Search Results for: South Africa

South Asian clothing manufacturers are facing lean times, with international brands reducing or cancelling orders, but industry association leaders are looking towards a recovery by the end of this year. In major production hub Bangladesh, key purchasers from the USA and Europe have been cutting their order books as continuing high inflation depresses consumer demand and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sharpens nervousness among corporates and investors.…

Like many industries, the global textiles market is waking up to the potentially revolutionary applications of ‘generative’ AI tools able to create insight and hunt for information, such as ChatGPT. Its acronym stands for ‘generative pretrained transformer’ and is a natural language processing model that is free to use.…

The European Union (EU) has taken fresh action to reverse the decline of honeybees in Europe, with the European Commission revamping the EU Pollinators Initiative. The revised strategy involves spending on conservation, species reintroduction, research, monitoring and restricting dangerous pesticides. https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-5692-2023-INIT/en/pdf;…

Money launderers continue to develop layering techniques to insert criminal proceeds into legitimate financial transactions, and these typologies are becoming increasingly varied.

‘Cuckoo smurfing’ is one new technique attracting attention, for instance, said a briefing note from Australian FIU Austrac (1).…

Dogs have a troubled life in Tunisia. While in some neighbourhoods pet ownership has become more popular, as evidenced by the proliferation of new pet stores, these areas give an illusion that Tunisia is generally a dog-loving society. In reality, there is a much darker side of life for dogs in this country, where pedigree pooches are stolen for resale on the black market or females are made to breed puppies for profit, yet it is the native breeds that suffer the worst treatment.…

The 11% year-on-year increase in output by Canada’s automotive manufacturing industry in 2022, reverses a five-year trend of contraction, but will this increase be sustained?

Canada’s 2022 production uptick, according to figures from Wards Intelligence, is certainly significant. The bulk of the expansion was in the dominant light truck segment, with 933,091 vehicles being produced, compared to 814,263 in 2021.…

Russia’s bio-based oil sector looks set to benefit from the spoils of war, being poised to become the new global leader in the export of sunflower oil over the current agricultural year, overtaking past export leader Ukraine, which its military has invaded since last February, with 8,317 civilian deaths as of March 20 (2023).…

The international clothing and textile sector will have to take account of the first global sustainability reporting standards designed to become compulsory in many countries worldwide from January 1, 2024. These will be published by June, having been approved in February by the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB).…

Isabel dos Santos, once known as the richest women in Africa, and daughter of Angola’s former President. is facing a tightening noose of legal action alleging corruption and embezzlement. Keith Nuthall and Andreia Nogueira report.

The Angola government has ramped up its efforts to arrest Isabel dos Santos, and confiscate many of her assets, following the death of her father, the former President of Angola, José Eduardo dos Santos, last July (2022).…

Food security concerns have driven China’s ministry of agriculture and rural affairs to push Chinese soy output in the past two years as growing tension with its main western trading partners – coupled with the inflationary impact of the invasion of Ukraine – has preoccupied officials at the ministry’s complex in the Tuanjiehu neighbourhood of Beijing.…