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BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) has frozen its partnership and cooperation negotiations with Russia over the Georgia conflict, just three months after the talks were launched following long delays. An emergency meeting of the EU Council of Ministers has ordered no meetings will take place with Moscow on the agreement until its "troops have withdrawn to the positions held prior to 7 August", prior to its short war with Georgia.…

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

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 KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Parliament has approved the writing into European Union (EU) law of the UN’s ‘globally harmonised system on classification, labelling and packaging of hazardous substances’ – which includes paint, dyes, coating and adhesives chemicals. Although the United Nations’ (UN) rules are similar to existing EU legislation, a series of technical changes will now have to be implemented by all chemical-based goods packagers by 2015.…

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 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 Gavin Blair

Though the number of academic specialists in commercial crime in the Asia-Pacific region may be fewer than in the US or Europe, many of the leading figures are both willing to work with corporate clients and have a great deal of experience outside the ivory towers.…

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 MONICA DOBIE

CANADIAN winery owners in British Columbia have been warned by provincial alcohol monopolies in Ontario and Manitoba to stop direct sales to their residents, citing a law from the prohibition era.

To date, the Mission Hill Family Estate Winery and the Red Rooster winery have been officially informed that they are breaking the Importation of Intoxicating Liquors Act of 1928 that faces up to a year in prison after a second offence.…

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.…