Search Results for: Climate change

The global confectionery and sweet bakery sectors have been hit hard by California’s worst ever drought, lasting since 2011, which has devastated its critically important production of the key ingredient almonds. The result has been scarcity and rising prices for this nut, worldwide
Sylvia Kälin, head of corporate communications for Lindt & Sprüngli, in Switzerland, said the shortage has helped increase the price of chocolates that include almonds, at a time when cocoa prices are also rising: “Even if we always attempt to counter— at least partially— these challenges with ongoing increases in efficiency and volume, this challenging situation may possibly result in further price increases on the side of the chocolate industry,” she told Confectionery Production.…

Best-selling Australian author and accounting historian Jane Gleeson-White sees accountants as potential revolutionaries with the power to save the planet. Now, there’s a thought.
They need to be creative, however. And while such tactics are generally associated with the mafia and corporate crooks, laundering the proceeds of drug cartels or squirrelling profits away from the view of the taxman, Gleeson-White, 54, challenges this perception.…

AN AGREEMENT on streamlining reviews in Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand of offers or listings of equity or plain debt securities has been secured. It has been written into a memorandum of understanding designed to promote common prospectuses in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).…

A PLANNED free trade agreement (FTA) between Turkey and Pakistan will be a ‘win-win’ situation overall, according to a senior Turkish government official involved in the negotiations. When asked about the current status of the deal, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told WTiN.com:…

The UK may still be a world-beating performer for developing offshore wind energy, but more still can be done onshore, as demonstrated by China’s wind-power growth, the Global Wind Energy Council’s (GWEC’s) secretary general Steve Sawyer has argued. Indeed, unveiling GWEC’s, Global Wind Report: Annual Market Update 2014, in a webinar April 1 from Istanbul, Sawyer noted that the UK at 813 megawatts (MW) of installed capacity produces more offshore wind energy than the rest of the world combined, with Denmark “a distant second”.…

A flexible charging system using off peak capacity and battery storage could prevent grid overload and disruptions to power supply as the electric vehicle (EV) market grows, especially in the UK, Europe’s electricity industry association Eurelectric argues.
In a new report, ‘Smart Charging: Steering the charge, driving the change’, it warns that even at low market shares, EVs could easily congest local transformers and disrupt voltage levels.…

EUROPEAN Union (EU) legislators are moving towards agreement on EU legislation promoting biofuels, with the European Parliament and the EU Council of Ministers agreeing to reduce incentives for the use and manufacture of first generation products. A tentative political agreement, that now has the support of the European Parliament’s environment committee, will cap at 7% by 2020 the amount of transport energy consumption from biofuels made from crops grown on agricultural land.…

Colombia’s bio-based oils and fats sector is seeing industry profits siphoned off by criminal networks thanks to a contraband smuggling boom linked to illegal armed groups, organised crime and money laundering.
Contraband smuggling in Colombia has evolved into a sophisticated criminal business worth USD6 billion a year, according to the estimates of the Colombian National Tax and Customs Directorate (DIAN – Dirección de Impuestos y Aduanas Nacionales), and has become one of the principal threats facing national industries.…

A GROWING number of UK health institutions are using mobile technology to help improve patient care and boost efficiency. UK-based Nervecentre Software Ltd offers a system that uses mobile devices to collect clinical information at the point of care – such as so-called ‘e-observations’ and assessments.…

Despite Paraguay’s past difficulties in effectively fighting money laundering, the country has been introducing new regulations to boost its controls; however their reforms’ implementation have been hampered by lack of political will.
Located between Argentina and Brazil, Paraguay is a key country in the struggle against money laundering and financing of terrorism in South America because its porous border is used by drug cartels to smuggle drugs, among other illicit items, into the two region’s biggest markets for cocaine and marijuana.…