Search Results for: Climate change

BY PAUL COCHRANE, AHMAD PATHONI, GAVIN BLAIR, RAGHAVENDRA VERMA, WANG FANGQING, HELEN FLUSFELDER, KARRYN MILLER, KEITH NUTHALL and ALAN OSBORN

THE BRITISH writer Oscar Wilde wrote: "A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied.…

BY EMMA JACKSON and JULIAN RYALL

DESPITE the still-smarting pains of a slowly fading recession, which wreaked havoc on industries across the board, there is one ink sector that has been steadily growing, with global appeal in almost every country and nearly every demographic.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) Council of Ministers has blocked a tightening of EU rules limiting volatile organic compounds, because the change would have required member states to draft statistical tables indicating potential air pollution by these chemicals. Ministers agreed the European Commission has exceeded the implementing powers of the act by proposing supplementary rules requiring governments "to draw up correlation tables…" The council otherwise agreed with tightening the controls, however, through these proposed changes to annex III of EU directive 2004/42.…

BY MARK ROWE and GERARD O’DWYER

CONCERNS over climate change often refer to the potential thawing of the Arctic permafrost, where large-scale releases of methane could significantly accelerate global warming. Yet at the same time, governments and energy companies are weighing up the potentially lucrative reserves of methane lying below the permafrost that covers the Siberian continental shelf, and extends up to 1,000 kilometres into the Arctic Ocean.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

BULGARIA is to likely be suspended from international carbon emissions trading under the Kyoto Protocol because of poor financial controls. A UN Framework Convention on Climate Change committee is expected to prevent Bulgarian trading from June to at least November, the Bulgarian environment minister has admitted.…

BY GAVIN BLAIR

AWARE that Japan’s attitudes towards smoking have been more relaxed than in most of the rest of the industrialised world, the Japanese have long referred to their own country as ‘tabako tengoku’ – which literally translates as smokers’ heaven.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

THE EUROPEAN Union’s (EU) new energy labelling directive approved last week (May 19) by the European Parliament has been hailed by Günther Oettinger, the EU commissioner for energy, as a "significant step towards reaching our ‘2020’ energy savings target".…

BY RAGHAVENDRA VERMA

INDIA’S anti-money laundering efforts could receive a major shot in the arm if the central government’s ambitious project of providing every adult Indian citizen a biometrics-based ‘unique identification number’ (UID) comes to fruition. Its collection and compilation of personal data is being successfully completed in many parts of the country.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Parliament has hijacked a technical change to European Union (EU) textile labelling rules to propose a comprehensive and mandatory system requiring origin labelling for non-EU textile and knitwear products. Amendments approved by MEPs yesterday (Tuesday May 18) would insist "the country of origin of textile products shall be indicated on the label of these products" and on their packaging before being imported.…

BY PAUL COCHRANE

THE KINGDOM of Saudi Arabia’s USD$1 billion paint sector market is projected to return to double-digit growth this year on the back of massive government spending, following static growth in 2009 in the wake of the global financial crisis.…