Archive
International News Services archives articles supplied to clients one year or more after initial publication. These articles are protected by a password and not made available to readers without permission from clients. They are used as a background resource by agency journalists. Upon client requests, International News Services will remove such articles from the archive or not upload them in the first place. They are included to demonstrate the breadth of topics undertaken by the agency and also to help promote clients’ coverage.
PORTUGAL WASTE WATER
BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is taking Portugal to the European Court of Justice, accusing it of insisting on excessive bureaucracy regarding the authorisation of polyethylene water pipe systems used in urban construction projects. Brussels claims that the rules are so rigorous, they break European Union free movement of goods principles.…
EEUROPE ACTION PLAN
BY KEITH NUTHALL
INTERNET connectivity grew rapidly last year in the European Union (EU) according to a European Commission report, which claims that some of the credit can be taken by its eEurope 2002 Action Plan. It was launched in 2000 and was designed to bring EU homes, businesses and public institution online as fast as possible; it spawned a range of legislative initiatives that were designed to iron out inconsistencies in EU national laws that could have slowed the roll-out of the Internet.…
RENEWABLES RESEARCH
BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union is putting itself in a position to reap the economic rewards of developing renewable energy technologies ahead of the United States, an American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting has been told. “Europe has made a major commitment to renewable energy and is leading the United States in deploying it,” said Allan Hoffman, a renewables specialist and senior advisor to Winrock International’s Clean Energy Group.…
HYDROGEN FUEL PUMPS
BY KEITH NUTHALL
A RESEARCH project funded by a European Commission Euro 1.62 million grant is to develop technology to install hydrogen fuel pumps in petrol stations by connecting them to a country’s existing natural gas supply network. The international Hydrofueler project – led by the University of Warwick – thinks that hydrogen can be crated form natural gas and delivered to cars via existing pipelines.…
BAKU PIPELINE
BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INTERNATIONAL Finance Corporation of the World Bank is heading up a groundbreaking aid deal that will try to foster key local companies who will be responsible for maintaining and managing piplelines sending natural gas and oil from central Asia to the European Union.…
GERMAN RENEWABLES
BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Investment Bank (EIB) has drawn up plans to finance a range of renewable energy projects in Germany. Up to Euro 200 million would be invested, mainly in wind power plants, and to a lesser extent geothermal, small-scale hydro power, solar energy and biomass based energy projects.…
BULGARIA POWER
BY KEITH NUTHALL
PRIVATE financing of Euro 235.9 million will be combined with loans of Euro 112.2 million from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to help rehabilitate and improve the environmental performance of Bulgaria’s privately owned lignite-fired 840 MW power plant Maritza East III.…
BULGARIA TELCO PRIVATISATION
BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is planning to lend international private equity group Advent International Euro 10 million, to help it, and an associated consortium, buy 65 per cent of the Bulgarian Telecommunications Company (BTC), which is being privatised.…
TELECOMS GROWTH
BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN electronic communications and information technology industry has – finally – hit rock bottom and is now slowly crawling out of the deep recession into which it had slipped, according to a report published by the European Information Technology Observatory (EITO).…
WORKPLACE HARASSMENT
Keith Nuthall
PSYCHOLOGICAL harassment in the workplace, especially by colleagues, is the new growing health-and-safety threat in Europe, both as a source of stress and a cause of productivity losses, a European Union (EU) agency’s report has concluded.
‘Preventing violence and harassment in the workplace’ by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions has found that defence industry workers and government officials are most likely to suffer this kind of victimisation, with 16 per cent reporting these problems.…