Search Results for: International business

BY ALAN OSBORN
ACCORDING to global consumption figures, Israel is the world capital of teenage soft drink demand, with hot weather combined with a competitive market to create something of a utopia for drinks companies. An international survey of soft drinks consumption published by the Economist by 15 year olds of both sexes suggests that Israel has the world’s biggest teenage consumers of carbonated and still drinks, colas, sodas, juices and the like on a per capita basis.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
ANDRIS Piebalgs, the European Union (EU) Commissioner for energy, has announced that energy conservation would be his top overall policy priority for his five-year term, not developing new energy sources. The European Commission will this year launch a ‘European Energy Efficiency Initiative’, he said, setting the EU “an ambitious but realistic and achievable target” to save, by 2010, the equivalent of 70 million tonnes of oil per annum, saving the EU Euro 15 billion annually.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INTERNATIONAL Maritime Organisation (IMO) is considering reformed guidelines for inspections of oil tankers and other bulk carriers. These include new advice on the inspection of double hull tankers. IMO is also considering new construction standards to prevent side shell failure in bulk carriers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE ECOLOGICAL havoc that could be wreaked by careless undersea mineral extraction at the fringes of Europe’s continental shelf will be assessed by a Euro 15 million international study. The European Commission is funding the HERMES project, which involves 36 research institutes and nine small companies from 15 countries, led by Britain’s Southampton Oceanography Centre.…

BY MATTHEW BRACE
THERE are not many countries left on the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) blacklist of dodgy jurisdictions regarding money laundering regulations, and one of the last stragglers – the South Pacific nation of the Cook Islands (a New Zealand dependency) – was provisionally removed in February.…

KEITH NUTHALL
ANDRIS Piebalgs, the European Union (EU) Commissioner for energy, has announced that energy conservation would be his top overall policy priority for his five-year term, rather than developing new energy sources. The Commission would this year launch a major ‘European Energy Efficiency Initiative’, he said, which should set the EU “an ambitious but realistic and achievable target” to save, by 2010, the equivalent of 70 million tonnes of oil per annum, saving the EU Euro 15 billion annually.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is planning to create a Euro 50 million loan facility to be on lent by banks in Bulgaria to individuals and households making energy efficiency improvements to their homes. The country – which joins the European Union (EU) in 2007 – is a notorious spendthrift when it comes to energy usage.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission will donate another Euro 49 million to the international Chernobyl Shelter Fund (CSF), which is converting the plant’s destroyed reactor 4 into an environmentally safe site. The Commission made its pledge at a London conference organised by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BETTER efforts need to be made to ensure a “culture of safety” exists in nuclear power plants worldwide, a meeting of the parties to the United Nations Convention on Nuclear Safety has concluded. Debating the current problems the idea at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) headquarters in Vienna, the meeting noted “in some instances…safety culture in nuclear power plants should be strengthened as deficiencies were reported in areas of decision-making, even management and internal communications”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE ACCESSION of the institutions of the European Union (EU) to two International Atomic Energy Agency 1986 conventions on nuclear accidents has been approved by the EU Council of Ministers: the convention on early notification of a nuclear accident and the convention on assistance in the case of a nuclear accident or radiological emergency.…