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BARACK Obama seems ready to accept an extension of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) for another 15 years before it expires in 2015, but sub-Saharan African textile manufacturers might have mixed feelings.

African ambassadors in Washington DC have been under strict instructions from their governments to lobby the United States Congress to renew the law, forming an ambassadors’ AGOA working group led by Ethiopian ambassador Girma Birru.…

Pakistan’s textile industry has largely remained detached from the industry and the markets of its neighbour India and the hostile relations between the two nations improve, their textile industries stand to benefit immensely: “There could be a huge intra-industry trade between the two countries,” said Dr Pravakar Sahoo, associate professor at the Institute of Economic Growth at the University of Delhi.…

THE EUROPEAN Medicines Agency (EMA) has advised pharmaceutical manufacturers to carefully assess the potential impact of nano-particles integrated into a medicine’s coating. The agency has published a paper outlining a series of issues that companies should consider regarding nano-coatings. These include their stability, pharmacokinetics and biodistribution; the potential interaction of the coating with other molecules and resulting consequences for patients.…

QUALITY guidelines have been released by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) on how pharma companies should limit the presence of certain potentially toxic impurities in newly developed medicines. These include drug products containing proteins and polypeptides, synthetically produced polypeptides, polynucleotides, and oligosaccharides.…

A EUROPEAN Commission Euro EUR1.5 million grant will help pharmaceutical researchers discover antibodies that can eradicate a tumour by destroying its blood vessels. The so-called VAMPIRE project (‘Vascular Antibody-Mediated Pharmaceutically Induced tumour Resection’) is led by Britain’s University of Birmingham and SomantiX, a Dutch biotech company, based in Utrecht.…

VENEZUELA’S economic turmoil is plaguing its pharmaceutical sector leaving its medicine manufacturers struggling to meet market demand. Strict price controls and a shortage of foreign currency are contributing to vacant store shelves in pharmacies across the country. Manufacturers are dependent on imported inputs and lack the hard currency to pay for them.…

PAKISTAN meat sector executives believe their export sector is underperforming, failing especially to seize sales in affluent international halal markets.

With an estimated annual output of 2.2 million tonnes, Pakistan is the 19^th largest producer of meat in the world.…

Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) has broken out in a key cattle rearing area of South Africa – Limpopo province, in the country’s north-east. Reports from South Africa’s department of agriculture, forestry and fisheries’ animal production and health branch, have blamed contact with wild animals for the outbreak.…

THE DEMAND for lithium from large batteries designed to store and redistribute electricity from the grid could surge if a British pilot project proves a success. It involves building Europe’s largest lithium battery, at southern England’s Leighton Buzzard at a cost of British Pounds GBP13.2 million (USD20.4 million).…

A team of Japanese scientists has developed a coating that makes use of rare earth elements to change its colour at different temperatures.

Yasuchika Hasegawa, a professor of materials chemistry at Hokkaido University, has been working on a project that he terms his “chameleon light emitter” for more than two years and is presently in discussions with a number of Japanese companies about collaborative projects to determine the best applications for the new technology.…