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THE WORLD has become used to large leaks of confidential data from intelligence services and banks, but the latest dump, from the files of the USA’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) may have impacts beyond the unveiling of wrongdoing. Keith Nuthall explains.…

The executive director of International Sugar Organisation (ISO) wants his body “to work more with the confectionery sector”, as it strives to debunk junk science that derides the nutritional value of sugar. José Orive told Confectionery Production that ISO wanted to succeed in presenting “scientific evidence-based information” about sugar’s health impact so the reputation of confectionery products is not “blackened with funky fake data”. …

With the fall out from the Covid-19 pandemic set to prompt an increase in already staggeringly high levels of digital identity fraud, financial institutions and businesses should develop more sophisticated tools to tackle the issue, researchers have warned. The fact the disease has hit when open banking applications are proliferating means fraudsters have more portals to target “particularly through identity fraud” attacks, suggests a July (2020) report from financial platform Finextra in collaboration with software providers Feedzai, headquartered in Portugal (https://www.finextra.com/finextra-downloads/research/documents/148/how-to-prevent-payments-fraud-amid-global-disruption.pdf).…

The UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO) July 30 charged Airbus subsidiary, GPT Special Project Management Ltd, former managing director Jeffrey Cook, an alleged accomplice Terence Dorothy and GPT ex-financial officer John Mason, over corruption linked to Saudi defence contracts. The charges come some eight years after the SFO opened its investigation into Riyadh-based GPT in August 2012 for paying GBP14 million (USD18.37 million) in bribes to secure a GBP2 billion (USD2.62 billion) contract for high-level intranet and communications work for the Saudi National Guard.…

INTRODUCTION

Quantum computers were once the stuff of science fiction, the technology that was always 10 years away from fruition. But now they are real and operating. Google last October announced it had developed a device of 53-qubits (quantum computers’ ability to express a signal), nicknamed Sycamore, which it claimed in a Nature article [1] took 200 seconds to sample one instance of a quantum circuit a million times, which the IT major claimed would take 10,000 years for a state-of-the-art digital supercomputer to achieve.…

AT a time when the UK paint and coating sector is reeling from Covid-19, the industry is bracing for another shock – a possible hard or no-deal Brexit. However, while paint and coating industry experts say the industry’s confidence levels are low because of these challenges, the pandemic has nonetheless encouraged the development and sale of innovative anti-viral coatings, opening potential new makers that may persist after the pandemic has ebbed.…

Two former Iraq managers for Monaco-based energy major Unaoil were convicted July 13 in Southwark Crown Court, London of paying over USD500,000 in bribes to officials at the Iraqi South Oil Company to clinch a USD55 million contract for offshore mooring buoys.…

Offshore oilfield development options enabled by new technologies can boost safety and efficiency even before The possibility off processing moving subsea becomes reality. Indeed, the idea of reducing the number of personnel on board (POB) to conduct operations, maintenance and intervention in the offshore oil and gas industry has been attracting renewed interest since the 2014–2016 oil price slump, and again in the industry fallout from the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic.…

As Syria enters its 10th year of civil conflict, the economy is in tatters, foreign currency is in short supply, and sanctions have not only been renewed, the USA has introduced new secondary sanctions. Illicit crime and sanctions busting abounds.

In May (2020), the USA issued further guidance on Syria, while the European Union (EU) extended its sanctions on Syria for a further year, to 1 June 2021.…

If there is one subsector of technical textiles that is regarded as well suited to environment-friendly materials innovation, it is surely the agricultural textile (ag-tex) sector. This is indeed the case, with research and development specialists creating clever solutions allying the functional and sustainability benefits of ag-tex with new biodegradable and naturally-sourced fibre.…