Search Results for: Climate change

BY MARK ROWE and MONICA DOBIE

GENETICALLY modified foods have split opinion across the world; hugely unpopular in Europe but embraced in the United States. But GM technology does not only apply to foodstuffs. Increasingly, scientists are looking at the extent to which altering the genetic components of a range of products that are used for textiles can influence the make-up of the clothes we wear.…

BY DEIRDRE MASON in London

PROPOSED new European Union (EU) legislation making a range of safety systems in new cars, trucks and other heavy vehicles mandatory from 2012 has had a largely positive response from the automotive industry, but proposals about cutting down tire noise have been less welcome.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE GREEN group of the European Parliament is pushing for the establishment of a separate European Union (EU) treaty that would commit EU institutions to promoting the development of renewable energies.

The MEPs have been inspired by the success of another separate EU treaty – albeit one they are not fond of – the Euratom treaty, which guarantees separate budgets to assist the operation of nuclear power plants.…

BY BILL CORCORAN, in Lilongwe, Malawi

A NEW initiative to improve the health, wealth and environment of Africans is being driven by the Kyoto Protocol’s international trades in carbon credits. This allows wealthy developed countries to scale back their emission reductions, if they can invest in slashing greenhouse gas pollution abroad.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Parliament has voted to give national food regulators authority to insist that some micro-enterprise food manufacturers follow HACCP hazard control point health procedures. MEPs have amended liberalising proposals from the European Commission that all micro-businesses in the food sector selling direct to the consumer should be exempted from EU legislation insisting on such checks.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

MEMBERS of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) are for the first time seriously debating a global agreement on fishing subsidies, setting rules on their scope that would apply across the globe, and which could ban financial handouts for increasing fleet capacity.…

BY PACIFICA GODDARD, in Caracas

LATIN AMERICA has long been notorious for its high levels of corruption, especially through money laundering, bribery and the illicit drug trade. And although the recent years of relative stability and democratisation in the region have brought economic progress, this has also widened the opportunities for fraudulent activities and fuelled an increasing sophistication by which they are performed.…

BY MARK ROWE

YOU are a young, thrusting oil company, sitting on vast reserves and anticipating an even more lucrative future. You’re looking to make a statement about your position in the world. What do you do? In the case of Gazprom Neft, you build a new mini-city.…

BY MARK ROWE

ONE of the first responses to concerns about climate change involved the search to sequester carbon, a component of the major greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide. Increasingly, efforts are focussing on how to deal with another greenhouse gas, methane.…

BY LEE ADENDORFF, in Lucca, Italy

OF the 3,000 students who will graduate from fashion school this year in the UK, only 500 will find jobs in the clothing and textile sector. They may be highly creative and excellent designers, but this is not always what the industry wants: many fashion producers say British graduates are ill-prepared to compete and adapt to a workplace characterised by overseas manufacturing bases, highly computerised environments and complex logistical production scenarios.…