Search Results for: International business

BY MARK ROWE
THAI-JAPANESE joint venturers have floated a plan to turn a hillside in northern Thailand into one of the world’s most unlikely ski venues. Leisure Patine International Co Ltd, which has previously developed ice rinks in Thai shopping centres, has suggested that Japanese snow-making machines could be used to establish a ski slope near the town of Chiang Mai, a place better known as a haven for European and Australian backpackers.…

BY MARK ROWE
JAPANESE synthetic fibre giant Toray International, one of the world’s largest textile and chemical companies has teamed up with and Mitsui Soko, Japan’s second largest warehousing company, and online logistics firm Bolero International.The companies are jointly running a phased testing of bolero.net…

KEITH NUTHALL
A COMPREHENSIVE reform of the European Union’s VAT package for travel agents has been proposed by the European Commission, which would change the special rules that apply for the sector. Because their services are often consumed in a foreign Member States where different sales tax rates can apply, travel agents are allowed to pay VAT on the profits that they make rather than handing over the VAT charged directly on services that they supply, minus the VAT they paid when incurring allowable business expenses.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INTERNATIONAL Court of Justice has announced five weeks of public hearings for a case between Nigeria and Cameroon, who are disputing their mutual maritime border. Nigerian troops currently occupy part of the disputed Bakassi peninsular, provoking the Cameroon government into launching the case, which calls for a fixing of the coastal and associated sea frontiers and the withdrawal of foreign forces.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED States government has informed the disputes settlement body of the World Trade Organisation that it “intended to comply” with the final Havana Club ruling issued at the start of this year, although it warned diplomats that it “would require for that purpose a reasonable period of time.”…

BY MARK ROWE
THE INTERNATIONAL Atomic Energy Agency has made its first visit to a nuclear establishment in North Korea since 1994, when the isolationist Asian state withdrew its membership of the agency.

The visit is understood to have been facilitated by the North Koreans’ desire to move ahead with their stalled plans for the development of two light water nuclear reactors.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
CONCLUDING that the health of between 100,000 to 200,000 people is still at risk because of radioactive contamination from the Chernobyl disaster, a United Nations report has called for an international fight against the resulting pollution.

The joint study involving agencies such as the UN Development Programme and the World Health Organisation has claimed that 2,000 people have been diagnosed with thyroid cancer because of the explosion, and as many as 8,000 to 10,000 cases are expected to develop it over the coming years.…

BY MONICA DOBIE, in Montreal
SCI-FI flicks, the likes of Terminator II and Total Recall, feature futuresque scanning of objects and people to verify if they were porting any dangerous weapons or were lying about what they carrying in suspicious bags; now, this kind of portable and instant inspection has made it from the big screen to current security technology used daily in customs screenings.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AS acts of international largesse go, the expansion of the European Union eastwards and southwards must rank as being one of the most generous in history. With research estimates claiming that the size of the EU budget will soar to accommodate the needs of the former communist republics, (plus Cyprus and Malta), we are talking Marshall Plan here; billions of Euro’s being transferred from national coffers in western Europe to the east, via Brussels.…

BY PHILIP FINE

NURSING homes in America’s south have seen their insurance liability rates pushed so high by "predatory" negligence claims and rise so high that many are being forced to take drastic measures.

Florida, a highly litigious and demographically older state, is now bereft of any state-residing insurers able to write long-term care liability insurance.…