Archive

BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKE
INDIA’S civil aviation minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy has told the Indian parliament that southern India airports will be made, while plans to upgrade the terminals at Mumbai (Bombay) and Delhi are delayed. Rudy said extension and resurfacing work at Hyderabad airport would be completed next June and the development of Andhra Pradesh’s Visakhapatnam airport would finish by September 2005.…

BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKE
MALAYSIA’S Senai Airport Terminal Services (SATS) is to spend Ringgit 1 billion (US$0.26 billion) over the next five years to turn its terminal into a logistics hub, exploiting its proximity to Singapore. SATS director Mohamad Sidik Shaik Osman has wants to raise 70-80 per cent from banks by this summer.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has welcomed the approval of new European Union (EU) denied boarding compensation rules by MEPs and ministers. When flights are overbooked, the new EU regulation obliges airlines to call for volunteers amongst passengers to surrender their seats in return for advantages, such as a free hotel and a voucher for future travel.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and Japanese-owned Sumitec International are creating a US$45 million facility, providing lease financing for Russian companies expanding or modernising construction equipment. The scheme will focus on Siberia and other far-east regions of Russia, which – said the bank – “are currently under-serviced by the leasing industry.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has released a formal regulation stating what items air passengers should be prevented from taking onto planes flying from European Union (EU) airports. It has laid down two lists, one for items that cannot be carried into a plane and airport secure areas.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
THE UNITED States wants to negotiate a deal with Canada that would free up controls on domestic flights in each other’s country. US Ambassador Paul Cellucci has told Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper that Washington wants a liberalised aviation policy that would include American carriers transporting passengers between airports in Canada and Canadian airlines flying between American cities.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EMEA’S committee for proprietary medicinal products (CPMP) has re-elected Dr Daniel Brasseur as its chairman and Dr Eric Abadie as vice-chairman. The decision came at the CPMP’s 100th meeting, where EMEA executive director Thomas Lönngren said: “The CPMP has established itself over the past years as a premier scientific body, not just in Europe but internationally.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE POLISH government may apply for an especially long transitional period from new European legislation extending patent production for new medicines from generic copies. With the European Parliament having approved extending this protection from the existing six to between eight and 11 years and the Council of Ministers poised to approve the regulation, eastern European countries joining the European Union (EU) in May have called for the status quo to apply to them.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FINAL approval has been given to the proposed EU herbal medicines directive by the European Parliament, which amended the text slightly in its second reading. MEPs insisted herbal products already registered as food, (hence falling under food regulations), should maintain this status.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
GUIDELINES on when the parallel import of medicinal products within the European Union (EU) is legal have been issued by the European Commission, which has tried to clarify recent rulings by the European Court of Justice. Notably, Brussels has underlined that if a product is already authorised for sale in an exporting Member State and is sufficiently similar to a product authorised in the importing country, then that trade is legal.…