Search Results for: South Africa

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A SOUTH Asia regional meeting of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) has agreed to set up a Central Reporting Agency (CRA), which would evaluate ground and airborne ADS/CPDLC systems performance in an operational trial for the Bay of Bengal area.…

BY RICHARD HURST
The former British colony of Sierra Leone has been a focus of a money laundering scandal since the September 11 attacks in the US, when it was uncovered (in the New York Times) that a senior member of the al Qaeda organisation, Ibrahim Bah, had been purchasing and stockpiling diamonds mined by the country’s Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN INTERNATIONAL development consortium is to promote sustainable cocoa production systems in west Africa, to make supplies more predictable for processors and profitable for producers, easing the sector’s recent price squeeze. The partnership includes the United Nations Development Programme, Conservation International and the World Cocoa Foundation, which have been working with Mars, Hershey, Nestlé and the Alliance of Cocoa Producing Countries, among others.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A UN-sponsored Pan-African Implementation and Partnership Conference on Water has pledged to halve from 300 million the number of Africans without safe water. Ministers promised to prepare long-term policies, including innovative irrigation.…

BY RICHARD HURST, in Johannesburg
THE AIRPORTS Company South Africa has issued two tenders seeking consultants for upgrading the international arrivals terminal and associated piers at Johannesburg International Airport, part of a Rand3.8-billion (US$550 million) upgrade.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
SEIZURES of counterfeit pharmaceuticals by customs officers of the 15 EU countries rose “significantly” in 2002 and the trend has continued so far this year, the European Commission has reported. Pharmaceuticals are not identified separately in statistics on pirated goods, but form the largest part of the “other goods” category where seizures have risen from 42 million in 2001 to 59 million in 2002.…

BY PHILIP FINE

TRADE Ministers at recent Free Trade Area of the Americas meetings have failed to strike an agreement that slashes north and south American food tariffs and subsidies. No deadlines were set to solve this rancorous issue, with the United States and Brazil opting for a solution to be struck at the World Trade Organisation’s Doha Development Round.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INTERNATIONAL Finance Corporation (IFC), of the World Bank, is supporting the commercial manufacture of woven grass handbags in a remote south-west region of Vietnam. It is funding skills training for the local Khmer-speaking of the wetland Ha Tien plain, so that the quality of their grass handbags is high enough to guarantee sales in tourist markets, such as in the regional centre of Ho Chi Minh City.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Health Organisation (WHO) is promoting collaboration between national tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS programmes, with 14 million patients jointly infected, 70 per cent in Africa. The WHO wants voluntary HIV testing and counselling expanded within TB programmes and TB testing in HIV-endemic areas.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Health Organisation (WHO) claims it is near to making guinea-worm disease the first parasitic illness to be eradicated globally. Only 35,000 sufferers remain in west Africa, the Sudan, Ethiopia and Uganda. The worm grows inside the abdomen and emerges through painful blisters on lower limbs.…