Search Results for: America

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE UNITED States and the European Union (EU) have agreed to set up joint-border enforcement cooperation to detect counterfeit goods, including clothing, and to create teams of diplomats in third country embassies tasked with sharing data and intelligence on counterfeiting.…

BY PAUL COCHRANE, in Damascus

THE SOFT drinks market in Syria is undergoing unprecedented growth, expected to surge 17%-18% this year over last year’s 12% growth, and Pepsi’s share of the market growing after just under a year of operations in the country.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE LATEST annual report from European Union (EU) anti-fraud unit OLAF has revealed how an accounts department staff member of a European Commission delegation to Africa diverted Euro 300,000 of EU money to his own bank account. The official, who had been recruited locally, "systematically falsified the signatures of duly authorised delegation staff on several cheques, payment orders and other accounting documents," noted OLAF, which has kept the country of operation under wraps.…

BY MONICA DOBIE, in Ottawa

SCIENTISTS have gathered in Quebec City, Canada, to discuss ways of fighting plant diseases that threaten to destroy cocoa production. At the Cacao Diseases: Important Threats to Chocolate Production Worldwide symposium members of the American Phytopathological Society, Canadian Phytopathological Society, and the Mycological Society of America listened to experts warn of the grave threat to cocoa plants posed by three deadly diseases: black pod, frosty pod, and witches’ broom.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

PROBABLY most specialists engaged in the fight against money laundering would agree that the US State Department’s International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) – and in particular the country-by-country analysis in the money laundering volume – is the single most comprehensive and useful document on the subject published annually anywhere in the world.…

BY PAUL COCHRANE, in Amman

JORDAN is undertaking a root and branch reform of its higher education sector to better match the needs of its economy and regulate the burgeoning private sector.

With no statistics on the number of students enrolled in specific subjects, the country’s ministry of higher education is working with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on a study to better coordinate the needs of the market and graduating students.…

BY PAUL COCHRANE, in Damascus

FOLLOWING a sizeable reduction in import duties last year, Syria’s fledgling car market has grown by up to 60% in under a year.

A mere decade ago Syria’s roads were full of ageing cars, such as 1950s and 1960s Chevrolets, Dodges and Plymouths that were either lovingly maintained or had had one paint job too many.…

STORIES BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE INTERNATIONAL Labour Organisation (ILO) has warned of both an increase in violence at work worldwide and of an increasing variety of threats, which are increasingly psychological rather than purely physical. In its latest global study of workplace violence, ILO says: "Bullying, harassment, mobbing and allied behaviours can be just as damaging as outright physical violence.…

BY MONICA DOBIE

THE DEADLY viral hemorrhagic septicaemia virus (VHSV), which causes fatal anaemia and haemorrhaging in many fish species, has been discovered for the first time in norther-eastern north America, in upstate New York, by Cornell University researchers.
In May 2006, scientists isolated the virus in round gobies that died in a massive fish kill in the southern St Lawrence River and in Irondequoit Bay, on the southern shore of Lake Ontario near Rochester, New York.…

BY LIZ HALL, in Alicante

IMPROVEMENTS in Portugal’s ability to detect crime detection, combined with increased vulnerability within the tourist property development arena, mean we could see another Operation White Whale in the next few years, its tip emerging in Portugal rather than Spain, experts warn.…