Search Results for: International business

BY MATTHEW BRACE, in Brisbane, EDWARD PETERS, in Hong Kong, RICHARD HURST, in Johannesburg, MARK ROWE, in London, SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKA, in Columbo and MONICA DOBIE, in Montreal.
FRAUD is fraud, jurists might say. And although jurisprudence generally has a universal flavour and there are frauds that are committed the world over, it would be a travesty of the truth to say that crimes involving deception uniform by nature.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
Europe’s ambitious Galileo programme to establish a global satellite navigation system is clearly a project that likes to keep its supporters in a state of fairly constant nervous tension. At a cost of 3.2 billion euros, Galileo was never a sure-fire runner to begin with.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has approved plans to lend US$3 million to the Armenian Copper Programme to help it increase its production of copper, build up reserves of raw materials and spend more on environmental-protection.…

BY PHILIP FINE

PAY telephones are proving to be unprofitable for US companies and are being removed at a dramatic rate from the country’s malls, restaurants and street corners. The number has dwindled from a high of 2.7 million in the mid-1990s to about 1.9 million, today, according to the American Public Communications Council.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN INTERNATIONAL agreement has been signed to develop a new combination anti-malaria drug. Called pyronaridine-artesunate, it will be jointly developed by the Tropical Diseases Research Programme, the Medicines for Malaria Venture and South Korea’s Shin Poong Pharmaceuticals. It could be registered by early 2006.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
IT’S now official. Following agreement this week by its environment ministers, the European Union (EU) is to set up a market to trade pollution permits for carbon dioxide (CO2), the main so-called greenhouse gas, starting in 2005.

The European Commission is delighted, business is pleased, and while not all environmentalists are overjoyed, the balance of opinion among them is clearly favourable.…

KEITH NUTHALL
SWITZERLAND has donated US$2.5 million to a new international BioTrade Facilitation Programme which will fund the development of export industries in poor countries based on under-exploited natural resources, notably fibre plants. The scheme will be run by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and its International Trade Centre joint venture with the World Trade Organisation.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A GROUND-BREAKING scheme to promote renewable energy in rural Wales has received a European award, in a competition designed to promote good practice and push the European Union towards meeting its target of generating 12 per cent of its energy from renewable sources by 2010.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union Council of Ministers has approved the writing into European law of the international Kimberly Process on certifying the origin of diamonds. Its aim is to prevent the sale of so-called blood diamonds, which are tainted by being trafficked from mines in African civil war areas.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission has ordered Italy to scrap a tax break regime for insurance and other financial companies wanting to trade in eastern Europe, claiming that it breaks EU state aid rules. It wants the Italian government to close its Trieste Financial Services and Insurance Centre; this special registration system was one of a number of similar arrangements initially approved by the Commission in 1995, which saw them as offering a way to enhance the development of financial markets in east European countries and the former Soviet Union.…