Search Results for: United Nations

BY ALAN OSBORN

THE WORLD is not over-full of specialist academic experts at universities and colleges teaching anti-money laundering methods. This is partly because the subject is often subsumed into financial crime generally and partly because genuine AML skills can command a useful premium to banks and other major financial institutions better able to support lavish salaries and back-up systems.…

BY MARK ROWE

NANOTECHNOLOGY can imbue textiles with eye-catching properties, but scientists and watchdogs are increasingly uncertain about the extent to which safety issues surrounding such developments have been explored.

According to the US-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, more than 350 nanotech consumer products are now available, such as stain-resistant clothing, (as well as cosmetics, sunscreens and food containers).…

BY KENCHO WANGDI

LIKE other nurses in the remote Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, religion played a part in convincing Dechen Om that she should become a nurse.

A Buddhist, like most of her co-patriots, she believed that by becoming a nurse she would get the chance to serve ill people and earn good karma so in the next life she would be born into a good family.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A MAN-MADE ecological disaster that almost destroyed a fishing industry is now being reversed. The northern Aral Sea – once a shallow saline remnant – is now growing again, boosting fish production. Excess irrigation shrank central Asia’s Aral Sea by 70% from 1960 to 2004, and its level dropped about 20 metres, splitting it in two in 1990: a small Northern Aral Sea entirely within Kazakhstan and a large Southern Aral Sea, shared by Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.…

BY DINAH GARDNER

THERE has not been a military clash over the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea since 1988 when China and Vietnam engaged in a brief naval spat over three reefs. Dozens of sailors perished in that conflict.…

BY PAUL COCHRANE

THE SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 attacks on the US resulted in a raft of regulations to curb terrorist financing, but seven years on Al Qaeda is still at large, has adapted to the new regulatory environment to raise funds, and morphed into an international terrorist Hydra.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL and ALAN OSBORN

ONE of the more colourful (and thankfully less deadly) aspects of Russia’s mini-war with Georgia in August was the simultaneous attach by hackers on Georgian Internet sites, especially those of its government.,

Ones of these were crashed by ‘denial of service’ attacks, where masses of data are sent to particular sites until they cannot handle the megabytes and closedown.…

By Keith Nuthall

The often controversial European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) has started work, with its newly appointed governing board having its first meeting, with the European Commission claiming it will help close Europe’s research spending gap compared with the United States.…

BY WILLIAM BARNES

A WOMAN brushes past palm fronds into the pastel lights of a busy Bangkok salon. At the counter she turns what looks to be a flawless, ivory face towards a woman in a vaguely medical uniform: "Aiyee! I am getting so old.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

MEMBER governments of the UN’s Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) have adopted international guidelines designed to limit the impact of deep-sea fishing on species at risk of being over-fished. The rules would apply for fishing vessels working in international waters and they call on international fishery organisations to ensure deep sea fisheries are "rigorously managed".…