Archive

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is distributing 1.2 million leaflets this summer, which aims to educate holiday-makers on how to use the single European currency, the Euro, whose notes and coins will be launched in January.

Called “Don’t forget to Pack the Euro,” the leaflet encourages tourists to get used to the concept of the Euro whilst vacationing abroad this summer.…

BY KATE REW
THE ORGANISATION which runs New York’s La Guardia airport, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, has said that it intends either to sharply increase landing fees or to auction landing slots to relieve airport congestion.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE CREATION of a European Aviation Safety Agency has moved closer following a “broad preliminary agreement” by EU transport ministers on common rules for civil aviation safety between the 15 member countries. The European Commission has been given 12 months to draw up “adequate proposals” on how the proposed regulation could be applied to third country aircraft.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has proposed that EU legislation be amended to make the installation of speed limiters compulsory for all large vans, vehicles that have so far been exempt from such regulations. Thus far, only lorries registered since 1988 of more than 12 tonnes in weight have had to be fitted with this technology, but the Commission has now concluded that this rule should be extended to all commercial vehicles of 3.5 tonnes or more.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Road Federation has called for a rethink regarding a proposed new four-year research programme, which will probably command a budget of around Euro 17.5 billion. It claims that the European Commission wants to focus too many resources on new areas of research, such as nanotechnology and genomics, at the expense of achieving the EU transport goals.…

BY ALAN OSBORN AND KEITH NUTHALL
THE STAGE has been set for a second round of political wrangling over the proposed extension of EU working time rules to road haulage sector, after the European Parliament confirmed substantial amendments to the plan.…

BY STEVE BAILEY, in Hanoi, Vietnam
WESTERN restaurateurs are opening businesses in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, and formerly the centre of a communist dictatorship that refused to allow foreign ownership of local companies and partnerships.

A string of western-owned restaurants, many under French control, have opened in the historic old quarter near St.…

BY MONICA DOBIE, in Montreal
CREDIT card fraudsters in the US and Canada are placing new kinds of skimming bugs to steal credit and charge card numbers from terminals used by north American retailers and restaurants.

Cardweb, a Maryland-based payment card information network, has claimed that tiny pieces of hardware are being planted by a fraudster working in a restaurant or shop.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
ONLINE bookseller giant Amazon.com, is stirring things up in the Canadian Internet book market, by announcing it will lower shipping costs for Canadian customers, effectively stiffening up competition for the future Chapters-Indigo combine, the country’s largest book retailer.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
SPAIN has expressed concerns to European ministers about delays in transferring control of the civilian-military Torrejon satellite imaging centre, near Madrid, from the increasingly obsolete Western European Union defence organisation to the European Union, which is setting up its own rapid reaction force.…