Search Results for: Climate change

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE BLUE flags system, alerting tourists to a beach with high bathing water quality, is to be integrated with a new system of ‘smiley’ symbols deemed more easily understood by non-EU visitors. The change – agreed last week by the European Parliament – is part of a reform of EU bathing water legislation, aimed at raising cleanliness standards.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Commission proposals to boost nuclear energy safety in Europe have come under fire from the British and German governments as well as the European Parliament, making it highly unlikely that they will be approved unscathed. In an unusual joint letter to the Commission, UK prime minister Tony Blair and German chancellor Gerhard Schröder criticised Brussels’ proposed directive, claiming that it would not deal tangible benefits in nuclear security.…

Keith Nuthall
EUROPEAN Union (EU) ministers have been asked to change airport security regulations introduced hastily in the wake of the September 11 attacks, because of problems caused at small aircraft and general aviation aerodromes sited next to large commercial airports.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Union (EU) ministers have been asked to change airport security regulations introduced hastily in the wake of the September 11 attacks, because of problems caused at small aircraft and general aviation aerodromes sited next to large commercial airports.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A POLITICAL battle is brewing between the European Union (EU) insurance industry and the European Parliament over a safety net law defining the minimum cover that must be offered by insurers selling compulsory motoring policies, which are required by national laws.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
LOBBYISTS may not usually be the most popular people – damned as peddlers of influence behind the scenes – but they must be flavour of the month in the European insurance industry at the moment. Faced with a proposal before the European Parliament to raise minimum levels of cover in compulsory motor insurance to levels sky high above those wanted by the industry, MEPs have been persuade to fall in line with insurers’ wishes.…

BY MARK ROWE
THE 19th century saw imperial rivalry create the “Great Game”, when Russia and the British Empire tweaked one another’s tails in the region that following Russia’s Bolshevik revolution became known as Soviet Central Asia. The old Great Game was tied to control of India, and to gems and gold.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
ASSUMPTIONS about natural gas and oil reserves worked into the Kyoto Protocol’s energy conservation formulae were over estimated, according to a study by researchers at the University of Uppsala, Sweden. They claim gas and oil reserves equal around 3,500 barrels of oil, compared with the lowest estimate made by the Kyoto Protocol’s intergovernmental panel on climate change – 5,000 barrels, (its worst case scenario put the figure at 18,000 barrels).…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Bank is lending US$12 million to Croatia, (to be combined with US$27.8 million from private lenders), to create a national market in energy efficiency. The money would fund the creation of an energy service company within Hrvatska Elektroprivreda (HEP, the national power utility), which would develop, finance and implement energy efficiency projects on a commercial basis, many of which would be put in place by local contractors.…

BY MATTHEW BRACE, in Brisbane
AUSTRALIAN researchers have developed a pilot plant that will sterilise ships’ ballast water. This technology, invented by researchers from the Cooperative Research Centre for Reefs, at James Cook University in Queensland, is undergoing tests in Townsville.…