Archive

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A NEW report from the European Environment Agency has described the wide gulf between Member States’ performance on renewable energy generation and highlighted a number of reasons for this. The top performer for 1993-9 was Germany, which surged ahead with the development of photovoltaics, solar thermal installations and wind generated energy output.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Intellectual Property Organisation’s digital copyright treaty is to come into force on March 6, next year, after Gabon became the 30th country to ratify its provisions, the minimum number required to make it international law.

This convention safeguards the rights of authors whose works are published on the Internet and in other digital media, protecting literary and artistic works, including online books, computer programs, music, art, and films.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
AMERICAN online book retailers are likely to be upset by the decision of the European Union Council of Ministers (finance) to approve its proposed new VAT requirement for books downloaded from the Internet. The system allows for online EU exporters to sell their goods without charging sales tax, but penalises websites based in the United States, (or other third countries), selling to consumers in the EU.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
CANADA’S booksellers are expecting very profitable sales for Christmas, banking on the general public’s need to reflect and have quieter family time over this particular holiday season.

“Christmas will be good, very good. People are cocooning and books are wonderful to cocoon with,” said Richard King of Paragraph Bookstore in Montreal, one of the city’s larger bookstores.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE USE of azocolourants for dyeing leather and textile goods is to be banned throughout the European Union following acceptance by EU ministers of scientific evidence that they present a cancer risk. Some EU countries already ban the nitrogen-based chemicals and the European Commission wants to harmonise the situation in the interests of free trade.…

BY SIGRUN DAVIDSDOTTIR
WHAT unlikely sort of new skin are the ‘hot’ designers/fashion houses such as Prada, John Galliano, Christian Dior, Stephane Kélian and Christian Louboutin using now?

Well, it is Icelandic fish skin – and it appears to be taking the world of high fashion by storm!…

From Alan Osborn
The fashionable term in setting up international energy projects these days is “flexible mechanisms” of which the best known is the trade in emission reductions, or carbon credits. The Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol, which guides implementation of the Convention, laid down emission reduction targets for industrialised countries but allowed flexibility to meet them through the purchase of emission credits from poorer countries.…

ALAN OSBORN
The European Commission is bringing actions in the European Court of Justice against Sweden and Portugal for failure to adopt an EU directive on maritime safety. The legislation, which was approved by the EU council in 1999, provides for the regular safety examination of ships arriving at or leaving EU ports and calls on member states to co-operate fully in investigations of marine accidents and incidents.…

KEITH NUTHALL
INNOVATION is important in the provision of water services, whether that be to prevent the contamination of supplies by a return of this summer’s floods, or to source drinking water for arid areas where ground reserves are running dry.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WITH the insurance business being one of the most internationally sensitive of global economic sectors, it came as no surprise that the tragic events of September 11 had a dramatic effect on its fortunes, impacting seriously on the work of its regulators, especially in the European Union.…