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RECENT technical advances and headline projects show how companies with market leadership in high voltage direct current (HVDC) and Ultra HVDC (UHVDC) are pushing the envelope of what these technologies can do.

Since Sweden’s ASEA (now part of Swiss multinational ABB) installed the world’s first commercial HVDC link, under the Baltic Sea to the Swedish island of Gotland in 1954, it has become the technology of choice for transmitting current over very long distances on land or subsea.…

The vice-chancellor of Cameroon’s English-speaking University of Buea (UB) has declared she is determined to soothe tensions on her campus which have led to a series of violent strikes by students. Buea is one of two public English-speaking universities in majority-Francophone Cameroon.…

China in April successfully conducted a maiden test flight of the first aviation biofuel entirely processed on its shores, joining the US, Finland and France as only the fourth country in the world to independently research and develop a bio-jet fuel production technology.…

REVISED European Union (EU) nuclear safety rules proposed by the European Commission, the EU’s executive body, may undermine the authority of national safety regulators and complicate the work of nuclear operators, according to Foratom, the organisation representing the interests of the European nuclear industry.…

A PUSH by the G8 group of the world’s seven most industrialised nations plus Russia to improve extractive industry transparency and openness can help industrial minerals companies manage the payments they make in developing counties, as they will only have to follow one set of rules, according to Rio Tinto chief executive Sam Walsh.…

The concept of closed loop supply chains sounds a laudable, if possibly Utopian ideal: a virtuous circle of production from cradle to grave and back to cradle again. However, as Ulf Eriksson, product manager for textiles and shoes at the Sweden-government-owned Ecolabelling Sweden (or Svanen – Swedish for swan), pointed out: “A closed loop is a challenge for the garment industry because this is a fashion business.…

The challenges of working out whether textiles are sourced, produced or manufactured ethically are magnified by the plethora of eco-labelling schemes that apply to the industry. According to the Vancouver, Canada-based Ecolabel Index (www.ecolabelindex.com) there are 436 ecolabels worldwide, of which at least 24 cover textiles, clothes, other apparel and garments (while several others potentially overlap into the industry).…

THE LEADERS of eight of the world’s leading economies have pledged to crack down on misuse of companies and legal arrangements to evade tax and launder money.

It raises the prospect of national registries of beneficial ownership for companies and trusts in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, USA, and in the UK, which had already announced plans to force registration of beneficial ownership at Britain’s Companies House registry.…

BIOMETRICS technologies producing voice and phone ‘fingerprints’ to prevent, detect and prosecute fraud and other crimes are evolving rapidly in an arms race between fraudsters, law enforcement, private companies and private sector anti-fraud companies.

For forensics, many jurisdictions admit voice biometrics in evidence.…

PORTUGAL’S Faro Algarve Airport may not be the first airport that leaps to mind when considering where to test-run the latest in air travel security equipment, but the airport is trialling a cutting-edge airport security system.

Located in the country’s southern Algarve region, it is a small airport with seasonal peaks and troughs of traffic that processed 5,672,377 passengers last year (2012) – the majority of whom arrived on budget carriers between June and September.…