Search Results for: united nations

BY ALAN OSBORN
NEW LEGISLATION limiting the amount of noise that employees may be exposed to at their place of work has been agreed by government ministers of the EU nations and the European Parliament and is likely to become European law before the end of the year.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations’ (UN) Food and Agriculture Organisation has welcomed the development of a privately funded fish farming sector in Saudi Arabia, following 20 years of research to identify the ideal fish for local aquaculture.

A note published by the FAO says that the Saudi Fish Company, at Al-Shaqiq near the southern Red Sea, is already producing 1,500 tonnes of fish-a-year; the National Shrimp Company, in the Al-Laith area, also on the Red Sea, is expecting to produce 10,000 tonnes annually soon; and the Gizan Agricultural Company is building farming facilities for 1,000 tonnes-a-year.…

BY MARK ROWE
MANY air traffic control (ATC) organisations experience difficulties in attracting sufficient qualified staff. Indeed, the air transport industry does not seem to be as attractive an employer as it used to be. As a result, CANSO is examining selection and scaling methods, benchmarking qualification requirements, and evaluating common programmes for attracting new applicants.…

Keith Nuthall
INSURANCE companies must brace themselves for exposure to US$150 billion in liabilities from natural disasters linked to global warming, says a new United Nations report, co-authored by industry heavy hitters, such as Prudential and Swiss Re. ‘Climate Change and the Financial Services Industry’ advises the insurance industry to follow an action plan, to withstand policy payouts for floods, storms, forest-fires and other natural disasters, which it says “appear to be doubling every decade and have reached one trillion US dollars in the past 15 years.”…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Commission has closed competition investigations into the Star Alliance of Lufthansa, SAS and United Airlines; and the KLM-Northwest Airlines compact. This follows Star partners offering to surrender slots at Frankfurt airport to Chicago, Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco.…

Keith Nuthall
BRITAIN remained an averagely taxed economy compared with its competitor rich nations in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), according to a new report from this international think-tank. It says that the share of Britain’s GDP represented by tax take remained at 37.4 per cent in 2001, the same as in 2000.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
COMPETITION clearance has been granted by the European Commission to the planned deal involving Finnish paper manufacturer UPM-Kymmene Corporation acquiring Morgan Adhesives, a United States-based company making adhesive labels for manufacturers. Brussels concluded after an inquiry that the takeover would not damage competition in the European Union (EU) as US-based Avery Dennison would remain the market leader in Europe.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FRANCE’S Suez and the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) have launched a joint drinking water improvements programme that will provide around Euro 300,000 in its first three years and will initially concentrate on the Volga-Caspian region.…

BY MARK ROWE
THE INDONESIA The Indonesian textile market is being hit hard by a black market in used garments made overseas, according to the Indonesian Textile Association. At least 480 million pieces of used garments are shipped into the country every year, from China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, the United States and European countries, it said.…

BY MARK ROWE
ENVIRONMENTAL organisations together with a local authority have issued a lawsuit against the American government for its alleged contribution to global warming. The suit filed in the US District Court in San Francisco claims that two American export credit agencies illegally provided US$32 billion in financing for oil fields, pipelines and coal-fired power plants over the past 10 years without assessing their contribution to global warming.…