Search Results for: Climate change

Keith Nuthall
THE BRITISH Columbian government may halt imports of American wine to the province in retaliation for US restrictions on softwood lumber according B.C’s forest minister Mike de Jong.

Mr. De Jong said British Columbia and Canada should use recent World Trade Organization rulings that would permit some retaliation by Canada.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BRITAIN and eight other European countries have signed a memorandum of understanding about constructing a groundbreaking X-ray research laser, so acute it could measure chemical reactions in real time. The UK, France, Greece, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Germany have agreed to negotiate in detail an inter-governmental arrangement for building an approximately three-kilometre-long underground laser generator.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN Union (EU) research project is investigating 13,000 personal DNA records to discover links between genetics, food components and obesity. A key aim is examining the role carbohydrates and high-protein foods could play in making consumers feel full and so less likely to continue eating.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
CHARITIES may be exempt from paying VAT, even if they are formally a profit making enterprise, a European Court of Justice (ECJ) advocate general has advised. Damaso Ruiz-Jarabo Colomer has said that under the EU’s sixth VAT directive (article 13A), profit-making companies can be exempt and that their money-making aims do “not in principle constitute an obstacle to its being regarded as a ‘charitable organisation'”.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
IT’S fair to say that neither Bulgarian nor Romanian wine stands very high in wine-lovers’ affections at the moment. That wasn’t always so.

The wines were held in some esteem in the 80s, for instance, under the last years of communist rule, but standards have slipped pretty drastically in the score of years since then.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE 2005 Yearbook of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has warned environmental change is spreading diseases beyond their traditional range, while causing pathogens to mutate and become more deadly.

It includes a number of case studies, illustrating one message: “Loss of forests, road and dam building, the spread of cities, the clearing of natural habitats for agriculture, mining and the pollution of coastal waters are promoting conditions under which new and old pathogens can thrive”.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
CAN a travel agency be considered a financial institution, and if so how vulnerable is it to money laundering? Should it have to meet the same reporting requirements, for instance, as banks and insurance brokers? These are tricky questions and they have dogged the American anti-money laundering authorities for some three years now, as they try to frame comprehensive controls following the September 11 attacks.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

RUSSIA has sent another threat to Europe over gas supplies, undermining its reputation as a potential reliable energy partner for its western neighbours. Semyon Vainshtok, the president of Russia pipeline monopoly Transneft has told the daily newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta that Russia has "overfed Europe with crude".…

BY LUCY JONES, in Dallas, Texas

THERE is another side to the loss of life and devastation wreaked in the USA by hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Wilma and Dennis last year, a market reaction that has brought unsought benefits to the US paint and coatings industry.…

KEITH NUTHALL
AS the European Union (EU)’s greenhouse gas trading scheme beds in this year, its environment ministers can push ahead with fighting pollution, in the knowledge that the EU should hit its Kyoto Protocol emissions targets. According to the European Commission, current and planned policies should enable the expanded EU to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 8% from their 1990 levels during 2008-2012.…