Search Results for: Global Warming

BY DAVID HAWORTH, in Brussels, and KEITH NUTHALL

1. The Commission is a keen supporter of creating increased gas storage capacities. But who should pay for developing these facilities?

The Commission believes that investment in storage should be left to the market, and the costs allocated through market forces.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

CANADA, in alliance with Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, has successfully scuppered plans to place chrysotile asbestos on the ‘watch list’ of the United Nations’ Rotterdam Convention, a move that would have allowed importing countries to insist on prior consent before admitting any cargoes of this mineral.…

BY DAVID HAWORTH, in Brussels, and KEITH NUTHALL

THE LEAGUE of European Research Universities (LERU) has attacked the publication on Wednesday (18-10) of plans to allow a European Institute of Technology (EIT) to issue degrees and suck money from the European Union’s (EU) seventh framework programme (FP7).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) is moving towards supporting environment-friendly road transport, rather than dedicating resources to promoting public transport, a European Parliament debate organised by the Automobile and Society Forum, has heard. The European Commission is currently reviewing its 2001 transport white paper and its working papers have noted "disappointment" over the results of the EU’s pro-public transport policies.…

BY DAVID HAWORTH, in Brussels, and KEITH NUTHALL

EUROPEAN Commission president José Manuel Barroso has claimed the EIT could be an excellent vehicle for solving the problems posed by climate change. He told a press conference today in Brussels that this was the "most important global challenge of our times" and he thought — and hoped — the EIT would make a great contribution to solving it.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

RICH country tax authority bosses have banded together to fight international tax avoidance caused by the abuse of increasingly liberal capital movement and trading laws. Representatives from more than 30 countries, at a Seoul meeting of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s forum on tax administration, agreed to conduct a joint study by 2007 into how accountants, lawyers and tax advisors were promoting illegal tax evasion and "unacceptable tax minimisation arrangements".…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A SECRETARIAT running the United Nations’ Global Bioenergy Partnership (GBEP) has been opened at the Rome headquarters of the UN Food & Agriculture Organisation. The body is charged with promoting bioenergy, helping international exchanges of know-how and technology, promoting policies and identifying potential funding.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A UNITED Nations unit is coordinating the introduction of International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) accrual systems across all agencies of the global body. The UN Task Force on Accounting Standards is overseeing the development of implementation timetables, which must see all UN agencies and branches adopting IPSAS by January 2010, except for peacekeeping operations, which must comply by July 2010.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

NEARLY a third of all confectionary sold in China are counterfeits of global brands, a new European Commission survey says. Businesses, industrial federations and diplomatic missions agreed: "For the confectionary business, the infringement causes more than 30% loss in sales value every year", and they stressed the difficulty of preventing such offences through legal action.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE WORLD Trade Organisation (WTO) has released global figures on imports and exports of food commodities for 2004. See

http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/agric_e/agric_e.htm, then ‘Data: Members’ shares of world trade in agricultural products’, then ‘G/AG/W/32/Rev.9.’

ENDS…