Search Results for: America

BY PAUL COCHRANE, in Damascus and Amman

JORDAN and Syria both have large tobacco markets, with a third of Jordan’s population, and around 60% of Syria’s male population, being smokers. Both markets are growing, spurred on by large young populations and the cultural prevalence of smoking cigarettes and nargileh (water pipes), but not all is rosy in the sector.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission has already started considering the potential shape of the eighth framework programme on research (which would start in 2014), even as the final details of its seventh predecessor are still being thrashed out.

Brussels’ directorate general (DG) for research commissioned a study, and it has recommended that the next big EU research programme look well beyond the shores of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.…

BY LIZ HALL

SIX years ago, government representatives from nine South American countries gathered in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, to sign a document of great importance to those concerned with fighting money-laundering (ML) and terrorism financing (TF).

On December 8, 2000, representatives of the governments of the following countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay, signed the Founding Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) formally establishing GAFISUD, a regional body modelled on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A MEMORANDUM of understanding has been signed by the USA and the Philippines on ‘stopping illegal transhipments of textile and apparel’ through the south east Asian country to America. The agreement commits both parties to customs cooperation, actively identifying the true manufacturers of shipments, and joint verification visits.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

The EU has demanded that all long grain rice from America must be tested and found to be free of GM before being allowed entry, the European Commission announced Wednesday. The notice was served following disclosure that small amounts of an unauthorised type of genetically engineered long grain rice had found its way into the feed and food chain in the US.…

BY MONICA DOBIE, in Las Vegas

LOCAL authorities in the UK are dipping their toes into the waters of improved environmental health in pubs and restaurants by publicising results of inspections in local papers. And for inspiration on tactics, they could do no better than look at the United States, where EHOs have named and shamed dirty restaurateurs for decades.…

BY KEITH NOYAHR, in Colombo

THE RESUMPTION of war in Sri Lanka is bad news. Period. But, ironically, there have been some benefits. One of these is a concentrating of the mind amongst law enforcement officials within Sri Lanka and their counterparts abroad into tracking down and stopping both terrorist financing and money laundering.…

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 ALAN OSBORN

CURRENT European Union (EU) president Finland will this year urge fellow member states to raise the political profile of alcohol across Europe as a threat to public health, bringing in specific measures to curb abuses. Its views are particularly important this year, because the European Commission is buffing up just such a plan for release in September or October, and the Finns will be pushing or agreement at the EU Council of Ministers in December.…

BY TIMON MOLLOY and KEITH NUTHALL

SUSPECTED fraud notifications to OLAF, the European Union’s (EU) anti fraud office rose 20% in 2005, according to its activity report for the period July 2004 to December 2005, which was published in July. The agency received 857 new pieces of information, of which 560 were assessed as potential opening leads.…