Search Results for: International business

BY PHILIP FINE

AMERICAN companies that commit accounting fraud are willing to pay millions of dollars in additional income taxes on phoney earnings, according to a University of Michigan Business School study.

The paper examined a sample of firms accused of accounting fraud by the SEC from 1996 to 2002, who had re-filed their accounts after answering such charges, enabling the researchers to compare their fake return with an accurate one.…

BY PHILIP FINE

TEAMS of microbiologists have concluded that it is not just unsafe to swim in sewage infiltrated waters, but that the amount of sickness caused by such pollution is actually far more predictable than previously thought. The findings have prompted them to call for global health-based legislation on the quality of the world’s bathing waters.…

Keith Nuthall
THE INDIAN government is threatening to impose trade penalties on the European Union, because of the latest WTO decision in the long running cotton-type bed linen dispute, where the organisation’s appellate body ruled that the EU had failed to impose anti-dumping duties fully in accordance with international law.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) Council of Ministers has agreed to extend until December 2004 an existing agreement with Vietnam on preventing fraud in the international trade in footwear products. The deal in effect extends this Memorandum of Understanding agreement by two years, allowing time for the two sides to review the controls, if necessary.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AS AMERICAN and British military forces secure control of Iraq from the regime of dictator Saddam Hussein using the latest military technology, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has released a cautionary report confirming for the first time that depleted uranium shells can and have contaminated drinking water.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union’s funding institutions are increasingly financially assisting the former USSR’s oil industry. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is lending US$80 million loan to a key subsidiary of Russia’s Lukoil group – CSJC Lukoil-Perm – to help it cut gas flaring to 20 per cent by 2005, compared with 52 per cent at typical Russian oilfields.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
SOME four years after they began, negotiations for a deal over a geographical indication register for traditionally made wines and spirits are entering a decisive phase at the World Trade Organisation. The talks have taken so long because there is a fundamental difference in approach between new world producers led by the US who want such a register to amount to no more than a kind of voluntary data-base and the Europeans who see it as a means of ensuring world-wide legal protection for traditional appellations.…

KEITH NUTHALL
AN INITIATIVE to transform natural gas burnt off in Russia’s oil fields into electricity and consumable heat has been developed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). It is granting a six year US$80 million loan to a key subsidiary of Russia’s Lukoil group – CSJC Lukoil-Perm – to help it cut gas flaring to 20 per cent by 2005, compared with 52 per cent at typical Russian oilfields.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INTERNATIONAL Labour Organisation (ILO) has released a detailed report warning that the globalisation of the world’s utilities is leading to job losses in the energy and water sectors, with only the roll-out of new infrastructure and services in developing countries likely to generate employment.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is developing plans to set up a European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, which would coordinate efforts by European Union (EU) Member States to fight outbreaks of communicable viruses such as SARS.

In a speech to the European Parliament, EU health Commissioner David Byrne said that this would be “the most effective way to strengthen EU activities” against this disease and others such as TB.…