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.
SRI LANKA FOOTWEAR TAX
BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKA, in Columbo
ANGER has been sparked amongst Sri Lanka’s footwear importers by the imposition of a SLRupees 100 (US$1.03) tax on imported pairs of footwear, causing traders to claim they are suffering heavy losses. The secretary of the island’s Footwear Importers’ Association, Sarath Pathirana, has claimed that when combined with other sales taxes, shoe importers now pay almost SLRupees 200 (US$2.03) in tax per pair.…
PRODUCTIVITY IMPROVEMENTS
BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKA
INDIA’S Footwear Design and Development Institute has launched an INDRupee 40,000 computer software package designed to improve productivity levels for the country’s footwear industry. Called PRISM (Productivity and Resources Information System Manager), the system is supposed to cut the time spent on administrative tasks in a leather-manufacturing unit to about 30 minutes from the existing three days of manual paperwork.…
NUCLIDES - JRC
BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN INTERNET tool for analysing radionuclides and their radiation has been launched by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre and international science publishing company Springer-Verlag. ‘Http://www.nuclides.net/’ is, said a JRC note, “a sequence of computer applications, which run over the Internet on a web server, supported by a powerful user-friendly interface.…
IAEA - TOKAI
BY KEITH NUTHALL
JAPANESE government officials have admitted that there have been shortcomings in the measurement of plutonium in high active liquid waste-storage tanks at Japan’s Tokai Reprocessing Plant, saying that the Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute is now correcting the amount of plutonium declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).…
NUCLEAR WASTE BURIAL
BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union’s research Commissioner Philippe Busquin has signalled that the European Commission is prepared to sink Brussels’ newly replenished research budgets into developing techniques for storing nuclear waste underground. After a visit to the European Underground Research Infrastructure for Disposal of nuclear waste in Clay Environment (EURIDICE), in Mol, Belgium, the Commissioner said: “A lot a progress has been made towards identifying appropriate sites and developing the necessary disposal technology for underground waste management.…
SEALED RADIATION SOURCES
BY KEITH NUTHALL
TIGHT pan-European Union controls on the use and disposal of high activity radioactive sources have been proposed by the European Commission. It has tabled a new directive that would insist that competent authorities approve in advance any handling of these sources, which would include all sources in the IAEA category 1, among others.…
SOUTH AUSTRALIA PR
BY MONICA DOBIE
THE AUSTRALIAN government has resorted to hiring a public relations firm to persuade the citizens of South Australia (SA) to abandon its opposition to plans to install a low level nuclear waste in outback Woomera.
Hill and Knowlton, the international communications company, which has with 66 offices worldwide, has been given an A$300,000 federal government contract to run a campaign from its Melbourne office.…
EIB ITALY LOAN
BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Investment Bank is planning to provide Italy’s electricity generator EniPower with a substantial Euro 400 million loan to help design, construct and operate a series of combined cycle gas turbines, which would provide electricity to Italy’s national grid, whilst supplying steam to be used by associated industrial sites.…
BOILER REPLACEMENT
BY ALAN OSBORN
SCOTLAND’S Dundee City Council is to receive Pounds 4.5 million over the next
18 months in a novel European Union-funded project to install energy efficient boilers in 2,500 council homes. The deal is part of a nation-wide scheme financed by the
European Investment Bank and Co-operative Bank.…
UNESCO/WORLD BANK - WATER
BY KEITH NUTHALL
TWO international organisations have highlighted opportunities for European water companies, which may be called upon in the next few decades to boost supplies to arid parts of the world, notably the Middle East.
The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s (UNESCO) World Water Development Report says this region is the poorest in terms of water availability, with Kuwait being the most parched (10 m3 is available per person annually), followed by Gaza Strip (52 m3), the United Arab Emirates (58 m3), Bahamas (66 m3), Qatar (94 m3), Maldives (103 m3), Libya (113 m3), Saudi Arabia (118 m3), and Malta (129 m3).…