Archive

BY MARK ROWE
AN INFLUX of cheap products from China is threatening the city of Marikina’s title as the shoe capital of the Philippines. The cheap goods have pushed the city’s shoe industry, which employs about 14,000 people and was one of the top five shoe exporters in Asia, to the brink of collapse.…

BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKA
BATA India Ltd has launched three new lines for Indian consumers. Two are for men: ‘Wind,’ with air circulation features, and ‘Flexible’ whose design reflects foot contours; and one for women: ‘Comfort,’ which has cushioned spring-pads and a cantilever sole design.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE KOZLODUY International Decommissioning Support Fund has set aside Euro 20 million to help fund energy efficiency improvements to the district heating system of Bulgaria’s capital Sofia and is expected to earmark another Euro 10 million later this year.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EU ministers have been asked to approve new regulations granting the public the right of access to documents held by Euratom, via a historical archive of material that is at least 30 years old. The system is based on a 2001 regulation on the general principles and the limits governing the public’s right of access to EU documents, and should widen public access to information on contracts concluded by the Euratom Supply Agency and documents and records of cases submitted for judgment to the European Court of Justice.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission could saddle imported American nuclear engineering equipment with protective duties of up to 100 per cent, because of a WTO ruling allowing Brussels to retaliate against the US’s use of foreign trade corporations to give its exporters illegal tax breaks.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A NEW laboratory tasked with fostering innovative solutions for nuclear waste management has been inaugurated at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre.

Its Institute for Transuranium Elements, in Karlsruhe, Germany, has opened a Euro 10 million Minor Actinide Laboratory, which will manufacture and characterize the most suitable materials for the transmutation of long-lived toxic elements created by the nuclear industry.…

BY JONATHAN THOMSON
BRITISH investors have been given the opportunity to help produce the world’s first air powered car.

French inventor Guy Nègre and his company Moteur Development International (MDI) unveiled their concept to industry and Government officials in September (20th), hopeful of establishing manufacturing units in the UK.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union is to abandon special testing of fish from China, because it no longer considers there is a serious risk of these exports being significantly contaminated with restricted anti-biotics. It has taken the same decision for shrimp shipments from Vietnam and Pakistan.…

BY JONATHAN THOMSON
THIS YEAR will see the highest ever number of confirmed BSE cases in Irish cattle, according to official government figures. The country’s Department of Agriculture admits that the number of cases detected so far this year has reached 246, the same figure for all of 2001, itself a record year.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Union scientists have attempted to lay the ghost of the theory that sheep have developed a special form of BSE, distinct from the known brain disease scrapie. Brussels’ scientific steering committee has ruled that sheepmeat is BSE free and so “sheep casings should not be included in the list of specified risk materials in relation to BSE.”…