The release said Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO), the standards and certification wing of the Fairtrade movement has collaborated with the ARM for the successful completion of the certification program. Through the new standard, gold products including jewellery, coins and religious artefacts will be essentially certified and labelled with the FAIRTRADE and FAIRMINED (F&F) marks.

The F&F marked gold products are hoped to emancipate the A&S miners from the ugly grip of middlemen who deprive them of obtaining proper value for their merchandise. The brand is believed to provide an opportunity for consumers to indirectly involve in a social cause without shelling out anything extra. The proceeds of the organized and increased market access are also understood to radically change the mining methods.

Surprisingly, the A&S miners annually produce just 15 percent of global gold supplies, but their labour effort constitutes 90 percent of gold extraction. Harriet Lamb, Executive Director of the Fairtrade said many in the trade were exploited by the middle men who pay below market prices and cheated them on weight and purity of the gold content. He added the F&F standards were an important development tool, and would complement other development interventions such as access to basic amenities to the communities.

Similarly, Cristina Echavarria, the ARM´s Executive Director, said the F&F program was providing a win-win platform for both A&S miners through their workmanships and consumers with their jewellery purchases. The program also promotes ethical consumer habits by making them aware of what they buy and how the proceeds of the same are utilized.

The F&F gold will be initially launched in the UK and then rolled out to other countries with a long term vision of capturing 5 percent of the gold jewellery market over a 15-year period, totalling 15 tonnes of the F&F gold annually. The standard was piloted by the ARM with nine legally established mining producer organizations in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, and now applications are open to all A&S gold mining organizations in Latin America. More producer organizations from Latin America are expected to join the system by 2011 and beyond, and from 2010 the ARM plans to establish a network of pilot projects in Africa, and subsequently in Asia.

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It has been reported that a large number of torture instruments including fixed wall restraints, metal ‘thumb cuffs’, and electroshock ‘sleeves’ and ‘cuffs’ which could deliver 50,000V shocks were widely traded with the tacit or explicit backing from some governments of the EU. Furthermore, these commercial exchanges have violated the 2006 Act of a global ban on the international trade of policing and security equipment designed for torture and ill-treatment.

According to the Amnesty International’s press release, the organization along with its research partner would be informing the EU administration to insulate legislative loopholes highlighted in the report, and the EU member states to adequately implement and enforce the regulation. Amnesty International’s UK arms program director Oliver Sprague lambasted the EU for condoning the sales of inhumane torture equipment, and also for using double standards in trade deals.

Interestingly, the accomplices in this illegal trade have flouted with impunity the Regulation that has been introduced after a decade of campaigning by human rights organizations. Nicolas Beger, Director of Amnesty International’s EU office blamed the EU for the failure of proper implementation or enforcement of the four year old legislation.

As per the report, between 2006 and 2009, the Czech Republic issued export licenses covering shackles, electric shock weapons and chemical sprays to six countries where police and security forces had a history of using such equipment for torture and other ill-treatment. Likewise, Germany issued similar licenses to three such countries for exports of foot-chains and chemical sprays.

Besides, law enforcement equipment suppliers in Italy and Spain are found to have encouraged the sale 50,000V electric shock ‘cuffs’ or ‘sleeves’ for use on prisoners by exploiting a legal loophole. In 2005 one of the EU member states, Hungary declared its intention to introduce electric ‘stun belts’ into its own prisons and police stations, despite a trade ban on such belts which inherently constituted torture or ill-treatment.

Surprisingly, five EU member states have expressed that they were unaware of any producers (Belgium, Cyprus, Italy, Finland and Malta) or exporters (Belgium, Cyprus, Italy) of equipment covered under the Regulation. However, it is interesting to note that companies from three of these five countries (Finland, Italy and Belgium) have stated openly in media interviews or on their websites that they supplied items which were covered by the Regulation, often manufactured in third countries.

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National Health Services (NHS) which are often blamed to show apathy towards patient-care by making patients wait even during emergencies was in the spotlight last month while the Royal Surrey County hospital admitted that it bought the NHS drugs cheap to sell at a profit in Europe. The foundation hospital last year continued with its trade in millions of pounds worth of drugs intended for the NHS to Europe, ignoring government warnings.

The weak pound value and sourcing of medicines at low prices are cited as contributing factors for the parallel drug trade. By diverting the medicines away from the UK markets has allowed pharma companies including some of the NHSs to gain a minimum profit of 30 percent extra.

According to the Department of Health’s pharmaceutical services negotiating committee, the new illegal trade has created shortage of 41 medicines including Zyprexa, which is used to treat people with schizophrenia and Actonel, for osteoporosis sufferers. Similarly, other figures show the short supply of these drugs is driven by an exodus of more than £30 million-worth of medicines from the UK every month.

Measures such as random inspections and raising the standards required for wholesaler dealers’ licences are some of the firewalls included to prevent parallel trade. Furthermore, if manufacturers or wholesalers are found to be in breach of legal duties to maintain an adequate supply of medicines they risk prosecution and losing their licences.

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Dr Charlotte Williams, head of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) said the search for greener plastics, especially for single use items such as food packaging, was the subject of significant research worldwide. The EPSRC says about seven percent of fossil fuels are used to manufacture plastics; with global production pegged at more than 150mn tons annually, almost 99 percent of plastics are made out of them.

The latest invention will seize the place of hitherto indispensable polluting plastics with its disposability and application quotient. The sugar-based polymer known as lignocellulosic biomass could be composted at home along with organic waste.

It is expected to be used in a variety of medical applications such as tissue regeneration, stitches and drug delivery as the polymer is supposed to have non-toxic properties which decompose in the body creating harmless by-products. The EPSRC is jointly making efforts with its commercial partner BioCeramic Therapeutics to make this a reality.

Currently, the largely used bio-degradable plastic, polylactide production requires high energy and large quantity of water and degraded in a high-temperature industrial facility. While the new polymer is produced through non-food crops including fast-growing trees and grasses, or renewable biomass from agricultural or food waste and has natural molecules to get absorbed with other organic waste.

As the production of the new packaging plastic would not cause any harm to the food crop resources, it is regarded as a relief from polluting petro-chemical ones. “Our key breakthrough was in finding a way of using a non-food crop to form a polymer, as there are ethical issues around using food sources in this way,” said Williams.

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The CTTC is the representative body for Independent coach operators of Ireland which provides first class passenger transport to domestic and overseas visitors. Likewise, Mullins is one of the key figures who lobbies for change in national and the EU transportation policy.

As per current Irish visa regulations, a visa aspirant should provide documents including six months of bank statements, a letter from one’s employer or educational institution stating one would return, and a letter from one’s host. Mullins argues “Can you imagine booking a room in a Dublin hotel, and then asking the receptionist if the hotel would forward a letter saying they will support you during your visit?”

The CTTC chief criticized that “effectively, we tell them to go away, and spend their money in some other country.” During his tirade he felt the restrictions would not have made a difference in the past because many from the emerging tourist markets could not have afforded any such visits then. But he informed Ireland had not woken up to the reality that people from China and prospective new markets were travelling by their millions and becoming richer than them.

It has been noticed that business has significantly reduced owing to recession in Ireland’s traditional tourism markets such as the EU, the UK and the US. The Irish tourism industry feels there should be relaxation on visa norms at least to potential new markets to boost the economy. Incidentally, nationalities of 88 countries do not need a visa to travel to Ireland.

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As per the survey, Indian naans and bagels, the New York favourite have also made notable growth by 13 percent and 11 percent respectively. Andy Simpson, Tesco’s bakery spokesman said “While croissants have been commonplace across the UK since the 1980s, it’s naan bread, chapattis, bagels and more recently tortillas that have now established themselves as popular snack alternatives to the traditional sandwich.

Simpson further added that there were so many bread varieties from all around the world now available in the UK and these were drawing sales from traditional loaves, rolls and baps which had reigned supreme in bakeries for hundreds of years. His words are corroborated by the fact that even kuboos, the most preferred bread variety of the Middle East is available in many of the stores in the UK regularly. Besides, the multicultural demographics and consumers’ attitude to experiment with new snacks have also led to the slide in the traditional British food stuff.

The state of the art commercially viable technology present now to produce many oriental bites is also believed to be another reason for them to breach the 250 year old strongly held fortress of traditional British bread basket. Until recently, large scale production of many Indian food items including chapattis and naans were not possible, but today instead of employing manual hours, such production processes are done by machines with relatively less time in making higher quantity.

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It should be recalled the UK was the world’s largest defense exporter in 2007, accounting for a third of global defense exports. Britain was able to achieve the whopping figures of about $31bn worth of exports in 2007 particularly by the orders for Eurofighter Typhoon jets from Saudi Arabia. The jets are expected to be delivered to the Royal Saudi Air Force by this weekend.

DSO in its latest release said, as there was not any significant slide in defense demand as compared to previous years, the defense and security sectors are weathering the recession better than many other sectors. Nevertheless, Chris Baker, the DSO operations director acknowledged that 2009 wouldn’t be an easy year for the more resilient defense industry.

The DSO list show that the US retaining the highest rank followed by the UK and France in defense sales. However, according to another list issued by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in April showed that while the US remained the world’s largest defense exporter, Russia, Germany and France came next in order followed by the UK at the fifth place.

The DSO authorities have admitted that their yardstick of assessment is based on deals signed in any one given year, while all other major players use actual deliveries to arrive at their figures. The DSO was formed last year after the Defence Export Sales Organisation was controversially moved by Prime Minister Gordon Brown from Ministry of Defence ownership to the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform.

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The ITC found children or siblings of the people involved in the organic farming activities were better fed, better clothed and performed better at school than others. The workers of this sector were better informed about the ill-effects of dangerous diseases such as, HIV/AIDS. They also enjoyed better human resources development practices including employee safety, free transport and so on.

Lately, the growing concern over climate change has tagged ‘Food miles’ to airfreighted products threatening livelihoods of many people in Kenya and other African countries involved in this trade. Various organic certifiers from Europe have even withdrawn organic certification to airfreighted products by branding them as products of high carbon footprint.

However, due to the concerted effort by the ITC and the DFID, the UK government department which works for human development and poverty alleviation, the Soil Association certifier has assured that they would continue to certify airfreighted organic products from Africa. ITC strongly argued that despite the UK beef production generated many times more greenhouse gases than other forms of animal protein production it passed similar certification test. Interestingly findings of a research showed a 10km car trip to a supermarket generated more carbon emissions than airfreighting a kilogram of beans from Kenya.

The leading airfreight export countries are Kenya, Egypt, Morocco, Zambia and the US. There are also other African nations involved in this trade including South Africa, Cameroon, Gambia and Ghana. ITC feels a sustained growth in the organic market without any hiccups like that of the certification issue could help many farmers and workers in Africa to lead a quality life.

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