Archive

BY KEITH NUTHALL
DEVELOPING countries should create their own domestic strategies to reverse the loss of highly skilled citizens to developed countries, the United Nations Commission on Population and Development has recommended.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE FIRST trade fair on emissions trading has been staged in Cologne, Germany, (June 9-11), allowing buyers and sellers of greenhouse gas reductions to meet. Co-sponsor the World Bank said it was “an unprecedented opportunity” for developing countries to exploit the emerging carbon market.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
RICH country farm subsidies are preventing developing countries from growing alternative export crops to coffee, whose price has been falling steeply, the World Bank says in a report Coffee Markets: New Paradigms in Global Supply & Demand. * http://lnweb18.worldbank.org/ESSD/ardext.nsf/11ByDocName/PublicationsCoffeeMarketsNewParadigmsinGlobalSupplyandDemand…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A DISCUSSION paper has been launched by the European Commission, seeking comments on how far public-private partnerships (PPP) should be bound by European Union (EU) public procurement rules on open tendering. Brussels is concerned that the wide variety of PPPs, (contractual, cooperative, institutionalised, etc), is leading EU member countries to create divergent rules on how these partnerships buy in goods and services.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FOR a local government job with real pay prospects – go to Romania. That would appear to be the message of recent collective pay award statistics released by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, (an EU agency).…

Keith Nuthall
AVITRACK, a three-dimensional monitoring system allowing airport managers to check all groundhandling movements on aircraft runways, taxiways, aprons and parking zones, is being developed by a European Union (EU) research consortium. Coordinated by French IT firm SILOGIC, it involves cameras creating digital images that identify individuals, objects and vehicles, whose movement can be interpreted by computers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Parliament has decided to challenge at the European Court of Justice (ECJ) the agreement between the European Union (EU) and the United States over transferring airline passenger data to US authorities. MEPs think the data transfer deal breaks the EU’s data protection directive, and so the European Commission was wrong to agree its terms without parliamentary approval.…

Keith Nuthall
A BRITISH research project is developing a three dimensional airport detection system to pick out concealed objects using harmless microwaves, instead of the harmful x-rays traditionally used in terminals. The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council-funded Northumbria University project is developing a two-stage system using conventional detectors to measure two-dimensional microwave patterns caused by hidden objects and then computer software constructing 3-dimensional images from this data.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
THE USA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) has developed a “curtain of air” that keeps disease-carrying insects from boarding airplanes. High velocity fans blow air at a speed of one metre per second away from the passenger doors on either side of the passenger walkways.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Commission has been given powers to impose duties on non-European Union (EU) air carriers it deems are benefiting from state subsidies. These tariffs will be no higher than necessary to remedy damage caused by these handouts to EU airlines, which could be direct or indirect, cutting the costs of non-EU competitors.…