Search Results for: Bangladesh

BY KEITH NUTHALL
UNESCO, the UN’s scientific and cultural organisation, has launched a filter removing arsenic from water and which could, it claims, save tens of millions of lives from a pollutant created by many mines. Unveiled at its headquarters in Paris, UNESCO said the filter was “simple and ecologically sound”, using as an absorbent recycled iron oxide coated sand produced as a by-product in groundwater treatment plants “available at no cost almost everywhere”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
UNESCO, the UN’s scientific and cultural organisation, has launched a filter removing arsenic from water and which could save tens of millions of lives. Unveiled at its headquarters in Paris, UNESCO said the filter was “simple and ecologically sound”, using as an absorbent recycled iron oxide coated sand produced as a by-product in groundwater treatment plants “available at no cost almost everywhere”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD’S premier anti-corruption organisation Transparency International, has again hailed northern Europe as the region most free of graft, bribes and kickbacks. Such financial crime is rarest in Iceland, says the 2005 corruption rankings from the German group, with Finland and New Zealand tying at second place, Denmark, fourth, Sweden sixth, and Norway eighth.…

BY KENCHO WANGDI
BANGLADESH’S paint industry claims to be thriving on an upbeat construction and healthy economy, despite the knocks it has suffered because of global liberalisation of the country’s key textile industry this January. Piggy-backing on a real estate boom, the Bangladeshi market for residential paints and wall coverings continues to maintain a relentless upwards march of around 7% a year.…

BY MATTHEW BRACE
FIGHTING money laundering is about getting your hands dirty. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) may pronounce global standards that it would like jurisdictions to follow, but all governments need help, and often regional bodies are better placed to do the detailed work than more remote global organisations.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
CHINA’S competitors in the race to exploit this year’s abolition of clothing and textile import quotas have been holding their own in sales to the European Union (EU), new trade figures show. Released by the European Commission, the statistics illustrate how China has – as expected – grown EU exports sharply: from January to May, it sold Euro 7.3 billion’s worth of clothing and textile products, up from Euro 5.4 billion the previous year.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
GLOBAL tea production hit a new record high in 2004, growing 2% to reach an estimated 3.2 million tonnes, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation has reported. The expansion was mainly due to increases in Turkey, China, Kenya, Malawi, Sri Lanka and Indonesia, offsetting declines in other major producing countries, notably India and Bangladesh.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BANGLADESH’S first quarterly results following the abolition of textile trade quotas worldwide have been buoyed by the success of its knitwear industry in exporting to the European Union (EU). Prof Mustafizur Rahman, research director of the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) has been quoted in Dhaka’s press saying that the knitwear sector had actually enabled the country to grow its garment exports from January to March by 9.5% compared with the same period in 2004.…

BY KENCHO WANGDI
“NO smoking on the dance floor guys, please,” the DJ screams into the microphone of a nightclub in Thimphu, the capital of the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan.

But the younger members the country’s English speaking elite continue to writhe on the dance floor, fingers gripping half-smoked cigarettes, clouds of smoke wafting through the neon light, even though since March 1 public smoking has been illegal.…

BY KENCHO WANGDI
THE TINY Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan has never been if great – if any – interest to the tobacco industry, until this January 1, when it became the first country in the world to ban domestic tobacco sales.…