Search Results for: United Nations

BY ALAN OSBORN and KEITH NUTHALL
THE SEPTEMBER 11 attacks sparked a major overhaul of national and international money laundering laws around the world, based on concerns that Al Qaida had clearly shifted money into the USA to finance its operations, unnoticed by banks and law enforcement.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL AND ALAN OSBORN
THE TOP selling guidebook Lonely Planet is rather dismissive of San Marino, calling the world’s oldest republic and Europe’s third smallest state “a silly place”. True, there is a touch of the comic opera about this Italian-speaking enclave, with it spiffily unformed ceremonial guards and its reliance on sales of colourful stamps, but San Marino does have a significant financial sector, and so is of interest to anti-money laundering professionals.…

BY MARK ROWE
CHOCOLATE sells in eastern Europe. One of the curiosities of the old Soviet Empire was that, even in the darkest days of rule by Stalin and Brezhnev, the USSR imported vast amounts of cocoa, simply because the Kremlin thought it was good for the masses.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has warned against rich countries erecting “a plethora of protectionist non-tariff barriers” to defend their textile industries after January’s quota abolition. Although this UN agency accepts the need for smaller developing countries facing the full onslaught of Chinese competition to have “special adjustment measures” such as rules of origin and “improved preferential access”, it wants this assistance limited.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
DETAILED and comprehensive regulations have been proposed for approval by European Union (EU) ministers, harmonising how EU car-makers design models to ward off head-on and lateral collisions. The rules would enshrine in EU law technical guidelines drawn up by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), which cover issues such as air bag operation, child restraints, steering wheel position and crash test dummies, whose performance has recently been improved by an international project.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE OPPORTINITY for companies to buy efficient robots to tackle unpopular or dangerous jobs is increasing fast, with orders for industrial robots rising by 18% worldwide January-June this year, a United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) report has said.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) is piloting the Internet dissemination of market data to Cameroon cocoa (and coffee) producers to see if the information will help them grow commodities mirroring market needs. UNCTAD wants to avoid over supply problems that can deflate prices, sometimes ruining producers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL and MONICA DOBIE
AT least one million cases of pesticide poisonings occur annually worldwide, killing thousands of people, with children being especially at risk, a United Nations (UN) agency joint-report has claimed.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) say most poisonings occur in developing country rural areas, with poor countries accounting for 99% of these deaths, while using just 25% of the planet’s pesticides.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
REPRESENTATIVES of 40 governments have heard how space technology can be used to boost drinking water quality worldwide. A conference organised by the Vienna-based United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs heard how satellites can aid groundwater monitoring, flood predictions, lake and river water movement assessments, and other key tasks.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INQUIRY into irregularities surrounding the United Nations oil for food fund in Iraq will cost the scheme’s administrative account US$30 million and will continue all of next year, the UN security council has been told.…