Search Results for: Climate change

BY ALAN OSBORN

A research study has suggested that new uses might be found for marketed drugs based on unwanted side effects. A striking example is the drug Viagra which was initially developed to treat angina but where its side effects of prolonged penile erection led to a change in therapeutic area.…

BY CLEMENCE MANYUKWE

ZIMBABWE tobacco farmer Kobus Joubert looks to the heavens gloomily as he prepares to sleep by the roadside next to his Chegutu farm. Those who know him say they have only seen that look when there is an impending drought.…

BY JULIAN RYALL, JAMES BURNS, RAGHAVENDRA VERMA and PHILIPPA JONES

"IT is better to be beautiful than to be good," wrote Oscar Wilde in ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’. Many cosmetics and personal care companies worldwide may still believe this statement to be true, but being, or at least claiming to be, "good" has become an essential part of the sector’s public image.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A UN Development Programme study comparing Bhutanese with Laotian textile production has highlighted shortcomings in the Bhutan sector, showing how focused international development assistance can make permanent improvements. Bhutan textiles could potentially be of high quality and command international sales, said the report, but their production is hamstrung by potentially resolvable shortcomings: inflating Bhutanese scarves prices 40% above those in Laos.…

BY CLEMENCE MANYUKWE

"IMAGINE a country with no Coca Cola," a headline in Zimbabwe’s weekly independent newspaper the Financial Gazette asked its readers recently.

The article quoted from the Bible, Proverbs chapter 31 verse 7 that reads: "Let him drink and forget his poverty and remember his misery no more", aptly summing up the drinking patterns in a nation where poverty is widespread due to a current world record inflation of 11.7 million % (and rising).…

BY ALAN OSBORN

SUSTAINABILITY has moved firmly to the top of the corporate agenda in the oils and fats sector following Unilever’s announcement in May that it intended to have all of its palm oil certified sustainable by 2015. By any measure this would be a bold pledge but coming from the world’s largest consumer of palm oil (Unilever takes 4% of total global production to make its food and cosmetic products) it serves additionally to raise the bar for others.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

IT would seem even the worst man-made ecological disasters can be reversed: the northern Aral Sea – once a shallow saline remnant of its former self, surrounded by dust bowls – is now growing again, boosting fish production and improving the weather.…

By Eric Lyman in Rome

There are problems in the world that cannot be confronted with any success by a single state, no matter how powerful. Big environmental issues and world hunger and poverty immediately come to mind, along with many regional peacekeeping needs and most economic and trade-related problems.

Enter multilateralism, the consensus-driven process that democratically pulls countries together for collective problem solving, usually under the auspices of an umbrella organisation such as the United Nations or the World Trade Organisation.

Multilateralism has been hailed as the natural evolution from the bipolar world order that marked the period after World War II – with influence split between the camps of US and the Soviet Union – and the unipolar order based on the power and influence of the US since the end of the Cold War.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A EUROPEAN Union (EU) regulation laying down clear procedures for pharmaceutical manufacturers needing to vary the terms of their market approvals for particular medicines has been proposed by the European Commission.

The legislation would build upon the existing EU market approval regulations EC/1084/2003 and EC/1085/2003.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

SELLERS of audio books toasting European Commission proposals that they be subject to reduced rate VAT must wait until January 2011 to cut their prices. That is the date the proposed change in European Union (EU) VAT directive covering audio books would come into force, and it would still need writing into national statute books.…