Search Results for: Climate change

By Leah Germain

So what does swindling investors out of US$65 billion get you these days? A 150-year prison sentence and a whole lot of bad publicity. Now from Bernie Madoff’s venerable standpoint, one-and-a-half centuries sounds like a painfully long sentence, especially if you are serving that time in a real American prison and not the infamous Club Fed, a low-security Florida prison facility reserved for white-collar criminals where 18 holes of golf and lobster cookouts are rumored to be among the inmates’ daily activities.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) and Canada have struck a cooperation deal over regulating biotechnology products, including novel cosmetics. The agreement solves a long-running World Trade Organisation dispute between Ottawa and Brussels over genetically modified product controls, which Canada has argued can be too restrictive.…

BY ALAN OSBORN, in London; RUSSELL BERMAN, in Washington DC; JULIAN RYALL, in Tokyo; RAGHAVENDRA VERMA, in New Delhi; BY WANG FANGQING, in Shanghai; EMMA JACKSON, in Ottawa; KARRYN MILLER; and KEITH NUTHALL

THE AUTOMOBILE sector maybe one of the most globally integrated manufacturing industries on the planet, but national governments (or continental bodies in Europe) still hold sway regarding regulation.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE LONG awaited formal review of the European Union’s (EU) block exemption for the EU auto sales sector from standard European competition rules should be launched next Wednesday (22-7). The European Commission – the EU executive – is poised to release a detailed consultation paper that day on "how we should or shouldn’t revise the current rules", an Brussels official said.…

BY WANG FANGQING

GONE are the days when it was only rich developed country markets which punished cigarette sales with high duties. In the past six months, the biggest (and gloomiest) news for China’s cigarette manufacturers has been the change in consumption tax (an excise tax) – it was raised as high as 56% depending on the tobacco product, along with an additional 5% ad valorem wholesale price-based tax.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A EUROPEAN Union (EU)-funded research project is trying to outmode traditional stamping of auto structure parts by integrating three new formation techniques in a seamless production system.

The Euro 6 million PROFORM project participants aim to unveil its technology at a conference next year.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THERE is a sense, in the rivers of documents pouring from international talks to replace the Kyoto Protocol with a new global warming treaty in Copenhagen this December that the chickens are really coming home to roost.

For the first time – at July’s G8 summit in Italy – there was a common near-universal declaration that humankind has been messing up the climate and has to stop filling the atmosphere with carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

DETAILED rules have been announced in Sweden for an ecolabelling project highlighting food products whose packagers and manufacturers reduce production-linked greenhouse gases by at least 25%. Criteria for cereal, vegetable, dairy and fish products have now been launched (NOTE – ON JUNE 26) and standards for other product groups are due October.…

BY MARK ROWE

SINGAPORE enjoys an international reputation for rigour when it comes to implementing and adhering to industry standards, and its paint sector is no exception. This approach is being applied, or has already been applied, to all the key major international regulations, including the European Union’s (EU) VOC (volatile organic compounds) directive 2004/42/EC, International Maritime Organisation (IMO) coatings rules, the UN’s Globally Harmonised System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals, and the EU chemical control system REACH.…

BY PHILIPPA JONES, in Paris; LEE ADENDORFF, in Lucca, Italy; KARRYN MILLER, in Tokyo; and LUCY JONES, in Dallas

IT almost seems commonsense to say that an industry providing such a human product as clothing has to take account of cultural sensibilities in target markets.…