Search Results for: United Nations

BY PAUL COCHRANE, IN BEIRUT

Syria’s long uprising and associated sanctions has removed some competition for national tobacco company GOT. But a collapse in the Syrian pound has made inputs more expensive. And now GOT is facing an asset freeze in Europe as sanctions tighten.…

BY HANA KAMARUDDIN, IN SELANGOR, MALAYSIA

Students in some Asian countries, such as Japan, Indonesia and South Korea now earn credit hours for voluntary work, an incentive that builds volunteering into the university assessment system and promotes community work as an integral part of higher education, a conference has been told.…

BY RAGHAVENDRA VERMA, IN NEW DELHI

INDIA is planning to create a special fund to enable its dominant state-owned miner to acquire overseas coal mines to compensate for severe domestic coal shortages that are hurting the country’s power, steel and other industrial sectors.…

BY ROBERT STOKES, IN EDINBURGH

TO listen to many researchers, the ‘wonder material’ graphene will metaphorically transform base metal into gold. But what is in it for plastics manufacturers and what does the road ahead hold in store?

On the face of it – the material is impressive: graphene is a sheet of carbon, just one atom thick, around one hundred-thousandth of the width of a human hair, 200 times stronger than steel, and with the atoms arranged in a honeycomb pattern.…

BY BILL CORCORAN, IN CAPE TOWN; MOHAMMED YUSUF, IN NAIROBI; AND KEITH NUTHALL

A BOOK launched at last December’s Durban international climate change conference has focused on the growing potential for sugar to be a biofuel feedstock in Africa. ‘Bioenergy for Sustainable Development and International Competitiveness:

The Role of Sugar Cane in Africa’ was written by 44 authors representing 30 organisations in 16 countries and was published by Routledge.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL AND RAGHAVENDRA VERMA, IN NEW DELHI

THE INDIAN government has decided to launch a World Trade Organisation (WTO) challenge to USA countervailing duties on certain steel products. New Delhi has requested that formal consultations be undertaken at Geneva: if these fail (and that is to be expected) then India will probably demand that a WTO disputes panel is established to rule on whether US steel countervailing duties comply with world trade laws.…

BY KARRYN MILLER

THAILAND has not had the easiest time over the last few years. Political unrest first deterred people from visiting the country in 2010. And last year, floods from the north spilled into greater Bangkok and its environs. Citizens and businesses have suffered.…

BY MARK ROWE

WHEN the European Union (EU) set up the world’s first carbon trading market in 2001, the Emissions Trading System (ETS), advocates heralded a new dawn: carbon pollution could be brought under control in a way that benefited the environment while not damaging industrial interests.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE INDIAN government has become the latest to tell the European Union (EU) it does not want its airlines to participate in the expanded EU emissions trading scheme (ETS).

The country’s civil aviation minister Ajit Singh told the Indian parliament ahead of the March 31 deadline for taking part that Indian airlines would simply fail to hand over emissions data to the European Commission.…

BY KARRYN MILLER AND JEN SWANSON, IN YANGON

MYANMAR’S clothing industry looks set to grow as the country once shunned by the west starts to reform. Following pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s release from house arrest in November 2010, the government has taken steps to boost foreign relations and attract investors from abroad?although…