Search Results for: International law

BY KEITH NUTHALL
INTERNATIONAL cooperation is to be stepped up to fight travel document fraud, with border authorities increasingly anxious to restrict the movement of would-be terrorists.

The European Union Council of Ministers (justice and home affairs) has agreed in principle to allow information on counterfeits to be exchanged between its working party on frontiers and false documents and Europol, Interpol, the USA and Canada.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development has drawn up plans to lend lending Russia’s largest automobile glass manufacturer US$ 25 million; Bor Glass Works, near Nizhny Novgorod, is to spend the money on improving its auto and flat glass production and repairing a furnace.…

BY RICHARD HURST, in Johannesburg
BIDDERS for the new international airport north of Durban South Africa have begun to stake claims in the project with interest being drawn from Swiss technology group ABB and the investment arm of Australia’s Macquarie Bank.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) and the League of Arab States have agreed to boost cooperation on improving intellectual property standards in Arab countries, especially copyright. The two bodies have agreed to help organise conferences on copyright in the region, especially regarding the Internet.…

Keith Nuthall
INTERNATIONAL airports have been at the centre of a Europol-coordinated series of raids that netted 335,000 ecstasy pills. Airports involved included Amsterdam-Schiphol (89,000 pills), Frankfurt/Main (83,000), Zürich (40,000), Madrid (27,000), Brussels (10,000), Paris Charles de Gaulle (26,500), and Miami (59,000).…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission is “continuously monitoring” developments involving the accountancy firm Andersen following the collapse of the proposed merger between the firm’s non-American operations and those of KPMG, officials have told Accountancy Age.

Brussels is concerned about the implications if Andersen’s practices are picked up piecemeal by local or international firms; if parts of Andersen were sold off to other major accountancy

firms on a local basis this “could justify an inquiry” but each case would be judged on its own merits, the official said.…

BY MONICA DOBIE, in Montreal
THE SASKATCHEWAN provincial government in Canada has banned the advertising and displaying of tobacco products in retail outlets where people under the age of eighteen are allowed on the premises.

Shopkeepers must hide all tobacco products from patrons by enclosing them in non- transparent cabinets, behind curtains or blinds or selling them from under the counter.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
NATIONAL regulations in Norway are being challenged for allowing state electricity operators to secure unlimited concessions to exploit waterfalls for hydro-electric projects, whilst time limiting those available to private generating companies to 60 years.

The Surveillance Authority of the European Free Trade Area, (EFTA), may try to overturn the law at the EFTA court, which has precedence over Norwegian law.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
LAST week a political deal was struck in Brussels on the shape of European cookie legislation. The result, in footballing terms: Lawyers 5 – IT industry 2.

On the plus side, the anti-cookie proposals of Council of Ministers, (which represents Europe’s Member States and shares the right of veto over this law with the European Parliament), have been softened, which should give some breathing room to the EU’s hard pressed Internet industry.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Agency for Reconstruction, the EU organisation funding the rehabilitation of former war zones in the Balkans, is spending Euro 550,000 on rebuilding five traditional stone tower houses in Kosovo. Called kullas, they were constructed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and are all in a state of disrepair because of war damage and lack of maintenance.…