Search Results for: Polish

BY KEITH NUTHALL

CEREAL production and prices in the European Union (EU) both slumped in 2005, compared with 2004, according to the latest food market figures from EU statistical agency Eurostat. Faced with a bumper harvest in 2004, producers struggled to secure good prices, even by cutting back on production, a process aided by poor weather.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has opened another formal state aid investigation into long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs), this time those struck by Polish state-owned network operator Polskie Sieci Energetyczne (PSE) with power generators. The inquiry follows the launch of a similar probe into purchase agreements in Hungary.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE POLISH government has been alarmed by a call from Russia’s Gazprom to renegotiate its long-term natural gas supply contract, which is supposed to expire in 2022. Poland’s freshly-appointed prime minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz said he was baffled by the move: “It’s hard to understand this step.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
OIL and gas companies have called on the European Commission to improve long-term certainty within the European Union’s (EU) global warming emissions trading scheme, in a public consultation attracting over 300 responses from energy producers and consumers. A key concern is predictability regarding allocating national emission allowances, whose award has become less reliable since a recent European Court of Justice (ECJ) case, where judges rejected a European Commission order for the UK to adjust its CO2 pollution limits.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Parliament has backed removing so-called ‘non-hazardous non-inert’ waste from a proposed European Union (EU) directive on managing mining waste, rejecting amendments that would have blocked this exemption. The parliament’s environment committee had claimed this classification has “absolutely no scientific basis”, adding such materials could still pose a danger.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A TEAM of Chinese, German, Danish and Polish scientists claims to have found a cure for SARS in a compound called cinanserin, approved in the US during the 1960s to treat psychopathic diseases, such as schizophrenia. Their claim that cinanserin can halt the SARS virus from replicating has been published the international Journal of Virology, although animal tests or epidemiological testing are needed to produce an effective medicine.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Parliament has backed removing so-called ‘non-hazardous non-inert’ waste from a proposed European Union (EU) directive on managing mining waste, rejecting amendments that would have blocked this exemption. The parliament’s environment committee had pushed the tougher line, claiming this classification has “absolutely no scientific basis”, adding such materials could still pose a danger, for instance in unstable slag heaps.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
ITALIAN researchers have developed a new technique for producing hydrogen whilst purifying polluted gases. Coordinated by the University of Trieste, the team has found that cerium oxide, a pale yellow-white powder used in ceramics and to polish glass, can be used to store or release oxygen.…

BY MARK ROWE
IT is difficult to separate the present-day Czech paint industry from the industrial heritage of the country. While the rest of the world made jokes about Skoda cars during the Communist era, the Czechs fumed as they saw a once great engineering industry reduced to a laughing stock.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission says “further efforts are still needed” to guarantee the future of privatised Polish steel producer Polskie Huty Stali. Assessing the Poland’s and the Czech Republic’s steel industries, it said “the Polish industry continues to show delays, sometimes significant, especially in relation to investments, which (for) some companies could affect their future viability (in) a significant market slowdown”.…