead of Brexit.…

WITH boasts of being the strongest, thinnest, most flexible material that is also super-lightweight and an excellent thermal and electronic conductor, the ‘wonder material’ graphene is finding its properties a game changer in the sporting arena – including at last month’s Winter Olympics (February).…

EXPERTS on Britain’s civil nuclear industry have warned that the UK is running out of time to prepare itself for the country’s exit from European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom), due to the complexity of replicating its nuclear standards in UK law. …

THE BULL run in the British rural land market is over, or at least has slowed to a trot. After rising by 149% over the 10 years to 2016, research by the property consultancy Carter Jonas indicates that that the value of British (UK, excluding Northern Ireland) farmland fell by more than 8% last year.…

THE FUTURE of materials in this carbon-averse world is all about lightweighting. But quality and safety must be maintained. Nowhere is this truer than with the aerospace textiles segment, where durability, toughness and flexibility is allied with low weights, of importance when civil aviation operators are under pressure to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.…

THE DE-RISKING by banks of their correspondent banking relationships is a long-standing problem and is today becoming a truly global phenomenon. From the Caribbean to the Pacific Islands, to Middle East, Africa and Eastern Europe, banks have lost correspondent relationships with international financial institutions.…

THE INTERNATIONAL Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) is to discuss enriching the weather forecasts supplied to airlines, airports and air traffic controllers through the World Area Forecast System (WAFS), so that pilots have much more detailed data available to avoid turbulence and tap stronger tail winds.…

ANTI-MONEY laundering is at the core of a new UK anti-corruption strategy for the next five years (to 2022), which was published on Monday (Dec 11).

The detailed strategy includes creating a new Office for Professional Body Anti-Money Laundering Supervision (OPBAS), hosted by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).…

PERSONAL care product packagers are taking increasing care over the design and development of secondary packaging, noting that this can impart brand value, just in the same way as the elegant primary packaging that has always been part of the personal care product experience.…

VIETNAM’S textile and clothing and textile sector is looking to sell more product into Asian markets such as South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Japan, while solidifying its traditional export bases like the US and EU, the latest trade data indicates. 

Last year, Vietnam exported USD2.28 billion’s worth of clothing and textiles to South Korea – a 7.45% gain compared with 2015, according to Vietnam customs data analysed by the Vietnam Textile and Apparel Association (VITAS). …

ANTI-FRAUD measures are expensive, and investment is growing from a low base yet surprisingly few companies keep tabs on the impact of fraud on their profit/loss margins.

Annual fraud losses are estimated to cost the UK more than GBP193 billion (USD240 billion), according to the 2016 Annual Fraud Indicator report prepared by the Centre for Counter Fraud Studies at southern England’s University of Portsmouth in partnership with data services group Experian and accountants PKF Littlejohn.…

Customer willingness to pay a premium for the natural health qualities of honey appears to be outweighing price hikes for the natural sweetener amid falling production levels as beekeepers have battled catastrophic colony losses.

This has reduced worldwide bee numbers, prompting fears that confectioners might adapt production methods to replace honey with other naturally occurring sweeteners, such as stevia.…

How much dirty money can get into global property markets as a result of crooked or incompetent lawyers? While legal professions representative bodies say the problem is not widespread and lawyers take their conveyancing responsibilities seriously, the court record suggests there are rotten apples.…

THE GROWING importance of computer apps (applications) in fraud investigation has been highlighted at an expert conference – Forensics Europe Expo, the annual exhibition for the international and digital forensic communities held at the Olympia exhibition centre in London in May.…

A banker with the London-based European Bank for Reconstruction & Development (EBRD) has been jailed for six years by London’s Old Bailey Central Criminal Court of England and Wales on June 20 for taking USD3.5 million in bribes from a consultant, plus two years for money laundering to run concurrently.…

No-one knows for sure just what deal the UK is going to end up with at the end of the two-year Brexit negotiation period – and just how that will affect British landowners and the agricultural sector. The general election result (due as Land & Business went to press) may begin the process of bringing some clarity to what remains for now something of an art in informed crystal ball gazing.…

Machines are taking on more and more tasks traditionally carried out by accountants, Professor Richard Susskind OBE and his son Dr Daniel Susskind, an economics lecturer at the University of Oxford, UK, have warned. They were speaking at a ‘Digital Day’ conference in Brussels, staged on March 29, in a ‘What future for the professions?’…

A EUROPEAN Court of Justice (ECJ) judgement has confirmed the legal right of the European Union (EU) and the UK to subject Russian oil companies to financial sanctions and implement them using criminal law. These rights had been challenged by Russian oil and gas major Rosneft, and the case had been subsequently referred to the ECJ by the High Court for England and Wales.…

A EUROPEAN Court of Justice (ECJ) judgement has confirmed the legal right of the European Union (EU) and the UK to subject Russian oil companies to financial sanctions and implement them using criminal law. These rights had been challenged by Russian oil and gas major Rosneft, and the case had been subsequently referred to the ECJ by the High Court for England and Wales.…

It is fair to say the eyes of the UK paint and coatings industry are firmly on Brussels and Downing Street now that Article 50 has been triggered and negotiations on Britain quitting the European Union (EU) are now under preparation.…

Ongoing concerns about underfunding and even the future abolition of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) could hamper the UK’s fight against bribery, according to the latest assessment report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) working group on bribery.…

Even as the official withdrawal of the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has been greeted by enthusiasm by American automakers, the focus is shifting to the bilateral trade deals that President Donald Trump has promised will take its place.…

HUMAN resources specialists are advising Vietnam’s government and private sector to get smarter over their personnel policies if it wants to maintain the productivity improvements that have helped pull this southeast Asian country out of poverty.

A report released in October (2016) by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) on the issue has cited research from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) to highlight Vietnam’s strong record: the report notes that Vietnam’s productivity grew 184% from 1991-2012, far surpassing Thailand’s 85%, Singapore’s 81% and Malaysia’s 80% growth over the same period.…

A PRECAUTIONARY approach should be used when cooking beef burgers or minced beef, European Union (EU) experts have suggested at a meeting of a network on microbiological risk assessment hosted by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) at its Parma, Italy, headquarters.…

THE EUROPEAN Chemicals Agency (ECHA) is investigating if European Union (EU)-wide controls are needed to protect consumers against substances used in tattoo inks and permanent make-up (PMU) – with one solution expanding the scope of the EU cosmetics directive.

While the printing ink industry has suffered a recession, the tattoo and PMU ink sectors are booming in the wake of a huge increase in purchases of tattoos EU-wide.…

The European Commission needs to reform its governance systems to boost its efficiency and make it less prone to corruption scandals, Lazaros Lazarou, the Cypriot member of the European Union’s (EU) financial watchdog, the European Court of Auditors, has told Accounting & Business.…

As the Northern Ireland government lurched from crisis to political crisis in recent years there has been less focus on the rivers of dirty money flowing through and out of the province, the results of criminal enterprises run by Ulster’s paramilitaries.…

As offshore wind takes off, China’s expanding wind turbine and clean energy manufacturing sectors are demanding more specialised coatings. China is the biggest market in the world for wind power installations: Chinese installations match the figure for the entire European Union (EU) according to the EU Chamber of Commerce in China.…

COTTON

Cotton maybe one of the most popular fibres for clothing and accessories because of its universality, timelessness, and availability, but this past year has shown that the fibre is not immune to volatile economic markets. World cotton production fell by 17% to 21.65 million tonnes in 2015-2016, the lowest volume since 2003-2004, according to the International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC).…

CONFECTIONERY and sweet bakery industry chiefs have moved beyond their initial shock at the UK Brexit referendum vote to leave the European Union (EU) to consider their best case scenarios for a future with Britain outside the 28 country bloc.

As an immediate step, employers and industry associations have been trying to reassure staff who are non-UK EU nationals working in Britain about their status.…

AS Theresa May became British Prime Minister on July 13, 2016, she has admitted she faces the toughest of briefs. Unravelling 43 years of close legal relations with the UK’s European Union (EU) neighbours will be complex, difficult, and involve some serious economic and financial losses on the way.…

MONGOLIA’S raw cashmere production is growing. The number of goats supplying this luxury fibre increased by 2.9 million to 24.9 million in 2015 compared with 2014, bringing production to 7,470 tonnes last year, according to Mongolia-based Monital Cashmere.

Indeed, the country’s major cashmere manufacturer the Gobi Corporation, stresses that Mongolia is the world’s second largest producer of cashmere – supplying 41% of global production (in 2014), second only to China.…

A report on crime figures from the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) has shown that people are now more likely to be a victim of fraud than any other crime, with one-in-10 adults defrauded in the past 12 months. There were almost six million fraud and cybercrimes committed in 2015, with most cases – 2.5 million – related to bank account and credit card fraud, followed by non-investment fraud, such as online shopping scams.…

Banking security chiefs and their opponents in their opponents in the underworld of cybercrime are fighting a “cold war arms race” with no long-term solution in sight, fraud specialist academics have told Fraud Intelligence.

And if anyone should doubt that this threat is not just profound, but global in scope, witness that Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB – Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti) announced last month that it had arrested 50 members of a gang believed to have been responsible for a Russian Roubles RUB1.7 billion (USD 26.6 million) bank cyberhack using the Trojan programme ‘Lurk’ to collect customer data.…

South-east Asia is a region that has sharp contrasts in economic development, from between the wealth of Singapore to countries such as Myanmar, where poverty is endemic and consumer markets are relatively undeveloped.

Such contrasts pose challenges for personal care product companies seeking regional strategies to tap the markets of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) 10 countries, whose cosmetics suppliers have to comply with the standards of the ASEAN Cosmetics Directive, which was modelled on European Union legislation.…

Yet the good old British public is defying its political leaders and employers in its tens of millions. Why? There are a number of reasons, some of them more ‘tangible’ than others. I’ll attempt to list the main ones.

IMMIGRATION

The EU is associated in the public mind with immigration because it allows the free movement of labour.…

MYANMAR, the world’s newest democracy, is taking steps to improve its financial reporting. Its reforms are new – as befits a country that saw its first and only stock exchange – the Myanmar Securities Exchange Centre (MSEC) – open on March 25.…

INNOVATIVE ways of powering trains are poised for mainstream use in the global transport industry. Today, the most common trains are still those powered by diesel engines, but there is a continuing shift towards electricity and alternative power sources.

“With rail expected to play an increasingly important role in future transport systems…there is a lot of focus on how it should be more energy efficient,” said Andrew Foulkes, a communications manager at Ricardo Rail, a UK-based railway engineering and consultancy firm.…

Wholesalers and their suppliers are overwhelmingly in favour of the UK remaining within the European Union (EU) despite frustrations over issues including corruption and overweening red tape from Brussels’ bureaucracy.

As the UK’s June 23 in-out referendum on the EU approaches, minds have been focussing on how the key areas of cost, labour mobility and common regulation might affect the overall wholesale picture – as well as supply segments including food, drinks and tobacco.…

THE COMMITTEE of European Sugar Users (CIUS) has called on the European Union (EU) to take urgent action to prevent EU confectionery and sweet bakery manufacturers facing a sugar supply crunch this summer. In a strongly worded message, the industry group has said that duties and levies should not be imposed on supplies of beet and cane sugar and the EU’s cane sugar ‘CXL’ duty should be scrapped immediately.…

Almost certainly the vast majority of UK-based Japanese-owned businesses want Britain to stay in the European Union (EU) after the in-out EU membership referendum planned for June 23.

However, few companies have stated this publicly and no Japanese company has yet said it would move elsewhere if there was a vote to leave.…

ACCOUNTANTS are starting to tangle with the knotty question of whether to support Britain remaining in or quitting the European Union (EU) after the scheduled in-out referendum on June 23. While many UK captains of industry and business have publicly called for Britain to stay in, citing the advantages of freely accessing the EU’s 503 million person market and its trained labour pool, the question for accountants is not that simple.…

Fears have emerged that UK minerals companies could be left behind in terms of vital research and development if Britain leaves the European Union (EU) following the now scheduled June 23 in-out referendum. Industrial minerals experts and industry chiefs have been focussing on the consequences of a ‘Brexit’, but – in contrast to other industries – they have been concentrating on the potential impact upon R&D – the key to the locating and developing new deposits.…

Uncertainty is growing within industry associations influencing the non-ferrous metals industry over the prospect of Britain leaving the European Union (EU) after a scheduled in-out referendum on June 23.

René van Sloten, executive director of industrial policy at The European Chemical Industry Council (Cefic), representing key suppliers to metal manufacturers, said: “If the result…is indeed that Britain would leave the EU, this would significantly impact on the way it trades with other European countries.…

THE BRITISH government has launched public consultation on plans to force foreign companies who want to buy property in England and Wales or secure English public procurement contracts to declare beneficial ownership information.

The UK department for business, innovation & skills wants comments by April 1 and says it plans to develop formal proposals later this year (2016).…

England’s High Court has backed the UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO) over the way it handles and identifies electronic material subject to the right to non-disclosure through legal professional privilege (LPP). In a case brought by an individual under investigation, the court ruled on January 27 that the SFO did have a right to use in-house technical experts rather than external contractors to isolate material embedded in seized electronic devices, such as USB keys or laptops, potentially subject to LPP, before passing it on to independent lawyers for review.…

WITH advances in technology making it increasingly possible for malware kits to be bought and used by people with relatively little IT knowledge,

‘cybercrime-as-a-service’ systems are causing anti-fraud professionals sharper and sharper headaches. This is regardless of whether they work for banks, police forces or in company IT departments.…

THE BRITISH government is launching a new regulatory, business and law enforcement taskforce to crack down on the more than 5 million frauds that are undertaken annually in the UK. This Joint Fraud Taskforce will bring together the City of London Police, the National Crime Agency, Financial Fraud Action UK, the Bank of England, fraud prevention body Cifas, plus bank and credit card companies.…

THE AMOUNT of fraud committed in the UK appears to be rising, according to a detailed report from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) – although the agency accepts the many difficulties in gathering reliable data on the topic. A headline figure generated by the ONS based on data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), UK fraud reporting body Action Fraud (which feeds information into the crime survey), plus industry bodies Cifas and Financial Fraud Action UK (FFA UK) suggest that in the year ending September 2015, 604,601 fraud offences were recorded in England and Wales – 11 offences per 1,000 population.…

The European Union’s (EU) Energy Roadmap 2050 project is certainly ambitious – looking to decarbonise Europe’s energy sector – and it anticipates that carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology will play an important role. Yet, it is clear that this technology is far from ubiquitous and significant efforts will be required to enable CCS to play a key part in Europe’s CCS future.…

Financial experts struck off for misconduct from professional bodies, such as the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), should be actively barred from working as accountants, a Brussels conference on ‘Fighting Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing: The Role of Accountants and Finance Professionals’ has heard.…

While many economies in Africa are growing fast, there is a consensus amongst accountants that the continent has to build its business reporting and administration to make sure this growth is sustainable. Indeed, the third African Congress of Accountants (ACOA), staged in Port Louis, Mauritius, from May 11 to 14, heard that this essential work is needed now, even as some countries remain marred by severe socio-political unrest, economic instability, poverty, famine and disease.…

EUROPEAN cigarette smuggling has evolved and diversified over the past ten years, and international cooperation is often the best way to counter them, argue European Union (EU) anti-fraud officials. Meanwhile, the tobacco industry has accepted that liaising with these initiatives does bring benefits.…

A BREAKTHROUGH project that could return all olive oil waste back to the olive oil production cycle by turning it into onsite energy could bring significant profit margin improvements to the industry, while reducing its environmental impact. 
The European Union (EU)-funded pilot project Biogas2PEM-FC, based in Andalucía, southern Spain, uses  “valourisation” techniques to deal with waste, as opposed to the traditional method of “depositing or using physical, physicochemical or biological methods for detoxification, which is costly,” explained Per Ekdunge, the Swedish fuel cell technology company PowerCell’s vice  president and chief technology officer.…

PLASTIC banknotes have been in circulation since their introduction in Australia in 1988 and their use is expanding. Counterfeiters beware. Alan Osborn, in London; Kitty So, in Ottawa; and Lee Adendorff, in Byron Bay, Australia, report.

FAKING banknotes is considerably more difficult on plastic than on cotton-based paper, and while printing technology improvements may aid forgers, central banks seem happy to avail themselves of the competitive advantage.

The challenge of maintaining the integrity and efficient operation of remote oil and gas pipelines under deep water will become more taxing in future. And their potential failure will cost companies more in commercial losses and in regulatory penalties, according to industry experts.…

As they looks at the rewards of shale gas production seen over recent years in the US, European producers are edging closer to commercial shale gas production. However, it faces a wide range of challenges, and the debate within Europe over shale gas is intensifying.…

Fraud offences in the UK rose 5% in the 12 months ending September 2014 year-on-year according to the country’s national fraud and cybercrime reporting centre Action Fraud. It recorded 213,000 instances: four per 1,000 (0.4%) people.

The UK’s Office for National Statistics meanwhile has reported that 5.2% of bank and credit card owners in England and Wales suffered from card fraud over the same period, compared with 4.6% in 2012/2013.…

Plastic banknotes have been in circulation since their introduction in Australia in 1988 and the consensus so far seems to be that they do an excellent job of a key requirement – reducing counterfeiting. It may be that forgers will gain more expertise in time – faking is considerably more difficult on plastic than on cotton-based paper – but the initial reports from larger countries that have taken this route, such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand, have persuaded the UK’s Bank of England to follow them.

Plastic banknotes have been in circulation since their introduction in Australia in 1988 and the consensus so far seems to be that they do an excellent job of a key requirement – reducing counterfeiting. It may be that forgers will gain more expertise in time – faking is considerably more difficult on plastic than on cotton-based paper – but the initial reports from larger countries that have taken this route, such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand, have persuaded the UK’s Bank of England to follow them.

NURSES should be well informed about the Ebola virus: how it is spreads; how it is transmitted; how they can protect themselves; what the preventative measures are; and above all, how to put on and take off the personal protective equipment.…

AS companies and government organisations implement more stringent fraud detection programmes, they are recruiting the best and brightest anti-fraud experts. Universities in North America, Australia, Europe and Asia are responding to demand for anti-fraud expertise by offering fraud prevention classes in accounting, criminology, and business degrees.…

The Bangladesh cabinet on Monday (Nov 10) finally proposed a long awaited law to regulate Bangladesh’s audit profession, which had been stalled amidst disagreements between auditors and management accountants

A draft Financial Reporting Act will now be presented for a vote by the country’s parliament, the Jatiyo Sangshad, although the government has yet to release full details.…

Over the past few years, Spain’s government has regularly questioned whether Gibraltar’s excellent economic condition has more to do with money laundering, smuggling and tax evasion than good business practice. “The wealth that Gibraltar enjoys cannot continue to be based solely on an economy that is clearly damaging for our country and for the European Union,” said Spain’s minister for European affairs Íñigo Méndez de Vigo in an interview with the Spanish newspaper ABC in September 2013.…

Tougher security regulations are restricting the ability of airport managers to provide adequate car and bus parking, a headache given these services are a frequent target of consumer advocacy groups. Complaints range typically from price through availability to ease and airports of all sizes need to balance customer satisfaction against the need for revenue and the demands made by security regulations.…

Big data is creating a growing range of opportunities that can help the global pharmaceutical industry develop and manufacture drugs more effectively. However, the industry faces a number of challenges in the way it manages and analyses the increasingly broad range of data that is available, with collaboration essential for the industry to capitalise on the potential of the big data explosion.…

DETAILED sentencing guidance for judges and magistrates in England and Wales trying fraud, money laundering and bribery cases has been released, stressing non-financial harm to victims must be taken into account along with monetary losses.

The Sentencing Council for England and Wales has released comprehensive sentencing tables categorising the judicial response to each of 20 financial crimes, where proven, taking account of a criminal’s role, the vulnerability of the victim, the scale of the scam and suffering caused. …

ONE of the warmest fibres used in knitwear across the world is also – unsurprisingly – one of the rarest and most expensive, making the manufacturing of ‘qiviuk’ garments from musk ox wool a true art. Harvested from the soft underfur of this High Arctic musk ox, qiviuk fibre is long, does not shrink when washed and lacks the scales that makes sheep wool itchy.…

THREE dimensional (3D) technology – while well established in many other industrial sectors like aerospace, architecture and industrial design – is still relatively new to the fashion industry. Analysts are describing it as ‘disruptive’ technology, capable of transforming the way apparel companies do business, from prototyping and pattern making using 3D models to the creation of 3D digital catalogues and a range of customer centric services based on 3D body scanning and sizing.…

LONG-TERM support for the wave and tidal energy industries has been announced by the European Commission, which this spring said it intended to support “the rapid development of key ocean energy technologies at the European level”.

European Union (EU) energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger said: “Ocean energy has a significant potential to enhance the security of supply”, adding that “a wide portfolio of renewable energy sources -including ocean energy” was necessary if non fossil fuels were to become “mainstream and integrated into the European energy system.”…

The European Union (EU) has ended nearly four years of speculation and uncertainty for auditors by agreeing a package of audit reforms that reflects major signs of compromise but which nevertheless will bring about big changes in the profession. The clear hope is that the changes will lead to a more competitive and effective audit profession, thereby helping prevent a repeat of the financial crisis of the last few years.…

AUSTRIA

The location of ECC Austria in central Vienna means many consumers drop by to receive advice or lodge complaints in person with the ECC’s five staff members. A top priority in 2013 was increasing public awareness about e-commerce fraud; a brochure aimed at combatting the problem was published and more than 600,000 were distributed throughout Austria.…

WHILE the debate over British airport capacity and expansion has focused on the comparatively rich and crowded south-east England, regional airports across the UK have been increasing passenger numbers and footprint substantially. In each case, airport management has had to negotiate long-term expansion plans against the vagaries of the economic climate.…

INFORMATION services company Experian has concluded that British urban centre residents are being increasingly targeted by identity thieves and fraudsters. In its fifth annual Fraudscape report, written with UK fraud prevention service CIFAS, Experian said fraudsters had moved away from a strong 2009 focus on affluent UK households, especially in the suburbs or semi-rural locations.…

The corporate logo of a white cross on a red shield is instantly and unmistakably the mark of every adventurous schoolboy’s favourite gadget. But while Victorinox is renowned for its Swiss Army Knives, it is now bringing the same commitment of quality to ranges of functional and fashionable clothing that make the most of innovative materials.…

GREATER international and government-industry collaboration is taking the fight to cyber criminals who exploit security weaknesses in IT systems. Just as well: cyber security has rocketed up the league table of chief executive officers’ concerns as lurid examples of cybercrime become almost a weekly media event.…

IT is a curious irony that for an industry as technical as cogeneration that maybe the biggest handicap to its sustained growth in Europe is actually emotional. Both commercial markets and governments are swayed by sentiment as well as hard cash – and currently both influences are failing to pull in co-gen’s favour.…

IT is a curious irony that for an industry as technical as cogeneration that maybe the biggest handicap to its sustained growth in Europe is actually emotional. Both commercial markets and governments are swayed by sentiment as well as hard cash – and currently both influences are failing to pull in co-gen’s favour.…

IT has not happened yet but the outlook for effective world-wide action to expose the beneficial ownership of shell companies and other kinds of suspect corporate vehicles is probably better today than it has been for many years, perhaps ever. That’s the word from Robert Palmer of Global Witness, the campaign group which has played a leading part in pressing for action on the matter.…

PERSONALISED medicines offer the chance of tailoring treatments for the age, gender and genetic make-up of patients. And while this offers the chance of better care and the minimizing of side-effects, the use of such medicines have obvious management demands, especially for nurses.…

LEADING law associations worldwide are joining forces to publish in-depth case studies of how lawyers and other legal professionals become unwittingly enmeshed in money laundering by clients.

The Money Laundering Bulletin has learned that the London-based International Bar Association (IBA) is to produce such a report amid disgruntlement over a June 2013 study in which the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) published typologies of money laundering methods in which lawyers were involved.…

It is almost received wisdom that significant sales opportunities will emerge for pharmaceutical manufacturers as the world’s population gets older, especially in rich world markets and ageing China. However, as drug companies attempt to capitalise on demand for treating old age-linked diseases such as cancer and dementia, they face several significant challenges.…

ORGANISATIONS need to appreciate both the scale of damage done by internal fraud, and the need for adequate vetting, a new British government report called ‘The True Cost of Insider Fraud’ urges. The study for CIFAS, the UK’s Fraud Prevention Service analyses how internal frauds include sums taken by the fraudster as well as investigation costs, disciplinary measures, fines, compensation and intangibles such as impact on morale, reputation or share price.…

A major international survey of education standards has found serious weaknesses in the EU countries when compared to levels in other parts of the world. In spite of the heavy investment in higher education in recent years in the EU, the study suggests that a fifth of the working age population has worrying low literacy and numeracy skills and a quarter of adults lack the digital skills needed to effectively use ICT.…

THE EUROPEAN Commission has announced funding for three major research projects designed to promote innovation in the meat and livestock sector. They will be launched on Wednesday (Nov 6) and funded by the EU’s outgoing Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7), which ends next month (December 31).…

THE EXTENT of waste in Europe’s austerity-hit public health services was one of the ‘elephants in the room’ – a big issue seldom discussed – identified by a professionals’ conference in Brussels, Belgium, on September 4 and 5.

150 delegates at the European Public Health Alliance (EPHA) annual conference heard that, on average, between 3% and 10% of budgets for European Union (EU) national health systems was lost through waste, but in some cases could even reach 30%.…

EVEN if the UK department for environment, food and rural affairs (DEFRA) has yet to decide whether managing water supplies on a catchment area basis is a positive move overall, it is happy that the past two years’ pilot projects have created some tangible benefits.…

THE DEMAND for lithium from large batteries designed to store and redistribute electricity from the grid could surge if a British pilot project proves a success. It involves building Europe’s largest lithium battery, at southern England’s Leighton Buzzard at a cost of British Pounds GBP13.2 million (USD20.4 million).…

THERE has been a sharp rise in the number of British health practitioners being trained in psychotherapy, giving nurses a significant opportunity to diversify their skill-set, enrich their careers and make more money.

The opportunity has come from the Increased Access to Psychological Therapy (IAPT) programme.…

The 9.5MW J920 FleXtra gas engine formally installed in May this year by the municipal utility Stadtwerke Rosenheim, in Bavaria, Germany, ticks off a number of important innovations. The largest gas engine yet developed by the Austrian company GE Jenbacher, the unit is seen by the company as an illustration of the role distributed energy is now playing in Germany’s ‘Energiewende’ – the country’s policy to halt all nuclear power by 2022 and replace it with natural gas, renewable energy, and greater use of energy efficient technologies.…

The challenges of working out whether textiles are sourced, produced or manufactured ethically are magnified by the plethora of eco-labelling schemes that apply to the industry. According to the Vancouver, Canada-based Ecolabel Index (www.ecolabelindex.com) there are 436 ecolabels worldwide, of which at least 24 cover textiles, clothes, other apparel and garments (while several others potentially overlap into the industry).…

WASTE -to-energy gasification is a game changer, experts say, because it offers renewable and low carbon heat and power, security of supply and short delivery times when energy prices are high.

Advanced thermal gasification, as opposed to combustion – burning waste in an incinerator to produce energy, is “clean, safe, very efficient, and being of a moderate scale is acceptable to local communities, because nobody wants a huge incinerator in their back yard,” stressed George Willacy, the chairman of Refgas UK, a Flintshire-based specialist in gasification fuelled by waste and biomass.…

“We use our earth as if we have a planet and a half; we have a deficit relation with our natural resources. The biggest challenge facing not just business, society and government, but humanity is the question of our sustainability. And business, as usual, will do nothing to solve it.”…

WHILE textiles, clothing and textile-based soft materials have not traditionally been a focus in robotics, researchers in the United States (US) especially are increasingly combining the two to perform certain functions, such as helping robots to ‘touch’ and ‘feel’ their environment.…

THROUGH their fat content, dairy products affect viscosity in the production of confectionery, bakery and ice-cream products and also the ‘mouth feel’ of the end product. The trick in manipulating this to advantage is to start from ingredients as near ideal characteristics as possible, then use the most reliable and sensitive equipment that return-on-investment considerations allow.…

THE EUROPEAN Union’s (EU) long term budget for 2014-2020 (called the multiannual financial framework (MFF) in Brussels’ famously complex jargon) is currently in limbo following a vote by the European Parliament last month (March) to reject the deal. The political deadlock is not likely to last, nor are the actual figures, agreed by EU heads of government in February, likely to be much changed, though.

IT seems for all the world like the setting for a Graham Greene novel: a British-trained chartered accountant in charge of an almost unfathomably wealthy state-owned holding corporation in a distant outpost.

Yet Greene would barely recognise the 21st century context in which Our Man in Kazakhstan operates.…

TO listen to opposing sides in a polarised debate, February 14, 2013, could go down in European business history as a St Valentine’s Day Massacre of Europe’s capital markets or as the start of a beautiful love affair with regulation that could help to prevent speculative trading turning boom to bust.…

IN Britain clinical research costs a whopping GBP8 billion or more annually, making up third of all research and development expenses in the economy, says the UK Clinical Research Collaboration (UKCRC) group. But clinical research nurses (CRN) who play a crucial role in such work, are in short supply.…

PURCHASING cosmetics through business-to-consumer (B2C) group-buying websites offering national and local discount deals from third party vendors is catching on in key markets worldwide and positively blossoming in China, but with different nuances according to location. Cosmetics deals are popular on these sites throughout Asia, according to Shanghai, China based Dataotuan.com…

NOONE has been hanged for fraud in England since 1811, but not every country is so advanced:  today the death penalty is still applied for people convicted of fraud in China, Iran and North Korea among others. And even below the ultimate sanction, deterrents to committing fraud can look frightening in many countries of the world.…

FOR critics who claim financial reporting is boring – accounting professionals should point to Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page. He has created a unit with a limited staff and budget, taking on a government with a taste for secrecy, and still released reports revealing cost assessments that have made headlines.…

SPORTS regulators, police and other ‘actors’ in the emerging global scandal over match-fixing and other forms of bribery, fraud and corruption need more dedicated accounting skills in-house to prevent, detect and prosecute offences.

“Sporting institutions are behind the curve and need specialists including people trained in forensic accounting within them,” said Dr Graham Brooks, a leading independent analyst of sports crime, and senior lecturer at the Institute of Criminal Justice Studies (ICJS) at the University of Portsmouth, in southern England.…

THE BRITISH government is creating a unique regime of energy price incentives to spur commercialisation of carbon capture and storage systems, yet significant barriers remain to unlocking the billions of Pounds Sterling needed to build a CCS industry of sufficient mass in the UK able to create economies of scale for investors.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

COATINGS companies worldwide are developing lower temperature curing systems for powder coatings, enabling them to be applied to wood and/or plastics. Also, new acrylic resins to avoid powder coating contamination problems are being developed, Polymers Paint Colour Journal has been told.…

BY ROBERT STOKES

SMALL and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in the European Union (EU) complain they cannot get finance from banks, or not on reasonable terms. Banks counter that there is just not that much demand.

Politicians have responded with schemes to improve the flow of finance to SMEs.…

BY MARK ROWE, IN BRISTOL

BRISTOL Airport, the largest in the south-west of the UK, plans to expand its annual passenger numbers from 6 million to 9 million by 2015. At the heart of the development is a 30-point plan, which includes reconfiguring the terminal building, with an extension to the east (6,700 square metres) and west (3,600 square metres) of the existing terminal to just over double its current overall floor area.…

BY MJ DESCHAMPS, IN CALGARY

Dr Tarnia Taverner, assistant professor at the University of British Columbia’s School of Nursing knows the transition from British to Canadian nursing is not seamless. She came to Canada from England 10-years-ago as a clinical nurse, when her British army officer husband was posted in Alberta.…

BY RAGHAVENDRA VERMA

THE NEW vice-chancellor of Bangladesh’s Asian University for Women (AUW) has told University World News how she plans to help her institution move forward after management disputes sparked negative publicity. Fahima Aziz was appointed four months ago and is focusing on securing quality academics and attracting more students to the university’s temporary campus in Chittagong.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Parliament’s energy committee has rejected attempts to introduce a moratorium on offshore gas drilling in the Arctic, overruling a contrary vote by the EP’s environment committee last month. Instead, the committee proposed new amendments to a proposed law on European Union (EU) oil and gas exploration, ensuring that companies have ‘adequate financial security’ to cover liabilities from any drilling accidents in all EU waters.…

BY ROBERT STOKES

THE SEPTEMBER 2012 announcement by utility RWE npower it would close the 2,000 megawatt (MW) coal-fired Didcot A power station in southern England has highlighted the scale and speed of large coal plant closures in Britain. European Union (EU) environmental laws are being identified as a key culprit behind this trend.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL, LEAH GERMAIN AND MARK GAO, IN BEIJING

A NEW trade dispute at the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva between the USA and China over protective duties could actually be a battle in a long war for supremacy in world automobile markets, an auto industry expert has told wardsauto.com.…

BY CARMEN PAUN, IN BRUSSELS

UNIVERSITY tuition fees cost more in England than anywhere else in Europe, according to a September 10 report from the European Commission, but the headline figures are not the whole story for students sizing up how to survive.…

BY POORNA RODRIGO

THE LEADERS of a project to set up a women’s university in Malaysia say that they have cleared land purchase problems that had been holding up construction. Representatives of the Asian Women’s Leadership University (AWLU) Project in Malaysia now say they are on a solid path to the institution opening in 2015.…

IT is a curious irony that for an industry as technical as cogeneration that maybe the biggest handicap to its sustained growth in Europe is actually emotional. Both commercial markets and governments are swayed by sentiment as well as hard cash – and currently both influences are failing to pull in co-gen’s favour.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

WITH fraud becoming ever more prevalent, complex and electronic, governments worldwide have no option but to harmonise their anti-fraud laws, a holistic international business risk assessment company has told Fraud Intelligence. At an interview in their headquarters in Ashford, Kent, southeast England, executives of the Inkerman Group added that governments also need to be more proactive in ensuring companies have online protection technology defending against hackers.…

BY MONIKA HANLEY, IN RIGA; ALICE TRUDELLE, IN WARSAW; CARMEN PAUN, IN BRUSSELS; EUGENE VOROTNIKOV, IN ST PETERSBURG; ROBERT STOKES, IN MALAGA; GERARD O’DWYER, IN HELSINKI; LEE ADENDOORF, IN LUCCA; ALAN OSBORN; MJ DESCHAMPS; AND KEITH NUTHALL

Such small plants have clear commercial applications and it could be – going forward – that market-based innovation, rather than government support, that will succour the sector in much of Europe during the ongoing financial and economic crisis.…

BY MONIKA HANLEY, IN RIGA; ALICE TRUDELLE, IN WARSAW; CARMEN PAUN, IN BRUSSELS; EUGENE VOROTNIKOV, IN ST PETERSBURG; ROBERT STOKES, IN MALAGA; GERARD O’DWYER, IN HELSINKI; LEE ADENDOORF, IN LUCCA; ALAN OSBORN; MJ DESCHAMPS; AND KEITH NUTHALL

IT is a curious irony that for an industry as technical as cogeneration that maybe the biggest handicap to its sustained growth in Europe is actually emotional.…

BY POORNA RODRIGO, IN LONDON

THE London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games have helped to raise hopes of more joint venture deals between UK plastics recyclers and a range of food-grade plastics users keen to reduce their carbon footprints.

Management at ECO Plastics Ltd, has expanded its large and sophisticated plastics sorting facility in Lincolnshire, eastern England, through the May launch of its 10-year Continuum Recycling joint venture with Coca-Cola Enterprises Ltd (CCE), making what it claims is the world’s largest recycled plastics processing plant.…

BY KITTY SO, IN OTTAWA

BRITISH nurses are not alone in receiving wider prescribing powers that would include special classes of government regulated drugs, considered prone to greater potential for abuse: Canadian nurses are also gaining similar responsibilities.

The UK government changed legislation in April, to expand the prescribing and drug mixing powers of pharmacists and nurses to cover ‘controlled drugs,’ which the government falling under two legislations: the Medicines Act, managed by the UK Department of Health, and the Misuse of Drugs Act, which is controlled by the Home Office.…

BY CARMEN PAUN, IN RIO DE JANEIRO

The executive coordinator of this week’s United Nations Rio de Janeiro conference on global sustainability has told University World News why she has placed higher education at the centre of the international strategy she hopes will flow from agreements made at the event.…

BY LEAH GERMAIN

AS a British nurse, the opportunities to work in other countries are eased by professional agencies helping foreign nurses relocate. Yet, US nursing sector experts fear their country may be overlooked by internationally-educated nursing candidates planning on relocating because long of wait times for working permits and visas.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

BRITAIN’S National Fraud Initiative (NFI) has reported a 25% increase in fraudulent applications for government services across England, with the recession apparently increasing dishonesty. The NFI said it had identified fraud, overpayments and errors totalling almost GBPounds GBP229 million for 2010/11, compared with GBP 189 million in 2008/9.…

BY ROBERT STOKES

ALGAE have been heralded as the universal raw material of the future for biofuels, agricultural feed, nutritional supplements, biochemicals and cosmetics. They gobble up CO2, can clean up waste water, and many will thrive in seawater when the fresh variety is usually limited to the sunnier climes where algae can be grown more cheaply.…

BY ROBERT STOKES

ALGAE have been heralded as the universal raw material of the future for biofuels, agricultural feed, nutritional supplements, biochemicals and cosmetics. They gobble up CO2, can clean up waste water, and many will thrive in seawater when the fresh variety is usually limited to the sunnier climes where algae can be grown more cheaply.…

BY GEMMA HANDY, IN PROVIDENCIALES, TURKS & CAICOS, AND POORNA RODRIGO

SWAPPING the grey British skies for the sun-soaked shores of the Caribbean might sound like an easy decision to make.

For 56-year-old nurse Anne Males, there was some initial trepidation at how she would cope living on a tiny island with a population of just 25,000, more than an hour’s flight from the nearest major American city.…

BY LEAH GERMAIN

LAST year (2011) cybercrime represented 38% of all economic crime in the global financial sector, reports the latest study from England’s PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). The report, Fighting Economic Crime in the Financial Services Sector, released on March 27, also details cybercrime accounted for 16% of economic crime in other industries.…

BY LEE ADENDORFF, IN LUCCA

The threat of increased fees for Italian students looks set to become a reality in the near future as universities wrestle with shrinking state funding and budget shortfalls. While the technocrat government headed by Mario Monti tries to pass a massive reform package liberalising diverse sectors of the economy and jump-starting growth, the issue of university funding and competitiveness is coming to a head.…

BY JAMES FULLER

AUTOMOBILE manufacturers are preparing to make the most of an increasing supply of lithium-based batteries, as they look to ramp up their production of electric cars.

They have commented following the December launch of the USD430 million joint Russo-Chinese plant, Liotech, outside Russia’s third-largest city Novosibirsk, in Siberia.…

BY JAMES FULLER, IN LONDON; AND EUGENE VOROTNIKOV, IN ST PETERSBURG

TIME was that automakers looking to expand electric car production worried about the price and scarcity of lithium – a key metal for many battery models. But no more: new production is being brought online and prices have softened dramatically over the past three years, with the recession knocking demand for other lithium-hungry products such as laptop computers and mobiles.…

BY DAVID HAYHURST

WITH a wide range of electric vehicles (EVs) slated to roll out across Europe throughout 2012, utilities have to seriously consider how this new transport sector will impact on their business. Because power producers will be the fuel companies of the future, once electric cars take hold of the consumer imagination, utilities will need to consider how they best serve this new consumer business.…

BY JOHN PAGNI, IN HELSINKI, AND KITTY SO

When officially opened on May 8, Finland’s new 90MW Kymijärvi 2 power station will break ground in its novel energy efficiency and environment technology: a waste-to-energy combined heat and power (CHP) production unit using clean bio-gas as its fuel.…

BY MJ DESCHAMPS

WITH fast fashion and quick turnover key commercial ingredients of today’s garment and apparel industry, excess textile production is prompting the sector to gravitate towards more recycling and reuse of materials, to conserve energy, increase sustainability and lower raw material costs.…

BY ROBERT STOKES, IN EDINBURGH

INVESTORS want to make the United Kingdom the hot spot for new gas storage projects in the European Union (EU). The UK tops the EU’s league table of projects either applied for or with official consent: 11.1 billion cubic metres (bcm) of space compared with 4.6bcm of current operational capacity.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE BRITISH government’s Audit Commission has called on UK local governments to spend money on fighting fraud, even as their income is squeezed by central government and a weak economy. The agency – itself about to be abolished because of spending cuts – has said England’s councils detected GBP185 million’s worth of fraud in 2010-11, up from GBP135 million the previous year.…

BY MJ DESCHAMPS

WITH the cost of raw materials for manufacturing rising rapidly, partly because of – but also in parallel to increasing energy prices worldwide, an industry that is both little known and very large is looking for ways to cut energy costs.…

BY MARK ROWE and MJ DESCHAMPS

FOR many environmentalists – and indeed many others who wonder just where our energy is going to come from in future decades – the aviation industry can seem to embody everything that is wasteful about our current fossil-fuel dependent world.…

BY PAUL COCHRANE

INTELLIGENCE agencies by their very nature are secretive. So too are budgetary expenses and the ways in which agencies finance operations, especially in foreign jurisdictions and where they carry out so-called ‘black ops’. The techniques to quietly transfer funds do not in fact differ that widely from organised crime or terrorist groups, using banking services, front companies, charities and the like.…

BY ROBERT STOKES

NATIONALISM and the energy industry have made uneasy bedfellows throughout history, yet Scotland is attracting substantial international investment in renewables despite having, since May and for the first time, a majority government committed to winning independence from the UK.…

BY MJ DESCHAMPS

With drink consumers increasingly choosing beverage options that fit their lifestyles – and do not just quench their thirst – innovations taking place in drinks packaging show that in the future, containers will be just as important as contents.…

BY DEIRDRE MASON

RECYCLING products as large as motor vehicles; or encouraging public authorities to buy environment-friendly autos seem such good ideas, laws insisting this happens is surely just commonsense? Not so in Europe, it would appear, where a string of countries are in trouble for not implementing the European Union’s recent (EU) green procurement directive; and one – Italy – is facing potential legal action for flouting the EU’s end-of-life vehicles (ELV) directive, even though these was approved in the year 2000.…

BY MARGUERITE-JEANNE DESCHAMPS, MINI PANT ZACHARIAH and WANG FANGQING

While sales of alcohol in pubs and bars in North America, Europe and the UK have seen a steady decline since the global economic downturn, experts are saying the shift from on-trade to off-trade sales of alcohol has not really had a financial impact on the alcoholic beverage industry as a whole.…

BY KARRYN MILLER

ON February 22 New Zealand’s second largest city, Christchurch, felt the earth tremble. Still unsettled from the 7.1 magnitude earthquake that hit in September 2010, the country’s self-styled garden city was struck by a 6.3 magnitude aftershock that proved to be more damaging than the initial quake.…

BY MARK ROWE, ALAN OSBORN and PAUL COCHRANE

IT may be no coincidence that football (or soccer as it is known by north American readers) is generally regarded as corrupt by law enforcement agencies and has chosen to stage two of its next major spectacles – the 2012 European championships, and the 2018 World Cup, in Ukraine and Russia.…

By Alyshah Hasham, International News Services

The UK is by no means an exception to this trend. A recent study from the University of Plymouth concluded that the most dangerous climate-change linked threat to Britain’s environmental health could be vector borne diseases (such as Leishmaniasis – carried by the sand fly) which could spread to new areas because of warming temperatures.…

BY CHARLIE WALLIN

UK ceramic experts from the University of Central Lancashire have teamed up with a commercial recycler and social welfare charity Recycling Lives, of Preston, also in Lancashire, to create a unique eco-material that can be used in architecture and interior design.…

BY ALYSHAH HASHAM

AS negotiators at the recent United Nations climate change conference in Cancun wrapped up their work, one problem concentrating minds enough to secure a partial deal was the spread of disease on the coat-tails of global warming. Infectious diseases are spreading to regions where they were previously absent, driven by warmer temperatures and changing rainfall patterns.…

BY RAGHAVENDRA VERMA

The past two years have been tough for Price Waterhouse, India’s branch of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC). The firm has been caught up in the billion dollar Satyam scandal that exploded onto the world’s newspapers, televisions and computer screens from January 2009.…

BY MARK ROWE

NANOTECHNOLOGY is playing an increasing part in the European Union’s (EU) ambitious binding EU-wide target to source 20% of energy needs from renewables, including biomass, hydro, wind and solar power, by 2020. The principle applied in other industries – that materials, elements and components exhibit different, often highly energy-efficient properties at the nanoscale – has sparked widespread interest within the energy field.…

BY ALYSHAH HASHAM

AS negotiators at the recent United Nations climate change conference in Cancun wrapped up their work, one problem concentrating minds enough to secure a partial deal was the spread of disease on the coat-tails of global warming. Infectious diseases are spreading to regions where they were previously absent, driven by warmer temperatures and changing rainfall patterns.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

WINTER always beings jitters to European utilities. Will Russia cut off gas to a neighbouring country because of a payment row? Until major new pipeline routes are in place, such as Nord Stream or Nabucco, this concern will continue.…

BY David Haworth

Too few universities teach about turning science into specific products to be sold on the markets and lack entrepreneurship departments which instruct ways in which ideas can be turned into money. Dr Bernd Huber, president of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, tells an audience of some 300 researchers attending a Brussels conference on the future of Europe’s science and technology.…

BY MARK GODFREY

Albert Ng, Ernst & Young

Managing partner and chairman of E&Y’s China business, Hong Kong native Albert Ng has over 25 years of professional experience in the accounting industry in China and Australia. That background will be valuable as he moves the firm on from an embarrassing settlement over its auditing of Akai Holdings, a bankrupted Chinese electronic manufacturer and retailer.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

NEW competitors for shipping gas to the European Union (EU) from the Caucasus are emerging, while Turkmenistan has announced a major new gas find. The Turkmen government is claiming guaranteed gas supplies to Europe, by quadrupling exports over the next 20 years, after unveiling a major new gas field.…

BY BARBARA BIERACH

WHILE the Reserve Bank of Australia has a licence to print cash, two subsidiaries wanted one too, it seems – only using international sales agents to bribe foreign public officials over banknote printing contracts. Barbara Bierach reports from Sydney.…

BY MJ DESCHAMPS

With the global textile and clothing industry this year emerging from a deep slump, it is perhaps understandable that there were going to be unexpected twists and turns in the sector during 2010. Of course, the fashion business is always colourful, and attracts characters and innovation.…

By Emma Jackson

Researchers say they have secured the future of Europe’s huge volumes of digital data, having created an open source software that will protect digital data from becoming unreadable or unusable because it is incompatible with newer technologies. This has been developed by the European Union (EU)-funded CASPAR (Cultural, Artistic and Scientific knowledge for Preservation, Access and Retrieval) programme.…

BY MICHAEL MACKEY

A SPONSORSHIP deal with football giant Manchester United will help Boon Rawd Trading International make its Singha brand one of England’s top Asian beers, the Thai company told just-drinks. It will be the only lager-style beer sold at its Old Trafford stadium.…

BY ALAN OSBORN, KEITH NUTHALL

THE PASSAGE of legislation by parliaments and assemblies worldwide has been the usual route by which anti-money laundering legislation becomes law in most jurisdictions. But to some degree, this is because such laws are relatively new and so have yet to face many legal challenges in court.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

FORD UK has this morning welcomed the signing of contracts for a GBPounds GBP450 million loan from the European Investment Bank (EIB) it says will unlock five-years’ investment in environment-friendly auto production. GBP 360 million of the loan will be guaranteed by the British government.…

BY ALAN OSBORN and CRISTINA MUNTEAN

A SLEW of new European Union (EU) regulations laying down the precise conditions for road transport cabotage operations in the EU came into effect on May 14, and there are hopes they will encourage high quality and competitive haulage for materials.…

BY PAUL COCHRANE, AHMAD PATHONI, GAVIN BLAIR, RAGHAVENDRA VERMA, WANG FANGQING, HELEN FLUSFELDER, KARRYN MILLER, KEITH NUTHALL and ALAN OSBORN

THE BRITISH writer Oscar Wilde wrote: "A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) has launched a Euro 4.2 million research project SAFEPROTEX that will develop highly protective clothing for complex emergency operations. Running until 2013 it will involve companies such as Palmhive Technical Textiles Ltd, of Nottingham, England; France’s TDV Industries and Rescoll; Italy’s Lenzi Egisto; Finland’s TTY-Saatio; Spain’s Suministros Irunako; Slovakia’s Vyskumny Ustav Chemickych Vlakien; and Sweden’s Swerea IVF.…

BY RAGHAVENDRA VERMA

VEDANTA Resources, the London-based metals and mining group, is trying to utilise waste from its aluminium refinery in the Indian state of Orissa even as it fights allegations that its operations have caused environmental damage to surrounding hills and harmed local tribal communities.…

BY EMMA JACKSON and JULIAN RYALL

DESPITE the still-smarting pains of a slowly fading recession, which wreaked havoc on industries across the board, there is one ink sector that has been steadily growing, with global appeal in almost every country and nearly every demographic.…

BY MARK ROWE

REMEMBER swine flu? While minute-by-minute updates in the international media have evaporated, the H1N1 virus has not, and airports around the world are being advised to maintain elevated levels of vigilance and good hygiene.

In June 2009, the World Health Organisation (WHO) raised the H1N1 virus alert to ‘Phase Six’ – signifying a pandemic – where it remains at the time of writing.…

BY GERARD O’DWYER

IF there is one region where high standards in fighting money laundering and terrorist finance are expected, it is surely the five Nordic states: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland. Notwithstanding the criticism leveled at Iceland’s financial regulators during the credit crunch, all five countries have admirable traditions of public openness, government efficiency and international cooperation, especially amongst themselves.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

SCIENTISTS from across Europe will use genetic expertise to improve livestock breeding and meat quality, focusing especially pork, notably chorizo and Parma ham. The EXCELMEAT project is led by Bristol-based the University of the West of England (UWE) and part funded by the European Union (EU).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

MARTA Andreasen, the outspoken former European Commission chief accountant, says she will recruit accountants and auditors to work at European Union (EU) anti-fraud office OLAF, if she becomes its new director general. Speaking to Accountancy Age, she confirmed she would be applying for the vacant position, now open because of the death from cancer of OLAF’s first boss Franz-Hermann Brüner in January.…

BY DEIRDRE MASON

STANDARDIZATION for electric vehicles and, crucially, the batteries that power them has taken a key step forward with the official topping out ceremony [NOTE: US STYLE MIGHT USE ‘GROUNDBREAKING CEREMONY’ – IT’S THE CEREMONY WHERE SOMEONE TURNS THE FIRST SPADEFUL AT THE VERY START OF CONSTRUCTION.]…

BY ALAN OSBORN

ON the face of it, the UK, with other leading western European Union (EU) countries, leads the pack in terms of drawing up and submitting its River Basin Management (RBM) plans to the European Commission – the key first stage requirement of the EU’s Water Framework Directive (WFD).…

BY ALAN OSBORN, EMMA JACKSON, PAUL COCHRANE and JULIAN RYALL

INTRODUCTION

Professionalisation is a key trend in today’s drinks sector, particularly as export markets are growing fast in emerging markets. With brand loyalty up for grabs, it is critical for alcoholic drinks producers especially to maintain and raise quality.…

BY ANCA GURZU, MARK ROWE, PAUL COCHRANE AND KARRYN MILLER

THE COPENHAGEN conference on global warming may failed to have delivered a comprehensive global warming deal, but it did at least highlight an international consensus on the need to fight climate change and conserve energy: as a result, the global sales of paints and coatings that reflect heat and hence reduce the need for air conditioning are likely to rise.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

AS Barack Obama wrestles with the challenge of pushing healthcare reform through the US Congress, he could create political capital by highlighting the need to fight fraud in the sector. Keith Nuthall reports.

IT is something of a sacred cow.…

BY PHILIPPA JONES, LEE ADENDOORF, E. BLAKE BERRY, SYMON ROSS, MONICA DOBIE and KEITH NUTHALL

CONSUMER issues have been a key focus of European Union (EU) initiatives regarding utilities of late. The European Commission’s Citizens’ Energy Forum has been busy, recently focusing on improving billing practices, promoting good practice and calling for "clearer, more understandable and accurate bills".…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

TIME was when video games were simple pastimes, basic computer fun with classics such as ‘Space Invaders’ and ‘Asteroids’. But that is ‘so 1980s’. In the 21st century, the games of choice are interactive and involve spending money – the name is massively multiplayer online games (MMOG).…

BY ALAN OSBORN

ANDREA Perrone talks of when he was a child, and his father – a lawyer and the CEO of Brioni Retail – used to bring home customers from South America for lunch or dinner at the family’s residence in Abruzzi, Italy.…

BY ALAN OSBORN and GEORGINA OLIVER

ACCORDING to Jean Castarède, author of a lay-reader’s guide to the luxury industry published in 2008 in the popular ‘Que sais-je?’ (What do I know?) paperback series, France’s couture and high-end ready-to-wear sector then represented one third of the world’s Euro 30 billion luxury fashion market.…

BY EMMA JACKSON and MONICA DOBIE

USA researchers and health advocates have called in an influential journal for heavier taxes on sugary soft drinks, in an effort to curb consumption and raise funds for new health programmes.

Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, New York City health commissioner Dr Thomas Farley and academics from the Harvard School of Public Health and Yale University proposed an excise tax of 1% per fluid ounce for any beverages with added caloric sweeteners.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

ALL is not well with the European Union (EU)’s ambitious ‘water framework directive’ (WFD). The 2009 timetable has slipped. The 27 EU member states were required to establish their first river basin management plans (RBMPs) for all 110 river basin districts in the EU by the end of this year and include specific measures to ensure that all EU waters reach "good" status by 2015.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE UK’S construction industry has protested after 103 companies in England were fined GBPounds 129.5 million by Britain’s Office of Fair Trading (OFT) for illegal collusion when securing building contracts. The OFT acted over so-called ‘cover pricing’ where contractors uninterested in a job overbid for a tender, allowing another firm to secure work with an inflated price.…

BY MARK ROWE

ACCORDING to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), today’s world aircraft fleet is about 65% more fuel-efficient than in 1970. Between 1990 and 2000, fuel efficiency improved by 17%. Furthermore, the clean technology of modern aircraft engines has almost eliminated emissions of carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons.…

BY ANDREW CAVE

Food commodity prices are seldom out of the news nowadays, due to a mushrooming global population, the food-for-fuel controversy, an increasing focus on sustainability and the continued growth of the organic sector. However, beyond the generality of crop prices spiralling to new highs in 2007 and 2008 and then plummeting – in some cases – back to where they were before the boom, the picture is far from uniform.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

YOU might think, given the preponderance of doomsayers predicting drought and desertification in Europe because of global warming, that the rainfall data would back them up.

But on a continent-wide scale, it does not.

A report on water scarcity issued by the European Environment Agency (EEA) earlier this year noted that "precipitation in Europe generally increased over the twentieth century, rising by 6-8 % on average between 1901 and 2005".…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

COUNTERFEITERS often claim their crime is victimless – the only losers are rich corporations who enjoy healthy profits anyway from their brands. But what if you drink the fake, and it kills you? It happens, Keith Nuthall explores the murky world of drinks counterfeiting.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL, LEAH GERMAIN and MONICA DOBIE

MAYBE the best sign that renewable energies have hit the mainstream is that they now have their very own international organisation: the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). Launched in Bonn, Germany, this January, with the support of 76 countries, including its host nation, Spain, Italy, France and Sweden, the roster of signatory nations has since been swollen by India and Belarus.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL, JULIAN RYALL, in Tokyo, EMMA JACKSON and LEAH GERMAIN

TIME was when counterfeit personal care products were commonly crude fake perfumes pedalled in markets and workplaces during the Christmas and other festive periods to bargain hunters who knew they were buying rubbish.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL and EMMA JACKSON

COUNTERFEITERS often claim their crime is victimless – the only losers are rich corporations who enjoy healthy profits anyway. But tell that to the families of 1,069 duped Moscow consumers who died after becoming intoxicated by counterfeit alcoholic beverages in the city during 2008, according to the city’s board of health.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A MAJOR cigarette smuggling boom is being reported in Ireland by customs teams, with a record 135.2 million cigarettes being seized last year, almost twice the amount seized in 2007. Of these, 56.82 million were counterfeits, the country’s Sunday Independent newspaper has reported.…

BY RAGHAVENDRA VERMA

INDIA’S US$12.4 billion annual turnover tobacco industry is passing through a difficult period, with little hope for a better future, despite its continued large size – this estimate coming from the Tobacco Institute of India for sales of all tobacco products, chewing tobacco and beedis.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL and EMMA JACKSON

COUNTERFEITERS often claim their crime is victimless – the only losers are rich corporations who enjoy healthy profits anyway from their brands. But tell that to the families of the 1,069 duped Moscow consumers who died after becoming intoxicated by counterfeit alcoholic beverages in the city during 2008, according to the Russian capital’s board of health.…

BY PHILIPPA JONES

BUILDINGS account globally for 8% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, or 20% if upstream emissions associated with electricity and heat are included, according to the climate change report written by UK government adviser and economist Nicholas Stern. The European Union (EU), national governments, and local authorities have all adopted targets aimed at incorporating renewables into the planning process and reducing these figures.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

IDEALLY, police and other law enforcement officers working against money laundering and terrorist financing will combine the best elements of two different professions: the forensic skills of the conventional police detective and the expert knowledge of an experienced financial practitioner such as you’d find in the larger banks and finance houses.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL, EMMA JACKSON and ALAN OSBORN

Although today’s nuclear technology is used primarily to produce electricity, meeting about 14.2% of the world’s demand, the birth of nuclear power, like many technologies, was not intended for civilian use. Rather, it was used to harness a militaristic advantage at the onset of the Second World War.…

BY JAMES FULLER

THE TWIN island republic of Trinidad & Tobago is many people’s idea of a tropical idyll but Sunita Kissoon, senior nurse/midwife at the Gulf View Medical Centre in San Fernando, says medical care in her country is fundamentally lacking when compared to the UK.…

BY ALAN OSBORN and MONICA DOBIE

A SIMPLE surgical checklist to be introduced by the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) for major operations in the UK from February 2010 has been welcomed by Diane Gilmour, president of the Association for Perioperative Practice (AFPP).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A DETAILED report from the European Environment Agency (EEA), which highlights signals of environmental problems within Europe, says England and Wales can be labelled "water stressed", along with only eight other European countries. They are Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Germany, Italy, Macedonia, Malta and Spain.…

BY PHILIPPA JONES, DOMINIQUE PATTON and LUCY JONES

The growth in outsourcing within the clothing and textile sector worldwide has highlighted a key issue, and that is the relative merits of running an integrated company that handles basic production and design, or relying on a string of specialist suppliers to deliver the goods, from fibre supplies, to textile manufacture, design, clothing assembly and retail.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

AS 2009 dawns, the European Union’s (EU) renewable energy sector knows that it has truly entered the mainstream of EU utility markets, its growth being sanctioned by ambitious legislation approved before Christmas.

After more than a year of debates, the European Parliament and EU ministers have approved a new EU directive imposing mandatory national targets for the 27 member states regarding the portion of their gross final consumption of energy in 2020 coming from renewable sources.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

AGREEMENT has been struck over future European Union (EU) targets for CO2 emissions from cars, with an informal deal being forged by the European Parliament and the EU Council of Ministers. The agreement is a compromise, with energy and automobile companies securing a phase-in between 2012 and 2015 of an agreed 120g/km target.…

BY DEIRDRE MASON, JAMES BURNS, and JULIAN RYALL

With technological change being forced upon the auto manufacturing industry by high oil prices, plants are being retooled faster than in living memory. At such a time, companies are always looking for new ideas and technology.…

BY MAKKI MARSEILLES

GREECE is something of a paradox in the tobacco sector. Its citizens smoke more cigarettes per capita than anywhere else in the world, yet its government is increasing anti-smoking legislation and its long-established leaf growing sector is shrinking towards virtual extinction.…

BY IRINA PRENTICE

WHILE finding accurate statistics about the Libya industry is as easy as finding your way around the country’s vast deserts without a map, it is undeniable that this is a growing paint and coating market: the country is in full economic development which includes construction, boosting demand for coatings of all kinds.…

BY KARRYN MILLER

ABOUT a decade ago we first heard whispers of compressed air cars: an eco-friendly driving option that kept travel costs low. Now, with mineral oil fuelled cars under pressure on price and pollution, air-powered vehicles are finally becoming a concrete product.…

BY PAUL RIGG

ROBBERIES, competition from immigrants and the state of the economy are the issues of most pressing concern for Spanish hauliers, according to drivers interviewed in truck stops on the outskirts of Madrid by Commercial Motor.

"I woke up with my kidneys and head hurting like I’d drunk a bottle of whisky," said Elias Calyo, 46, from Andalucia in the south of Spain.…

BY MARK ROWE

THE FUTURE of the oils and fats sector globally may be shaped in the coming years by the emergence of synthetic biology, which is enabling scientists to create oils and fats with enhanced properties.

This new technology has been developed in the wake of advances in biofuel manufacture, as the United Nations, major energy companies, scientists and environmental organisations all seek to identify the sources of energy that will sustain a post-oil world.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

DESPITE the binge drinking, fatty fast food, appalling public transport and bad weather, Britons have less medical hypertension than Italians, despite their sunshine, excellent diet, red wine and general supposed joie de vivre. That is the verdict of a European Union (EU)-funded research project IMMIDIET.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Court of Justice (ECJ) has cleared the way for national governments in the European Union (EU) to insist that diesel-powered vehicles registered in that country be fitted with special filters reducing particulate matter emissions. Judges struck down a European Commission decision blocking a Netherlands law effectively insisting that such a filter be used on all Dutch-registered diesel cars, lorries and vans.…

By Keith Nuthall

In a sign that the credit crunch is not demolishing all long term thinking in the financial sector, France’s AXA insurance group has continued rolling out funding from a five-year Euro 100 million programme into innovative research exploring risk.…

BY JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN

THE ACCOUNTANCY profession in the United States might think its day of reckoning came and went in 2002. But those who thought that the Sarbanes Oxley Act was the final word in regulation for the accounting profession may be in for a rude surprise.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Union’s (EU) consumer protection information network RAPEX has warned of two more safety bans on cosmetics products in Europe. Sweden has banned the sale of South Africa’s Tura England skin lightening cream for containing banned methyldibromo glutaronitrile; and Austria has banned the US-made MAXI-TONE skin lightening lotion with shea butter for containing more than 2% of hydroquinone, both breaking the EU cosmetics directive.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

AUSTRALIAN health officials have successfully attacked an outbreak of abalone viral ganglioneuritis which was discovered in a commercial processing plant in Mornington, near Hobart, Tasmania. The discovery prompted the closure of a 229 square kilometre fishing area, with the seabed in the D’Entrecasteaux Channel between Port Esperance and Southport being closed to commercial and recreational abalone harvesting.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

MAKING a living in the Canadian Arctic is never easy in commercial terms, given the restrictions imposed by the weather, the distances to populous markets and extremely undeveloped transport: there are no roads to and from the territory of Nunavut.…

BY MONICA DOBIE

Australian researchers are investigating the best ways to help people with

mental illness quit smoking. Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder patients are

more than three times more likely to smoke than other Australians.

Researchers from the University of Newcastle and Hunter New England Health

have received funding from the Australian Rotary Health Research Fund

(ARHRF) to test a new programme to help mental health inpatients give up

cigarettes.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

AN ANGLO-Canadian research team has found microbes living in dried oil tar can be provoked into digesting this petroleum well residue, turning it into natural gas. Scientists from England’s University of Newcastle and Canada’s University of Calgary found the microbes could be provoked into a tar feeding frenzy by supplying them with additional nutrients.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission has warned that British beaches became dirtier in 2007, with a major increase in the number of bathing water sites failing to meet European Union (EU) hygiene standard. These numbered 20 last year, up from just two in 2006, and 10 in 2005.…

BY ANDREW CAVE

SCARCELY a week goes by without volumes of newsprint or prime broadcasting slots being devoted to new and ingenious ways of mitigating climate change.

Global warming is now widely regarded the single most important issue the world faces, so it is no surprise that it is exercising the minds of the world’s most creative scientists.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE BRITISH government has warned the Aquatic Animals Commission (of the Office International des Épizooties – OIE) that future Bonamia ostreae outbreaks are to be expected in UK oysters. This follows cases of the disease in Whitstable, north Kent, southeast England; and West Loch Tarbert, a sea loch off the Mull of Kintyre, western Scotland.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

BRITISH veterinary authorities are investigating an outbreak of Bonamia ostreae amongst wild native oysters in the key southern England beds of Whitstable, Kent. Reports from the Aquatic Animals Commission (of the Office International des Épizooties – OIE) say that the disease was detected by histological examination in three oysters, following routine sampling in late November 2007.…

By Keith Nuthall

The potential riches that can be gained by universities spinning off successful science units into commercial operations has been made clear by a deal involving Britain’s University of Surrey and Airbus-maker EADS Astrium.

It has acquired the university’s Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) for an estimated GBPounds 50 million.…

By Monica Dobie

University World News here again features a selection of commercially important and cutting edge higher education research developments.

*Researchers from the Max Planck Institute, Germany, have developed a genetic tool that can help speed the development of new genetic varieties of food crops.…

BY ALAN OSBORN, in London, and SUZANNE KOELEGA, in Sint Maarten, Dutch West Indies

AS with much of life today, the future of gambling is closely tied to the Internet, and this development of an international industry based on instant cross-border cash flows has raised understandable concerns about money laundering.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has concluded that there is no need to change European Union (EU) food safety guidelines after studying University of Southampton, England, claims that mixtures of certain food colours and the preservative sodium benzoate could promote hyperactivity in children.…

BY Monica Dobie

Researchers from the University of Nottingham’s School of Mechanical, Materials and Manufacturing Engineering, in England’s East Midlands, have helped develop what has been hailed as the fastest swimsuit in the world.

Speedo’s new LZR Racer swimsuit was made using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) that scanned four hundred athletes’ bodies to pin-point areas of high and low friction when they swim.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Parliament has pushed for more concrete collaboration between African and European Union (EU) researchers, amidst concerns that grand declarations of altruistic intentions are failing to deliver cash or expertise.

A formal resolution passed by parliament members (MEPs) called for a "special emphasis [to] be placed on research into AIDS in African countries" within the EU’s ongoing seventh framework programme on research, which commands a huge Euro 53.2 billion budget, nearly three times the total GDP of Kenya.…

BY MONICA DOBIE

RESEARCHERS from the University of Nottingham’s School of Mechanical, Materials and Manufacturing Engineering, in England’s East Midlands, have helped develop what has been hailed as the fastest swimsuit in the world.

Speedo’s new LZR Racer swimsuit was made using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) that scanned four hundred athletes’ bodies to pin-point areas of high and low friction when they swim.…

BY MARK ROWE

SKY high prices for precious metals have prompted a rise in thefts of catalytic converters from a wide range of motor vehicles; the problem is so serious that the British Metals Recycling Association (BMRA) has linked up with the Association of Chief Police Officers of England, Wales and Northern Ireland (ACPO) to tackle the issue.…

BY ERIC LYMAN, in Rome

THE ITALIAN tobacco industry is currently in a holding pattern, mid-way between two milestones: the 2005 ban on indoor smoking that had a dramatic impact sales that the industry has yet to recover from, and a change in European Union (EU) subsidy rules scheduled for 2010 that could have a far greater effect on total production from Europe’s largest tobacco producer.…

BY MARK ROWE

WHICHEVER way you look, the oil and gas sector is investing in biofuels. The larger energy companies – driven by an eye for a new and potentially lucrative market as well as shareholder concern and governmental and international political pressure – are investigating both first and second generation biofuels.…

BY ANDREW CAVE

FOLLOWING the introduction on July 1 of public place smoking bans in England 240 million people worldwide were covered by public smoking restrictions, according to the International Union Against Cancer (UICC). (NOTE – THIS IS A FRENCH ACRONYM)

The movement towards such restrictions is becoming ubiquitous in the European Union (EU), with Estonia, Finland, Scotland and Ireland already have full public-place bans, while Italy, Sweden and Malta have partial bans, allowing smoking only in closed-off, separately-ventilated areas.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL and MONICA DOBIE

THE EUROPEAN Parliament’s environment committee wants European Union (EU) rules to insist that biofuel production is environmentally sustainable. The call was made in amendments tabled to proposed reforms from the European Commission to the EU’s fuel quality directive, which insists on certain standards for petrol and diesel.…

BY ANDREW CAVE

PUBLIC place smoking bans are spreading like wildlife these days, with one country after another drawing up rules preventing tobacco use where it could expose non-smokers to second-hand smoke.

In the European Union (EU), this year, public place smoking bans have been introduced in England, Estonia and Finland, for instance.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

EUROPEAN Union (EU) scientists are investigating developing genetically modified feed vegetables engineered to produce healthy long-chain fatty acids, which could nourish broiler chickens and beef cattle. The idea has come in the EU’s Lipgene project, which aims to increase the amount of these acids in EU human diets.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission has announced England’s Staffordshire cheese, Spanish cauliflower Coliflor de Calahorra; German grated horseradish Bayerischer Meerrettich and Bayerischer Kren; and German table carp Holsteiner Karpfen have been granted geographical indication protection within the European Union (EU).…

BY MONICA DOBIE

RESEARCHERS from the University of Leeds, England, have developed a way to turn vegetable sludge into hydrogen-rich gas. The process mixes glycerol with steam at controlled temperatures, separating the waste product into hydrogen, water and carbon dioxide with no residues.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE LEVEL of incineration and recycling of municipal waste within Britain is as low as former communist countries in eastern Europe, a new European Environment Agency (EEA) report has concluded. In an assessment the 27 European Union (EU) member states, the EEA bracketed Britain with Portugal, Greece, Cyprus, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission has approved a public sector-dominated investment package of GBPounds 44 million to help develop Newquay airport, in Cornwall, southwest England. Pounds 19.5 million will come from European Union funds, with the remainder being covered by UK government funding agencies and borrowing.…

BY MONICA DOBIE

RESEARCHERS at the University of Manchester, northwest England, have developed high-tech, battery-powered textile yarns that can be used to make clothing glow in the dark without a reflective light source.

These electroluminescent (EL) yarns, invented by the university’s William Lee Innovation Centre (WLIC) have the potential to be incorporated into clothing worn by cyclists, joggers and pedestrians.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE NEED to limit particulate matter in Britain and continental western Europe has been underlined by the European Environment Agency’s (EEA) latest assessment of pollution in Europe. In its fourth annual environmental health check of Europe, central Asia and Asiatic Russia, the agency concluded that much of western, central and south east Europe, especially urban areas, "experience daily average PM10 concentrations in excess of 50 ?g/m3…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has declared illegal rules that insist European Union (EU) students wanting to study in a foreign EU state must continue a course subject they have already begun in their home country, if they want to receive a grant from the government of the country where they normally live.…

Monica Dobie

Manchester

Researchers at the University of Manchester, northwest England, have developed high-tech, battery-powered textile yarns that can be used to make clothing glow in the dark without a reflective light source.

These electroluminescent (EL) yarns, invented by the university’s William Lee Innovation Centre (WLIC) have the potential to be incorporated into clothing worn by cyclists, joggers and pedestrians.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission has formally announced today (15-10) that England’s Staffordshire cheese, as well as traditional vegetable products from Germany and Spain, plus a German fish product, have been granted geographical indication protection within the European Union (EU).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

APPALLING drinking water quality problems still pose major health hazards for some south-eastern Europe countries wanting to join the European Union (EU), the European Environment Agency’s (EEA) latest assessment of European pollution has concluded. For example, Albania’s "urban water rarely has even preliminary treatment" through "the lack of adequate…facilities and the unreliable supply of chemicals."…

BY MARK ROWE

LORRIES are increasingly being stolen for their value as scrap and recycled materials, UK authorities have warned the road haulage industry. The rise in thefts of lorries has been blamed partly on the high prices now paid for scrap metal on the international markets – driven in part by China’s insatiable demand for metal – and on thieves who have realized that almost any part of a lorry, from wheel hubs to side panels, axles, catalytic converters, a plastic chair or the gold in the wiring looms has a recyclable value.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

THE MONEY Laundering Bulletin has found effects of the European Union’s (EU) second money laundering directive’s (2MLD) extension of EU anti-money laundering regulations to a range of businesses and professions are complicated by differences in the definition of the professions between the 27 member states.…

BY MARK ROWE

WEATHER-resistant and anti-corrosion coatings and sealants are being developed with the aid of nanotechnology that will significantly enhance the lifetime operation of buildings and property across the Asia-Pacific region and beyond. Most of the developments are expected to be particularly welcome in the Asia-Pacific region, where the hot and humid climate imposes a more onerous regime on paints and coatings.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A GROUNDBREAKING deal protecting traditionally-made food products in overseas markets is under way. In the first European Union (EU) agreement of its kind, the European Commission formally applied to register 10 EU food products within China’s geographical indications system and vice versa.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A GROUNDBREAKING cooperation deal on protecting traditionally-made food products in overseas markets rolled into action yesterday (Tues 10-7), with China and European Union (EU) officials preparing legal protection for 10 lines each. The first EU agreement of its kind, the European Commission formally applied to register 10 EU food products within China’s geographical indications system.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

AN INTERNET gambling boss has predicted England’s new nationwide smoking ban could pump an additional GBPounds 5 million-a-year into his industry’s coffers, as smoking punters abandon casinos and bingo halls banning cigarettes and cigars. Malcolm Graham, CEO poker website PKR.com,…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling on whether water companies are responsible under European Union (EU) law for cleaning up escaped sewage could force the UK government to consider national reforms on the issue. Judges ruled that the clean up of escaped solid waste was not covered by the 1991 EU urban waste water directive, and that the broader 1975 waste framework directive would not apply either if there were more detailed national rules.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission has suspended funds to five regional authorities in England – north-east England, north-west England, Yorkshire and Humberside, London and West Midlands – over “a lack of proper controls over paying agencies.” No indication of the sums involved was given but in 2005 the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) pumped Euro 2 billion into the UK, so the loss of money will be substantial.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling on whether water companies are responsible under European Union (EU) law for cleaning up escaped sewage could force the UK government to consider national reforms. Judges ruled the clean-up of escaped solid waste was not covered by the 1991 EU urban waste water directive, and the 1975 waste framework directive would not apply either if there were detailed national rules.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE BRITISH government is being threatened with legal action at the European Court of Justice (ECJ) over claims it has failed to ensure the correct implementation of the European Union’s (EU) landfill directive throughout the United Kingdom.

The directive imposes environmental and health standards on the operation and closure of landfills.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

BRITAIN’S Department for Communities and Local Government has been warned by the European Commission that it must sort out shortcomings in its auditing of European Union regional development spending in England or risk aid payments worth millions of Euros being suspended.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A SERIES of detailed and striking data-based images has been released by the European Environment Agency (EEA) starkly portraying western Europe’s density of development, and hence its exposure to environmental health problems. These make up the ‘Corine Land Cover 2000’ database, which offers information on land cover and land cover changes over the past decade in 32 European countries, using photo-interpretation of satellite images.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

WHEN academics think of European Union (EU) funding for their projects or institutions, they often consider the European Commission, with its high profile in education and research spending through its framework programmes. But there is another EU institution developing an increasingly important role as a financial fountainhead for European higher education: the European Investment Bank (EIB).…

BY MARK ROWE, in Bristol, England

A NEW generation of biofuels is set to radically overhaul the non-fossil fuel market, providing opportunities and challenges for the automotive manufacturing industry, with many innovations emerging from Europe. Until recently, the question of biofuels has been limited, mainly, to biodiesel and bioethanol made from crops such as cereals, soybean and palm oil.…

BY MONICA DOBIE, in Balderson, Ontario

STRONG family links and a dislike of European Union bureaucracy was what brought David James, 62, to Canada to start over again. In 1998, the James family, including wife Ann, 61, daughter Debra, 39, and son-in law Rob, 39, packed up their belongings and moved to a small farming community called Balderson, roughly 50 miles from Canada’s capital, Ottawa.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

THE FIRST appearance of counterfeit "supernotes" in America last year has the US Secret Service concerned – not so much because of the volume of these forged US dollar bills as because of the superb skill with which they’re made.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) Council of Ministers has approved a list of priority projects that will draw in EU funding and diplomatic support under its 2007-13 trans European network (TENs) energy programme. Agreed with the European Parliament, the schemes are designed to fulfil the EU’s energy policy goals of improving security of supply, especially from outside member states, and underpinning Europe’s internal market in gas and electricity.…

BY LUCY JONES, in Dallas, Texas

THERE is another side to the loss of life and devastation wreaked in the USA by hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Wilma and Dennis last year, a market reaction that has brought unsought benefits to the US paint and coatings industry.…

BY LUCY JONES, in Dallas, Texas

THERE is another side to the loss of life and devastation wreaked in the USA by hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Wilma and Dennis last year, a market reaction that has brought unsought benefits to the US paint and coatings industry.…

BY SYMON ROSS, in Christchurch, New Zealand,

THE DAVEY family swapped arable faming on the Lincolnshire Wolds for mixed farming on New Zealand’s South Island five years ago and say they haven’t looked back since.

Bill and Lynda Davey had felt the future of family farming in England was in serious jeopardy and made a life changing decision to look overseas.…

BY MONICA DOBIE

IDENTIFYING people contaminated with superbugs could soon be done mechanically with an electronic nose allowing laboratory and health service staff to quickly contain and attack deadly bacteria.

The e-nose is a polymer-based device with software that can correctly detect three strains of staphylococcus aureus bacteria, including the notorious MRSA, (methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus), with more than 99% accuracy.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

CONCERNS about needlestick injuries to nurses and other health workers have inspired the European Parliament to invoke a rarely-used legal procedure to formally call on the European Commission to table reforms. The parliament’s social affairs committee has adopted a report calling for action.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission has formally threatened the UK government with legal action at the European Court of Justice over alleged breaches of the European Union (EU) urban waste water treatment directive. Brussels claims that there are legally "insufficient collection and treatment facilities" for London, Torbay and Whitburn, in England, and Kilbarchan, in Scotland.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

TESTS carried out by the European Union’s (EU) reference laboratory in Weybridge, England, onto three sheep that died with suspected with BSE-like symptoms have not proved the disease has effectively jumped species from bovine livestock. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) said that one test – called the ‘discriminatory western blot’ – suggested that the two French and one Cypriot sheep did die from a BSE-like disease, but two other tests had different results.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

FACT BOX

Population of Cyprus: 793,100

Number of students enrolled at university: 5,000 (see text)

Percentage of university students who are Cypriots: 90%

Percentage of Cypriots (excluding mature students) attending university in Cyprus or other countries: 80%

INTERVIEW

OUT of every ten young people who apply for a place at the University of Cyprus, only three actually gets admitted.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

FACT BOX

Population of Iceland: 300,000

Number of students enrolled at university: 9,526

Percentage of university students who are Icelanders: 93%

Percentage of Icelandic population attending university: 5.8%

INTERVIEW

A LOT of people are fascinated by Iceland and it’s helped make the country’s university something of a lure for students across Europe and even America.…

BY MATTHEW BRACE, in Sydney

IT might sound like science fiction but many of the most exciting and useful advances emerging from the super-science of nanotechnology are real. Nanotechnology is a relatively new approach that deals with understanding and applying the properties of matter at the nano-scale, where a small molecule measures one nano-metre (one billionth of metre) in length, or about 1/80,000 of the diameter of a human hair.…

BY DEIRDRE MASON

THE MEDIA rush to pick up on the revival of nuclear energy as a serious UK option, made plain in the Department of Trade and Industry’s recent Energy Review consultation document, has diverted attention from which tail will, in practice, be wagging the UK energy dog over the coming months.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

BRITAIN has been given a generally positive report on its environmental performance by a detailed and long-term European Environment Agency (EEA) report. Overall, the EEA said that the UK was "fortunate to have implemented a series of structural economic changes in the recent past that have brought environmental improvements".…

BY DEIRDRE MASON

IRELAND’S Celtic Tiger economy may have lost a little of its bounce recently, with double-digit annual growth figures no longer predicted. However, the beast is still in fine fettle, as a recent Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) observer report notes: “The economy has bounced back.…

BY DEIRDRE MASON
IRELAND’S Celtic Tiger economy may have lost a little of its bounce recently, with double-digit annual growth figures no longer predicted. However, the beast is still in fine fettle, as a recent Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) observer report notes: “The economy has bounced back.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

INTERNATIONAL accountancy firms will be closely monitoring next week’s World Trade Organisation (WTO) summit in Hong Kong for signs that the WTO’s long-running Doha Development Round talks are about to crack open national accounting and auditing markets. Progress in refreshing the WTO General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) has been sluggish since talks began in 2000, one year ahead of the general round, with few trade-offs being offered in bilateral exchanges.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Commission has tasked an expert panel with examining whether the European Union (EU) should have legislation limiting the liability of auditors in the case of another huge accounting scandal, such as with Italy’s Parmalat. British members of this European Forum on Auditors’ Liability will include Eric Anstee, CEO of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales; PwC partner Peter Wyman; and Samantha Barrass, London Investment Banking Association director.…

BY MARK ROWE
WEATHER forecasters have always come in for criticism but the reality is that forecasting has evolved somewhat beyond the reliance of medieval truisms such as rain on St Swithun’s Day meant 40 more days of showers. And not only are today’s forecasts are more reliable than ever, with meteorologists providing long-term predictions of wet weather, heat waves and other extreme events, of incalculable value to energy and water utilities with half an eye on demand, but Britain’s Meteorological (Met) Office has taken its services one step further.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE AMOUNT of municipal waste being handled by British local authorities is projected by the European Environment Agency (EEA) to increase by 30% from 2000 to 2020. This is exceeds the predicted average for the old 15 member EU, which is 20-25%.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
BRITAIN is not normally thought of being subject to landslides and avalanches in the way that Alpine countries are, but the coming of climate change has made these natural disasters a real and potentially very expensive threat to us.…

BY MARK ROWE
WEATHER forecasters have always come in for criticism but the reality is that today’s forecasts are more reliable than ever, and predictions are just as accurate for five days ahead as they were for one day ahead even just a decade ago.…

BY MARK ROWE
INTRODUCTION

WEATHER forecasting has evolved somewhat beyond the reliance of medieval truisms such as rain on St Swithin’s Day meant 40 more days of showers. But better weather forecasts are only any use if we are able to respond to such information accordingly and effectively.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
SCOTS may drink hard, smoke, and eat deep-fried pizzas with battered Mars bars, but obvious environmental factors do not explain why they are so prone to heart disease says a University of Edinburgh study, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
SCOTS may drink hard, smoke, and eat deep-fried pizzas with battered Mars bars, but obvious environmental factors do not explain why they are so prone to heart disease says a University of Edinburgh study, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
CHINA’S presence at the meeting of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in Paris in February was a powerful reminder of how the world’s great economic, trade and regulatory institutions are changing, with consequences that few people probably fully grasp today.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Parliament looks unlikely to heed the concerns about the erosion of client confidentiality by European Union (EU) money laundering legislation, with its key civil liberties committee strengthening lawyers’ duties to inform the authorities about suspicious dealings.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Investment Bank (EIB) is planning to make large low interest loans to two British utilities, to fund major capital works schemes. In Northern Ireland, the publicly-owned European Union (EU) bank wants to lend the province’s Water Service up to GBPounds 88 million to help improve the quality, quantity and security of its treated water supplies to 781,000 customers, ensuring compliance with the EU drinking water directive.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Parliament and the European Union (EU) Council of Ministers have compromised on the final shape of a directive reducing sulphur content in marine fuels. The result is legislation that permits higher sulphur usage than the parliament wanted, cutting its marine fuels content to 1.5% by 2007, for all vessels in the Baltic, the North Sea, and the English Channel, and passenger ships in all EU seas and oceans.…

BY LUCY JONES, in Dallas, Texas

THERE is another side to the loss of life and devastation wreaked in the USA by hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Wilma and Dennis last year, a market reaction that has brought unsought benefits to the US paint and coatings industry.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

INTERNATIONAL accountancy firms will be closely monitoring next week’s World Trade Organisation (WTO) summit in Hong Kong for signs that the WTO’s long-running Doha Development Round talks are about to crack open national accounting and auditing markets. Progress in refreshing the WTO General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) has been sluggish since talks began in 2000, one year ahead of the general round, with few trade-offs being offered in bilateral exchanges.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

BRITAIN has been given a generally positive report on its environmental performance by a detailed and long-term European Environment Agency (EEA) report. Overall, the EEA said that the UK was "fortunate to have implemented a series of structural economic changes in the recent past that have brought environmental improvements".…

IRELAND’S Celtic Tiger economy may have lost a little of its bounce recently, with double-digit annual growth figures no longer predicted. However, the beast is still in fine fettle, as a recent Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) observer report notes: "The economy has bounced back.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
NATIONAL governments are often jealous of attempts by the European Union (EU) to increase its power into policy areas that they consider none of its business. Defence and foreign affairs are obvious examples, but health is another. EU member states have long resisted Brussels’ calls for influence over their health policies, but their resolve has weakened of late.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
FEW whistle-blowers have hit the headlines as much as accountant Marta Andreasen who was suspended by the European Commission in 2002 after disclosing serious weaknesses in its bookkeeping system and has now just been formally sacked.

Of all those who have taken the brave and often lonely path of public disclosure, Ms Andreasen, as the Commission’s former chief accounting officer, is by far the most senior.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
CHRIS Dickson, the Executive counsel of the Accountant’s Joint Disciplinary Scheme, spoke powerfully in defence of the European Commission’s sacked chief accountant Marta Andreasen at her disciplinary hearing in Brussels last month, Accountancy Age can reveal.

He represented her pro bono publico, appealing for her reinstatement in front of the entire outgoing Commission, a call that fell on deaf ears, with her former employers later ordering her dismissal.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
COMPANIES whose employees endure long stressful commutes to work are at a greater risk of losing their workers due to heart attacks according to German research published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The study said people are three times more likely to suffer a heart attack within an hour of driving a car or bicycle in a traffic jam than if they would be in activities away from traffic.…

BY MARK ROWE
AT first sight they would appear to be uneasy bedfellows. On the one hand, English Heritage, the British government’s advisory body with responsibility for the care and maintenance of the country’s historic environment; on the other, the Marxist-led government of the Indian state of West Bengal.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE LEGAL web being cast by the European Union (EU) in the fight against money laundering is being tightened still further. A third directive has now been proposed by the European Commission that, among other things, will broaden the definition of money laundering to include not only the concealment or disguise of the proceeds of serious crimes but also the financing of terrorism with either criminal or legally acquired money.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
The fact that some member states have now missed the deadline for implementation coupled with variation in the measures passed means that there will be “an imbalance of obligations on lawyers across the EU” said the American Bar Association’s Section on Business Law (SBL).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EVERYONE knows commercial fraud costs business millions and millions of dollars and euros, but no one really knows how much. The United Nations is going to investigate, following a successful international seminar staged in Vienna. Keith Nuthall reports.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE BIRD flu outbreak that has paralysed global poultry markets could spark a related deadly human influenza pandemic, for which preparations must be laid, a World Health Organisation (WHO) summit has concluded. “We have seen how many countries were preparing for terrorism and bioterrorism and we wish to point out that Mother Nature is the biggest bioterrorism of all,” said participant Dr Angus Nicoll, director of England & Wales’ Public Health Laboratory Service’s communicable disease surveillance centre.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE BIRD flu outbreak that has paralysed global poultry markets could spark a related deadly human influenza pandemic, for which preparations must be laid, a World Health Organisation summit has concluded. “We have seen how many countries were preparing for terrorism and bioterrorism and we wish to point out that Mother Nature is the biggest bioterrorism of all,” said participant Dr Angus Nicoll, director of England & Wales’ Public Health Laboratory Service’s communicable disease surveillance centre.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SCIENTISTS have for the first time scientifically confirmed that eating a diet rich in red meat causes gout. According to a study published in the USA’s New England Journal of Medicine, gout is 41 per cent more likely to be suffered by consumers with the highest consumption of beef, pork and lamb, compared with those with the lowest consumption.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE ASSOCIATION of British Insurers (ABI) is pressing the UK Government to maintain its raised level of spending on flood defences, as it works towards its next public spending round announcement in the summer. Following the spate of disastrous floods in 2000, Whitehall in 2002 increased its annual spending on the problem by Pounds 150 million.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EURATOM has released its 2002 report on inquiries carried out by its European Commission officials tasked with checking the safety and security of nuclear installations across the European Union (EU); although the paper’s conclusions was generally satisfactory, it notes a number of problems detected that required resolution.…

BY PHILIP FINE

A LOW-COST American air carrier has just set up a temporary retail shop in Boston to showcase its own wares that has been designed and furnished to look like one of its aeroplane cabins. Song, the low-fare unit run by Delta Air Lines, has opened the shop on a trial basis for two months.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
GENETICALLY modified sugar beet is between 15 and 50 per cent more environment-friendly than conventional beet, according to a University of Reading, England, study. It says that herbicide-resistant GM beet requires less weed killer and pesticide treatment, cutting tractor fuel used as a spin-off, reducing the crop’s impact on global warming.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
GENETICALLY modified sugar beet is between 15 and 50 per cent more environment-friendly than conventional beet, according to a University of Reading, England, study. It says that herbicide-resistant GM beet requires less weed killer and pesticide treatment, cutting tractor fuel used as a spin-off, reducing the crop’s impact on global warming.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE BEST place to break the law is where the closest policeman is 100’s of miles away. And where might that criminal utopia be? Siberia, the Sahara, the Amazon? No, it’s the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, on the developed world’s doorstep, where fishing crime is becoming a real problem.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A PLANNED reform of the European Union’s (EU) Euro 12.5 million-per-year hop subsidy regime could push hop producers towards promoting speciality varieties, of interest to brewers seeking an edge in flavour and bitterness, a National Hop Association of England spokesman has said.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN Space Agency (ESA) pilot is combining wireless satellite broadband services with terrestrial local area networks (LANs) to bring high speed Internet access to rural areas in Britain. Working with the UK’s Avanti Communications, France’s Eutelsat and Rural Solutions – a British rural development group – the ‘Broadband Access for Rural Regeneration with DVB-RCS’ (BARRD) trial is about to begin.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has announced the 2003 funding from its LIFE-Environment scheme, spending Euro 69 million across Europe, with money especially supporting integrated product production and novel waste management initiatives.

In the UK, Brussels has chosen projects that include a system for the recovery and recycling of X-Ray and other PET based films by JBR Recovery, of West Bromwich (Euro 1.7 million grant), a scheme for the bioabsorption of metals from abandoned mines by the University of Wales’ Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences (Euro 667,000), and Wednesbury’s G & P Batteries’ automated battery breaking system helping end of life battery management (Euro 436,000).…

BY PHILIP FINE

A UNIVERSITY of Warwick team trialling scented plastic mousetraps have found that mice are more readily lured to their doom with chocolate, than devices laced with the scent of vanilla or cheese. Now, Sorex, a Cheshire, England, pest control company, says it will be marketing a new mousetrap, made out of plastic and infused with chocolate essence, bringing a new meaning to the phrase "death by chocolate."…

BY ALAN OSBORN
BRITAIN is one of a number of EU countries being threatened by the European Commission with actions in the European Court of Justice (ECJ) for non-compliance with EU waste treatment and water laws. The potential legal action over waste management arises from a ruling by the ECJ in 2002 when the UK was condemned for failing to adopt waste management plans that conformed to the EU’s framework waste, hazardous waste and packaging waste directives.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
ITALY and Spain are living outside their means when it comes to fresh water abstraction, according to a new water report from the European Environment Agency (EEA). It brands these large European Union countries as being “water stressed,” exploiting more than 20 per cent of their annual fresh water supplies.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EVERY year it seems, the international community has a pet topic in which it is fashionable to promote good behaviour, and this year the favoured cause seems to be water conservation. The World Bank, the UN Environment Programme and others have all produced weighty tomes on the need to conserve drinking water stocks.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
FORGET all those stories you used to hear about weak regulation and cosy financial set-ups in Britain’s offshore dependencies such as the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and the crown colony of Gibraltar. They may once have been good places to launder money but not any more they aren’t.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
NEUROTICS and introverts often find it harder to quit smoking than extroverted happy people, according to research from the University of Warwick, England. It suggests that improving the social skills of these smokers may be more effective as an anti-smoking aid than a nicotine patch.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
NEUROTICS and introverts often find it harder to quit smoking than extroverted happy people, according to research from the University of Warwick, England. It suggests that improving the social skills of these smokers may be more effective as an anti-smoking aid than a nicotine patch.…

BY JONATHAN THOMSON, in Newcastle, England, MATTHEW BRACE, in Brisbane and RICHARD HURST, in Johannesburg
ASK a human to find a needle in a haystack and they would probably spend five minutes at the most sifting through the stalks, then get bored and walk away.…

BY DEIRDRE MASON
TECHNOLOGY may have produced many different ways of checking underground networks of pipes and sewers by remote control, but one problem remains the same: secure access. Even the smallest aperture can invite vandalism or, at its worst, deliberate contamination if it can be forced or broken easily.…

BY MICHAEL FOX
TANKS and vessels are used to store a huge range of hazardous liquids. But if they leak either from a failure of the storage system or during handling, many can pose a major threat to the environment and to groundwater.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has launched an investigation into Britain’s planned Euro 115 million SBS Incubation Fund, which would provide soft loans to businesses intending to develop and operate office premises for small firms. Brussels thinks that the scheme could break European Union state aid rules, because it does not appear to follow existing regional aid rules, notably in terms of imposing caps on the proportion of costs that can be covered.…

BY PHILIP FINE

A TEAM of inventors for American ice-cream maker, Good Humor-Breyers, have won a patent for using proteins from fish that thrive in freezing seas to improve water ices, sorbet, granitas and frozen fruit purées. One of the drawbacks of many ice treats is that most of the colour and flavour can be sucked away in the first few tastes, leaving plain ice behind.…

BY JONATHAN THOMSON, in Newcastle, England, PHILIP FINE and MONICA DOBIE, in Montreal, Canada

SPACE may be Star Trek’s final frontier, but in reality innovations used on rockets and satellites do not stay in orbit; they are often brought back to Earth where they have been used by auto-manufacturers to break their own technological boundaries.…

BY ALAN OSBORN, in London, PHILIP FINE, in Montreal, and MATTHEW BRACE, in Sydney

WITH a new crackdown on counterfeiting being prepared by the

European Commission, some industry watchers will be surprised to hear that soft drinks is one the sectors that Brussels thinks needs close attention.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL AND MARK ROWE
RESEARCHERS at the University of Essex have developed a new method of measuring rainfall accurately, that they claim could help improve the control of floods and reduce the potentially devastating losses that they can cause.…

BY MARK ROWE
THE CURRENT ATM system is flawed in many ways – one key problem being the inherent inefficiencies of an airway system relying on ground-based navigational aids and routes set up around 50 years ago. ANSPs have a responsibility to ensure the environment – in the air and on the ground – is protected as much as possible from wasteful engine emissions of noxious substances.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Investment Bank has drawn up plans to lend Britain’s National Grid Euro 200 million to help it finance its Euro 1 billion multi-annual investment programme to renew, reinforce and extend England and Wales’ transmission system.

Assuming the loan is approved by the bank’s board, the money would help pay for new connections, including distributed and renewable generation, as well as initiatives to reduce power losses.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has taken an important step towards giving EU water legislation more teeth, by moving against Belgium’s system of “tacit approvals” of pollution. Belgian law allows companies to assume that they have a right to pollute if they make an application to regulators and then receive no reply.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is signalling a possible move from its ban on hybrid or inter-specific vines being used in appellation brands by paying for a research project into their quality and disease resistance, “taking into account all the scientific elements in order to provide a basis for decision.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE NATIONAL Coal Mining Museum for England is to receive a share of Euro 69 million in grants made by the European Commission under the EU LIFE Environment scheme. The museum’s INWATCO project has been selected for funding; it aims to demonstrate and evaluate innovative techniques and procedures for the integrated management of groundwater resources in coal mining areas.…

BY JONATHAN THOMSON
SMALL shops in Ireland are losing Euros 450 (Pounds 300) worth of shopping baskets every month on average, following the introduction of a Euro 15 cent (10p) environmental levy on plastic carrier bags, according to an Irish small retailers group.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
THE AVERAGE consumer that tucks into a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia or Chunky Monkey has no idea that this supposedly quaint, hippy-dippy company that started out of an old garage in the beautiful landscape of America’s Vermont Green Mountains, is really owned by the nemesis of such small companies – a faceless multinational – in this case, Unilever.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
THE AVERAGE consumer that tucks into a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia or Chunky Monkey has no idea that this supposedly quaint, hippy-dippy company that started out of an old garage in the beautiful landscape of America’s Vermont Green Mountains, is really owned by the nemesis of such small companies – a faceless multinational – in this case, Unilever.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A BID by Northumbrian Water to comply with the European Union’s revised drinking water and urban wastewater treatment directives could net the utility up to Pounds 100 million in loans from the European Investment Bank. Its officials are considering funding a number of water supply and wastewater schemes throughout Northumbrian’s northern England service area.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
NOT many items of legislation from Brussels have provoked quite such anger among farmers over the years as the nitrates directive, which seeks to protect water from nitrate pollution caused by the application of organic and inorganic fertilisers to agricultural land.…

BY JONATHAN THOMSON, in Newcastle, England
FORD UK is backtracking on an earlier promise to fit digital radios to all its cars by 2004.

When contacted by just-auto.com, a spokeswoman for the company denied reports that the company had ever made a commitment to fit digital radios.…

BY MATTHEW BRACE
SYDNEY is the “defamation capital of the English-speaking world” according to a British legal expert working in Australia’s largest city. Based on his research, figures show that one writ is served for every 79,000 people in the state of New South Wales; a higher rate than England, (one writ per 121,000 people), and much higher than the United States, where the proportion us one writ per 2.3 million people.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
SIGNIFICANT changes in the international art market, with possibly adverse consequences for European museums, galleries and other art buyers, could follow from a case being brought by the European Commission against the world’s two leading fine art auction houses, Christie’s International plc in London and Sotheby’s Holdings, Inc of New York.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
ENGLISH lawyers would firmly oppose the establishment of EU legislation harmonising European contract law practice, claims the European Commission.

Releasing the results of wide-ranging consultation on four options for potential reform, Brussels said that the keenest opposition to EU legislation came from English lawyers, who “fear that the global significance of English common law would suffer.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BACK in the last century, it was easy to find economists who liked a little corruption, saying it oiled the wheels of government and commerce. Today, this complacency has gone, with most development specialists saying bribes weaken governments and shrink private investment.…

BY PHILIP FINE

GUINNESS UDV is facing federal regulatory scrutiny in the United States after a competitor complained that its Smirnoff Ice TM malt based product misleads consumers, because in the US, it does not contain vodka; the New York State advertising industry’s self-regulatory apparatus has now referred the matter to the US Federal Trade Commission and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms after Guinness refused to take part in the review.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has announced that it will make Euro 11 million, (Pounds 6.73 million), available for five regional programmes of innovative actions in Britain, funds that can be tapped by local authorities. The benefiting regions are the east Midlands (Euro 2.33 million), eastern England (Euro 2.27 million), north-east England (Euro 1.1 million), Wales, (2.83 million) and Yorkshire & Humberside, (Euro 2.75 million).…

Keith Nuthall
A 2-day conference ending yesterday (Wednesday) in London has posed

questions which should be a matter of top priority to any financial

services company today: how well did the overall financial system and

individual organisations cope with the disaster of September 11th and what

lessons can we draw about dealing with similar outrages in the future ?…

BY MONICA DOBIE
WHAT is the region with the highest port consumption in the world? A fair assumption would be Portugal or maybe England, but actually, it is the French-speaking Canadian province of Quebec.

Port sales in the Canadian province have exploded from 276,000 750 ml bottles in 1995, to an estimated 3 million this year.…

BY MONICA DOBIE, in Montreal
ONTARIO-based, Sleeman Breweries has announced that it has reached an agreement with H.P. Bulmer Ltd. of Hereford, England, to handle sales and marketing for its Strongbow premium packaged and draught ciders in Canada.

Bulmer cider became available in liquor stores in Ontario, B.C…

BY KEITH NUTHALL AND ALAN OSBORN
WATER pricing reform is on its way in the European Union. The water framework directive passed last year imposes a commitment on Member States by the year 2010 to ensure that their pricing policies “provide adequate incentives for users to use water resources efficiently.”…

BY ALAN OSBORN
BRITAIN is being threatened with fresh legal action over its failure to comply with a European Court of Justice ruling concerning ground waters and surface freshwaters affected by nitrate pollution. These proceedings could result in London being given massive recurring fines of up to Euro 100,000 a day, until it obeys the ECJ.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE RULES and procedures for registering museum names on the Internet under the “dot museum” domain have become clearer following an agreement between ICANN, the internet supervisory body, and MuseDoma, (the Museum Domain Management Association).

MuseDoma has been founded and is financed by the Paris-based International Council of Museums and the J.Paul…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has lifted the foot and mouth disease inspired ban on exports of pigmeat from parts of the UK, namely most of Scotland, bar Dumfries and Galloway, eastern England, and parts of north Wales. The ban for Northern Ireland was lifted in June.…

BY MONICA DOBIE, in Montreal
CANADIAN soft drinks giant the Cott Corporation has announced that it will invest US$29.5 million in cash, to form a new business venture with Polar Corp., an independent beverage supplier from Worcester, Massachusetts, in the USA.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has approved the spending of Euro 119.2 million, (Pounds 74.71 million), of EU grants on rural development programmes in England from 2001 to 2006. Money is to be funnelled from the EU’s Leader Plus initiative via 23 Local Action Groups, which are to be selected by the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.…

KEITH NUTHALL
IN the world’s continually growing urban communities, household consumption of water accounts for the bulk of demand, and as such, has to be the target of conservation strategies, for them to maximise their effectiveness.

However, a rather gloomy report from the European Environment Agency has claimed that high prices and lack of information are preventing many households from using devices that can substantially cut their water consumption.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE RIGHTS of cosmetic and perfume retailers to sell re-exported products cheaply on the grey parallel market – against the wish of a manufacturer – are likely to be strengthened by an oncoming European Court of Justice ruling.…

BY KATE REW
BOSTON port has hit back strongly against figures which apparently confirm that since 1998, it has lagged behind Portland, Maine, as New England’s number one port. In the last fiscal year, Portland handled 23.5 million tonnes of cargo and has become the number one port by volume in New England, with Boston trailing at 13.3 million.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE NEW Electricity Trading Arrangements (NETA) introduced in the UK on 27

March have begun smoothly, in spite of warnings earlier in the year from

electricity companies that insufficient testing of the system had taken

place and that market conditions were not favourable.…

Keith Nuthall
FRAUD management departments can yield a gold-mine of valuable commercial data, a conference on IT crime has been told, and if marketing and product development managers are made aware of this fact, they might be prepared to boost crime prevention budgets that are often strapped for cash.…