Search Results for: China

BY PAUL COCHRANE, in Damascus and Beirut, and HELENA FLUSFELDER, in Jerusalem

INTRODUCTION AND THE GULF

THE DENIM sector in the Middle East is as diverse as it is fragmented, with strong demand in the Gulf and Israel for major brand names and the latest trends, while in the less economically developed parts of the Levant international brands are of less importance than style.…

By Mark Godfrey in Beijing

No country has added nuclear power like energy-hungry China. Neighbouring North Korea had more nuclear power capacity than China in 2000 (as did Taiwan). But by 2010, according to the US government-affiliated Energy Information Administration, China will have bypassed both countries.…

BY MARK GODFREY, in Beijing

THE DAILY deluge of crime reports in China’s press indicates that corruption and fraud are not only still rife in the country they are most acute where government regulatory bodies hand out business licences and approvals to state-owned firms.…

BY DOMINIQUE PATTON, in Beijing

ALTHOUGH Taiwan’s tense relations with China does not help the necessary cooperation with the Chinese mainland that would help bring some of the island’s biggest economic criminals to book, it is nonetheless eager to co-operate with international authorities to fight money laundering.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission is monitoring concerns that Italian mozzarella cheese has been contaminated with dioxins and dioxin-like PCBs, amidst claims that the refuse crisis in Naples’ Campania region generated the responsible pollutants. Brussels was poised to ban the sale of the white melting cheese, but was mollified by a safety recall by Italian health authorities.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

The world can (in italics) move towards a low carbon, greener and more sustainable future by the restructuring of economies and the costs "are affordable" says the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), representing the world’s 30 leading industrialised countries, in its 2008 Environmental Outlook.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

DETAILED guidelines on developing legislation and policing to deter and punish traffickers of counterfeit and pirated goods in free trade zones are anticipated from the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC). This followed the ICC’s Fourth Global Congress on Combating Counterfeiting and Piracy, in Dubai – an emirate hosting such duty-free zones.…

BY MARK ROWE

WHEN the European Union’s (EU) energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs, visited Turkmenistan last autumn it served notice that this central Asian ex-Soviet republic had come in from the cold. Once a pariah on the international stage, because of the activity of its crazed former president Sapamurat Niyazov (NOTE – SPELLING IS CORRECT), Turkmenistan has become something more than a bit player in the international energy sector.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THIS year could well see the end of the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Doha Development Round, the global free trade negotiations staged since 2001 – and the stakes for the telecommunications business are high.

Unlike most economic sectors, telecoms are affected by not just one WTO agreement on removing trade barriers such as red tape and punishing tariffs, but three: the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS); the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) as regards industrial goods; and the WTO Information Technology Agreement.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

EUROPEAN Union (EU) anti-fraud office OLAF, with German and Polish police have broken an international cigarette smuggling ring, arresting 26 people and seizing millions of sticks. The arrests were made in Poland and Germany by the Polish Centralne Biuro ?ledcze…