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THE 11TH-HOUR trade deal UK and European Union (EU) negotiators struck last Christmas Eve reassured many dairy traders, but British cheesemakers now face major challenges. New expensive and complicated bureaucracy for UK-EU trades is fouling-up overseas dairy sales, and even pricing smaller companies out of the EU market.…

THE ONSET of Covid-19 has caused many fraud problems, but a particular difficulty has been fraudsters exploiting the unprecedented government largesse released designed to prevent economic collapse at the hands of the pandemic. In the UK, for instance, the House of Commons public accounts committee issued a report in October (2020), saying that Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC) had reported 8,000 allegations from employees that their employers – supposed to pay a lower level of wages to staff to receive furlough payments under the UK Job Retention Scheme – had not actually made these payments, or paid less than they should.…

WHILE investment into nuclear energy continues, especially in emerging market countries such as China, in Europe, this sector continues to dwindle in size, with some key countries sticking to plans to phase out the technology.

Concerns about safety and the environmental cost of its waste have encouraged Belgium, for example, to stick to its goal, as laid down in a January 2003 law (1), of stopping any nuclear energy production within the country by 2025, experts have told Energy World.…

THE STRIKING of a trade agreement between the European Union (EU) and a UK to pave Britain’s final and full exit from the EU from January 1 has offered US auto exporters opportunities to boost sales to the UK, but with some significant challenges, say experts.…

THE TOBACCO industry will be keeping a close eye on the latest set of reforms to the European Union’s (EU) chemical control legislation, which will impose new controls on accidental chemical mixtures, products incorporated chemicals and will change the tobacco products directive (TPD).…

The medieval scholar Abd al-Rahman Ibn Khaldun, a famous Tunisian historian of the 14^th and 15^th centuries, created a model for the history of states, which he said had a natural life of birth, maturity and death.

His Muqaddimah, published in Arabic in 1377, written as a prelude to an ambitious survey of global history, said states went through three stages, always ending – as the adage about politics says – in failure.…

Russian food retailers are expanding their offerings of ready-to-heat food in response to growing demand from consumers. The Covid-19 pandemic has encouraged sales, as an alternative to eating out, but it is building in longer-term trends among Russian consumers, particularly in large cities, to seek out convenient food product options.…

NEW integrated paint manufacturing units in India with an annual production capacity of less than Indian Rupees INR500 million (USD6.6 million) will soon be exempt from securing prior environment clearance by the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF). This rule, covering plants with production facilities for resins and pigments, is expected to come into force early next year (2021) once the central government formalises and gazettes a new Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification.…

A new Transparency International (TI) survey has reported significant concern in 17 Asian countries (1) that corruption continues to be a problem or is getting worse, undermining equitable access to public services and trust in government. TI’s ‘Global Corruption Barometer – Asia’ (2) found 74% of the 20,000 people surveyed believe that government corruption is a major problem in their country, with 19% of citizens surveyed admitting to paying a bribe and 22% using personal connections when accessing public services in the previous year.…

A Shanghai-based startup confectioner LANDBASE (NOTE TO EDITOR – UPPER CASE SPELLING FOR COMPANY NAME IS CORRECT) has tapped China’s competitive chocolate market though selling sugar-free chocolate, sweetened with alternative flavouring inulin, targeted at health-focused consumers.

The two-year-old company’s brand CHOCDAY and product lines ‘Dark Milk’ and ‘Dark Premium’, have been developed in China, but manufactured in Switzerland for the Chinese market, a first in China.…