Search Results for: India

BY DEIRDRE MASON
THE WORLD is waking up to biofuels, increasingly produced from food crops and their waste by-products, and now one of the growing energy alternatives to conventional fossil fuels. As prices for traditional energy rise year on year, and energy watchers warn of oil production peaking around 2010, governments are looking towards food producers to grow the raw feedstock for the fuel of the twenty-first century.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE WORLD Trade Organisation’s (WTO) general council has permanently amended the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement to make permanent a 2003 waiver helping poor countries obtain generic medicines during health emergencies. The TRIPS amendment enables any WTO member country to export generic pharmaceuticals made under a compulsory licence to assist countries lacking their own manufacturing capacity and whose nurses and doctors would otherwise be unable to deal with a serious disease problem.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE SEPTEMBER 11 attacks sparked a tightening of security restrictions around the world and the shipping industry has been a key focus. The latest initiative is the creation of a global system of biometric identifiers for seafarers. Keith Nuthall reports.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

AUTO manufacturing firms will be closely monitoring next week’s World Trade Organisation (WTO) summit in Hong Kong for signs that the WTO’s long-running Doha Development Round talks are about to crack open national automobile markets. Key auto industry countries – the US, the European Union, Canada, Japan, South Korea, India and Brazil – have been making steady progress this year in identifying non-tariff barriers to trade they would like to remove, such as burdensome customs procedures, technical engineering rules and licences.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

ONLY comparatively recently have the world’s anti money laundering agencies come to grips with alternative remittance systems (ARS) and even today the scale of the systems and the degree of infiltration by criminals is still not fully known.…

BY RAGHAVENDRA VERMA, in New Delhi

INDIAN students, desperate to prosper from the country’s booming economy, are resorting to expensive means of cheating to clear competitive examinations senior academics are warning. "The problem is getting serious day-by-day. For a limited number of seats in medical, engineering and management institutions, an increasing number of students, with active support of their parents, are trying to succeed by hook or crook", warns Dr.K.K.Jha,…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Union and Norway have divided up common stocks within the North Sea for 2006, overcoming difficult conservation problems, especially regarding cod. Brussels and Oslo have agreed on a long-term management plan for cod, to come into effect when the stock has returned to safe biological levels.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has proposed that a Euro 3,479 per tonne anti-dumping duty on coumarin imports from China is extended to shipments from India or Thailand to prevent Chinese exporters illegally diverting this additive to avoid the tariff.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A RISK guarantee package helping Indian companies invest overseas has been launched by the World Bank’s Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) and local finance houses. Private cover against currency inconvertibility and transfer restrictions; expropriation; war, terrorism and civil disturbance; and breach of contract, is hard to secure in India.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
GLOBAL tea production in 2003 reached a record high of 3.15 million tonnes, 75,000 tonnes more than in 2002, and although traded tea fell by 2.6% to 1.4 million tonnes, prices remained stable, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).…