Search Results for: Malaysia

BY MATTHEW BRACE
SINGAPORE’S economy is rejuvenating after the horrors of early 2004 when the threat of terrorism (both internationally and closer to home in South East Asia), and then the SARS virus hit the city state hard, shrinking demand for construction and hence the amount of money to be made by the coatings sector.…

BY MATTHEW BRACE
TASMANIA’S non-ferrous metals industry is enjoying a welcome resurgence with strong production targets for the next five to ten years.

Miners in Australia’s island state are reluctant to call it a “metals rush” but it is the most significant set of resource finds for more than 100 years.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE 2005 Yearbook of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has warned environmental change is spreading diseases beyond their traditional range, while causing pathogens to mutate and become more deadly.

It includes a number of case studies, illustrating one message: “Loss of forests, road and dam building, the spread of cities, the clearing of natural habitats for agriculture, mining and the pollution of coastal waters are promoting conditions under which new and old pathogens can thrive”.…

BY DEIRDRE MASON
THE WORLD is waking up to biofuels, increasingly produced from food crops and their waste by-products, and now one of the growing energy alternatives to conventional fossil fuels. As prices for traditional energy rise year on year, and energy watchers warn of oil production peaking around 2010, governments are looking towards food producers to grow the raw feedstock for the fuel of the twenty-first century.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A BAN on imports into the European Union (EU) on poultry meat or poultry from Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, China, Vietnam, Pakistan and Malaysia has been extended until this September, because of concerns that bird flu is still present in these countries.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE FORMAL decision has been taken by the European Union (EU) Council of Ministers to abolish all remaining textile and clothing import quotas for World Trade Organisation (WTO) member countries from January 1. It means 210 quotas affecting exporters from Argentina, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Peru, Philippines, Taiwan, South Korea and Thailand will go.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
IT could be the most underestimated commercial crime in the world, the illegal trade in wildlife and their products. Some estimates put its value at US$5 billion-a-year, but governments do not really seem to care. Keith Nuthall reports.…

BY MARK ROWE
WHEN anti-money laundering officials draw up their lists of most notorious nations, Burma – or Myanmar by its official name – is routinely identified as one of the murkiest epicentres of money laundering. Ignore the fact that Burma has only been classified as a non-cooperative country or territory (NCCT) by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) anti-money laundering body for just three years.…

BY MONICA DOBIE, ALAN OSBORN and MARK ROWE
SENDING employees abroad or setting up overseas branches always take some preparation and maybe the most important job is taking care of workers’ health needs. Not only must local employment laws be followed, but companies must ensure that they can manage the alien health risks faced abroad.…

BY EDWARD PETERS
THE PAST decade has seen China grasp an increasing share of the world’s cosmetic packaging industry. Low production prices and international manufacturing standards — to say nothing of an increasing appreciation of the beauty business — have all contributed to the People’s Republic upping its packaging profile.…