Archive

BY MARK ROWE
SINGAPORE’S Changi Airport has sold its stake in New Zealand’s largest airport, contrary to recent speculation that it was seeking to raise its shareholding in Auckland International Airport. Singapore Changi Airport Enterprise said in a statement yesterday that it had sold its 7.1 per cent stake for NZ$107 million, (S$81.3 million).…

KEITH NUTHALL
A PROGRAMME promoting sophisticated safety systems for lorries, (and other motor vehicles), is being drawn up by the European Commission and the EU automobile industry. This Action Plan on Active Safety (e-Safety) should establish guidelines for their introduction, and create a forum for discussing their market implications, said EU information society Commissioner Erkki Liikanen.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union Council of Ministers has formally approved new EU-wide rules limiting the emissions of light vans, (of weight categories 1,305-1,760kg and more than 1,760kg), during cold starts. There are currently no European limits on this kind of pollution from these commercial vehicles.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Investment Bank is lending the Czech Republic Euro 170 million to help it upgrade and expand its motorway network, notably improving key routes within this central European country between Germany and eastern Europe. The money will support the construction of various sections of Czech motorways, totalling some 80 km.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission’s plan to establish the satellite-based global positioning system Galileo has been dealt a heavy – and potentially fatal – blow by the EU Council of Ministers (transport), which has blocked finance for the crucial development stage of the programme.…

KEITH NUTHALL
SOPHISTICATED controls on the access of the European road haulage industry to ecologically sensitive areas such as the Alps should be introduced, not simple traffic bans, a new European Environment Agency report has claimed.

‘Road Freight Transport and the Environment in Mountainous Areas’ points out that the inevitable concentration of road traffic through mountain barriers, such as the Alps or the Pyrenees, will have “a large impact on human health and the ecosystem, especially in Austria, France, Italy and Switzerland.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union is likely to miss its New Years Day deadline for establishing a European Community patent, which would allow innovators to patent intellectual property far more swiftly and easily than they can at present. Unlike the existing European Patent, the European Commission has proposed that the Community Patent should be effective if translated into only one language out of English, French or German.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Space Agency has established a data link between satellites using a laser beam to carry signals, the first time this has been achieved. The SILEX system on ESA’s Artemis satellite was able to receive images in real time from the French space agency CNES’s Earth observation satellite SPOT 4, relaying them to an image processing center in Toulouse.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission’s plan to establish the satellite-based global positioning system Galileo has been dealt a heavy – and potentially fatal – blow by the EU Council of Ministers (transport), which has blocked finance for the crucial development stage of the programme.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A POLITICAL lifeline has been thrown to the EU’s Euro 3.6 billion, (Pounds 2.2 billion), Galileo project to set up a satellite-based global positioning system for European countries. After EU transport ministers appeared to have doomed the scheme by refusing some Euro 450 million, (Pounds 275 million), of development financing earlier this month, EU government leaders, meeting at the week-end in Belgium, said Galileo was of “strategic importance” adding that a financing decision should be taken by March next year.…