Search Results for: Climate change

BY JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN

PRESIDENT Barack Obama, an intermittent smoker, has been very coy about the status of his nicotine habit, which he has tried to kick several times. So, the question of whether the no-smoking rule at the White House will outlast the Obama presidency, or even if it should, has received no small amount of attention from journalists and in Washington circles.…

BY MARK ROWE

AUTO manufacturers and industry associations point to a significant dip in sales and production in Russia this year. JAMA, the Japanese Automobile Manufacturer’s Association, predicts auto sales will fall by 18%, while PricewaterhouseCoopers Russia forecasts a 25%-50% drop in Russia’s overall car sales this year, with Russian domestic car production dipping to 1.6 million vehicles from 3.2 million in 2008.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

STANDFIRST

Every country has its own food and drink regulatory body or bodies: in the first place to ensure that its citizens eat safely and in the second to help safeguard its position in the rapidly-growing world food trade.…

BY MARK ROWE

DESPITE the worldwide economic gloom (and the country’s own political woes), Thailand’s paint industry appeared vibrant right up to and including the final quarter of 2008, with a raft of expansion plans, significant investment and takeovers in an active market.…

By Eric Lyman, in Poznan, Poland, for ISN Security Watch

 As countries battle to come up with a plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions in 2009, attention will almost surely begin to focus on two main players that hold the fate of the international process in their hands: the US and China.

December’s United Nations negotiations on climate change in Poznan, Poland, concluded with relatively little progress. Delegates voted to activate a fund to help poor countries adapt to the changing climate, for example, but they did not approve a mechanism to put cash in the fund.…

BY LARS RUGAARD

CASH shortages, competition from abroad and cost rises threaten to remove one of every three of Denmark’s roughly 35,000 lorry drivers from their trade this year, haulage experts are warning. Speaking to Commercial Motor, a Danish truck driver sitting on the bunk of his Volvo truck sums up his industry’s gloom in one sentence: "Earlier things were better".…

BY PACIFICA GODDARD, in Caracas; MARVIN HOKSTAM, in Paramaribo, JAMES FULLER, in Port of Spain

IT may seem like a good thing for fuel retailers to be based in country that is sitting on a bounty of fuel reserves. But that is not necessarily the case, as many Latin American and Caribbean retailers can testify.…

BY BILL CORCORAN

SALES of new vehicles made in South Africa, one of the better performing automobile markets worldwide in recent times, fell by more than 20% last year due to the global economic downturn, and the country’s automakers are trying to crafting a positive response.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A DETAILED report from the European Environment Agency (EEA), which highlights signals of environmental problems within Europe, says England and Wales can be labelled "water stressed", along with only eight other European countries. They are Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Germany, Italy, Macedonia, Malta and Spain.…

BY GAVIN BLAIR

ONE of 10 recipients of the ‘Monument of the Millennium’ awards by the American Society of Civil Engineers, Kansai International Airport (KIX) has also been referred to as, ‘one of the world’s most attractive white elephants’. An undeniable triumph of human ingenuity, the sheer scale and ambitiousness of its construction, combined with ineffective central planning, continue to provide its greatest challenges.…