Search Results for: United Nations

BY KEITH NUTHALL

NEGOTIATORS are close to forging an international agreement that would ban vessels involved in illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing from ports worldwide, conserving fish stocks within developing country seas and oceans. The United Nations Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has been hosting the talks, and has reported that the "general outlines… on ‘port state’ measures that would deny vessels engaged in IUU fishing access to fishing ports are largely in place."…

BY PAUL COCHRANE

THE COSMETICS and personal care sector in the Middle East is one of the fastest growing in the industry worldwide, registering 12% annual growth in the three years to 2008, and valued at US$2.1 billion, according to trade experts Epoc Messe Frankfurt (EMF).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

UN cultural organisation UNESCO and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) have both released reports saying that slavery is alive and well across the world, despite its legal abolition. UNESCO’s paper Unfinished Business says human trafficking, sexual servitude and child labour have similar aspects to historical slave systems.…

BY MONICA DOBIE

GLOBAL yields of most biofuels crops have been overestimated 100%-150% claims a USA University of Wisconsin/University of Minnesota study. Data from nearly 240 countries suggest yield estimates are overly based on United States and Europe conditions, ignoring climate, soil, technological and other factors impeding other regions’ production.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

AN INTERNATIONAL Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) has been launched in Bonn, Germany, with the support of 76 countries, including its host nation, Spain, Italy, France and Sweden. Britain and the United States have yet to become signatories. IRENA will promote green energy, providing, said a communiqué: "…practical advice and support for both industrialised and developing countries."…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A EUROPEAN Union (EU)-funded research project called SonoDrugs has united universities and high-tech businesses in developing tiny, image-guided medicine capsules which could target medicines to where they are needed in a patient’s body. The aim of the innovation is conveying doses through blood vessels to the centre of an infection or disease, after which the drugs are activated by ultrasound pulses.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A UNITED Nations International Year of Natural Fibres 2009 is aiming to encourage developing countries to be imaginative in their processing of cotton, flax, sisal, hemp, wool, alpaca, cashmere, camel hair and angora, to seize new export markets.…

BY MARK GODFREY

BARRY Lee is probably typical of Chinese wine drinkers. The auto-sales accountant started off drinking a local Great Wall red at an office lunch, then got curious and went to a Beijing branch of the French Carrefour supermarket chain where he spent RMB78 (US$11.40) on a bottle of Chilean red.…

BY JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN

PRESIDENT Barack Obama, an intermittent smoker, has been very coy about the status of his nicotine habit, which he has tried to kick several times. So, the question of whether the no-smoking rule at the White House will outlast the Obama presidency, or even if it should, has received no small amount of attention from journalists and in Washington circles.…

BY MARK ROWE

DESPITE the worldwide economic gloom (and the country’s own political woes), Thailand’s paint industry appeared vibrant right up to and including the final quarter of 2008, with a raft of expansion plans, significant investment and takeovers in an active market.…