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THE INTERNATIONAL trade in tobacco products and inputs contains significant variations in prices that might indicate the presence of trade-based money laundering – of TBML – a specialist database indicates. Certain trade flows are exploited by money launderers seeking to move criminal proceeds from one country to another through artificial pricing – deliberate over- and under- invoicing.…

The Syrian tobacco sector has been hard hit by the civil war and associated social conflicts, now stretching into their tenth year. Tobacco leaf volumes and planted areas have dropped by around a third since the start of these troubles, factories have been destroyed, and sanctions have forced international brands from formal trading channels in Syria.…

INTRODUCTION

Quantum computers were once the stuff of science fiction, the technology that was always 10 years away from fruition. But now they are real and operating. Google last October announced it had developed a device of 53-qubits (quantum computers’ ability to express a signal), nicknamed Sycamore, which it claimed in a Nature article [1] took 200 seconds to sample one instance of a quantum circuit a million times, which the IT major claimed would take 10,000 years for a state-of-the-art digital supercomputer to achieve.…

ITALY’s paint industry is hopeful that the end of the country’s Covid-19 lockdown will herald a surge in business, interrupted by the pandemic. Gianni Martinetti, president of the Paints and Varnishes Group of AVISA, the adhesives and sealants, paints and varnishes and inks division of national chemicals industry association, Federchimica said: “The hope is that, after two very hard months of lockdown, we can start again with the same liveliness that was found in the first quarter of 2020.”…

A MAJOR expansion in collecting sales information within the digital economy across the European Union (EU) and beyond has been proposed by the European Commission, to crack down on widescale tax evasion.

The EU executive has proposed reforms to an EU directive on administrative cooperation between tax authorities (see https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/sites/taxation/files/2020_tax_package_dac7_en.pdf)…

Unsettling images of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or pristine tropical beaches desecrated with debris have promoted the trend for plastics-free goods across a wide range of economic sectors, including nonwovens, pressuring industries and policymakers to respond to the problem.…

THE ASIA nonwovens sector has been reaping the benefits of booming demand for protective medical materials during the Covid-19 crisis. But like the pandemic, this roaring demand will end, and nonwovens producers need to ready to a post-Covid-19 market.

This will mean reining in growth, but as David Price, founding partner of US-based management consultancy specialising in nonwovens Price Hanna Consultants, said, with regional nonwovens sales per person still low in global terms, the “market penetration for disposable and durable nonwovens in southeast Asia and China” is likely to grow regardless.…

THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) dairy sector has been riding out the Covid-19 crisis, despite weak raw milk prices, although looming political challenges regarding the EU budget and Brexit makes its future uncertain.

Pekka Pesonen, secretary general for EU farmers’ federation Copa-Cogeca, warned: “Producer prices have not yet seen an upward trend.”…

Enormous forces act on renewable energy system’s mechanical parts when generating power from wind and water. Between the smooth operation and potential loss of multi-million-dollar investments stand gear lubricants. Lubricants are also needed for the hydraulics that pitch the blades a few degrees every time the wind, or the water current, changes. …

Offshore oilfield development options enabled by new technologies can boost safety and efficiency even before The possibility off processing moving subsea becomes reality. Indeed, the idea of reducing the number of personnel on board (POB) to conduct operations, maintenance and intervention in the offshore oil and gas industry has been attracting renewed interest since the 2014–2016 oil price slump, and again in the industry fallout from the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic.…