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.
GERMANY - BRUSSELS
BY KEITH NUTHALL
A DEAL has been struck between the European Commission and the German publishing industry which will lift the threat of legal action by Brussels to fight collective embargoes imposed on book sales from foreign websites.
Indeed, Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels e.V.…
PUBLISHERS FORUM
BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE DEMAND for broadband high-speed Internet services needs to increase in the European Union for the publishing industry to reap the full potential of digital technology, EU Enterprise and Information Society Commissioner Erkki Liikanen said at a meeting with key players from the continent’s publishing industry.…
STRONG US DOLLAR
BY PHILIP FINE
THE AMERICAN Textile Manufacturers Institute says a high dollar is hurting its industry. The ATMI has told a US Senate finance committee that "an enormous and destructive increase in the value of the dollar," particularly against the currencies of Asian textile exporting countries, were a major cause of the industry’s woes" and added that the Bush Administration should abandon its ‘strong dollar’ policy.…
TAX SHARING
BY PHILIP FINE
A NEW sales tax-sharing bill to try and curb the inequities of urban sprawl that has passed in the California Senate has angered several national retailers, who fear that they will face additional tax burdens as a result.…
US RESERVES
BY PHILIP FINE
THE US Departments of Energy and the Interior are joining forces to use oil from federally leased land in the Gulf of Mexico for America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, an emergency crude oil stockpile. Equiva Trading Co. of Houston won the contract to supply additional oil, upping the reserve by 18.6 million barrels.…
TRAPPED OIL
BY PHILIP FINE
WITH estimates that nearly two out of every three barrels of oil discovered remain trapped underground after conventional recovery, three American universities have been awarded government-sponsored left-over oil recovery projects worth US$4
million (GB Pounds 2.8 million) in grants.…
MTBE BILL
BY PHILIP FINE
A REWRITTEN US Senate energy bill would see the use of ethanol in cars tripled and the unpopular gasoline oxygenate MTBE phased out in four years. A compromise was struck that tried to please the oil and gas, environmental, and agricultural sectors.…
SOUND WAVES
BY PHILIP FINE
SOUND waves can free gas wells of clogging debris, a team of US companies has claimed. The group, including Furness-Newburge of Kentucky, and Nicor Technologies and TechSavants Inc., both of Illinois, developed a prototype, which uses a two-foot cylinder lowered into a well.…
EXXON CASE
BY PHILIP FINE
A LOS Angeles court has ordered Exxon Mobil Corp to pay US$5.1 million to a former employee who alleged that toxic fumes emitted by crude oil caused his bladder and prostate cancer. In a case that could have major implication for petroleum transportation, Dwayne Gregory, 54, who served for seven years on oil tankers, claimed company officials waited 20 months to tell him that a shipboard physical examination detected blood in his urine, a sign of possible bladder cancer.…
BP ALASKA
BY PHILIP FINE
BP Exploration has outlined its plan for oil-leak prevention to Alaska state regulators after calls for improvements in its operations. The Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission had ordered the company to explain how it would better monitor and maintain the more than 1,000 critical valves at the biggest and oldest oil field at the state’s North Slope patch.…