Search Results for: United Nations

CUBA turned tobacco enthusiasts’ and international observers’ heads earlier this month when it filed its first ever complaint with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) against Australia’s tough tobacco plain-paper packaging restrictions.

The communist Caribbean island joined the Dominican Republic, Honduras and Ukraine in challenging Australia’s 2012 law which requires all tobacco products be placed in generic packages featuring graphic health warnings, but not brand logos.…

In the West Bank, everyone calls him ‘The Godfather’ or ‘The Duke of Nablus’ – Munib al-Masri, 79, is the richest Palestinian, the patriarch of a prominent Palestinian family that has produced bankers, consultants and politicians, and also one of the most influential.…

THE UNITED States might be a relatively new country, but it has not been keen on changing the borders of its constituent states, counties and cities. The result is sometimes an administrative hotchpotch, with political and administrative boundaries set in the 1700s and 1800s bisecting urban communities in an almost arbitrary way.…

As transportation technology in the United States continues to become more intelligent and efficient, traffic managers are turning to innovative software to organise increasingly complex networks of infrastructure and communications. 

For example, the world-ranking higher education institution the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has been researching enabling traffic simulators to not only show potential impact on traffics flows of new roads, bridges and traffic lights, but also to suggest the best infrastructure changes from a range of options, said Carolina Osorio, assistant professor at MIT’s department of civil and environmental engineering.…

By Kaci Racelma, in Tizi Ouzou, Algeria; and Paul Cochrane, in Beirut 

This article appeared last March (2012) in Commercial Crime International, a specialist title run by the International Chamber of Commerce. It foreshadowed the Islamist-related unrest and rebellion that actually occurred later in Mali and Algeria….

COMMERCIAL crime may not be as omnipresent in North Africa as in some other parts of the world, but companies operating in the region have risks to contend with. Corruption is rife, smuggling across the borders with Sub-Saharan countries is a major activity, and terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) are in the ascendancy. Kaci Racelma and Paul Cochrane take a detailed look at these problems.

 “CORRUPTION is systemic in all of the Maghreb, and not likely to change,” said Dr Geoff Porter, a political risk and security consultant specialising in North Africa. “We’ll have to see what happens in Tunisia. It was a cesspool of corruption under the previous government and while the new one seems to have a zero tolerance policy to corruption, it has not been in power long enough to gauge its effectiveness,” said Dr Porter, founder of US-based North Africa Risk Consulting.…

WHEN a titanium Russian flag was audaciously planted on the seabed 4,200m below the North Pole in 2007, it took the world by surprise, suggesting Russia was serious in its claims to the Arctic.

Russia is not alone. In all five Arctic coastal nations – the USA, Canada, Norway, Russia and Denmark (through Greenland) have laid claims to a slice of the Arctic.…

IF there is one paint ingredient that marketers agree should be left off the label, it has to be lead. General and scientific opinion agrees this metal causes health problems and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), working with the UN Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) has embarked on plans to eliminate architectural and household lead paints in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2020.…

CHINA and Japan offer two contrasting case studies in the punishment of fraud: while China is under pressure to dial down penalties from their past severity; in Japan, there have been moves to make punishments tougher.

Certainly China cannot get much tougher, given the death penalty is available to judges for fraud.…

DESPITE the presence of anti-fraud legislation, fraud and corruption are an everyday part of life throughout South America, where fraudsters are unlikely to be convicted, let alone penalised.

“Penalties don’t really have an effect on fraudsters,” said Fernando Gamiz, an analyst at the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), with over 20 years of experience working on South American fraud.…

THE EUROPEAN Union’s (EU) recent decision to impose antidumping duties on imports of bioethanol from the United States is triggering fears that trade remedy measures may become the new tool of choice for protecting domestic biofuel producers from foreign competitors.

EU ministers decided on February 18 to impose a definitive (long-term) antidumping duty of Euro EUR0.63 cents per metric tonne on US bioethanol imports in response to a complaint from the European Renewable Ethanol Association (ePURE).…