Search Results for: Climate change

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Doha Development Round liberalisation talks have been re-launched, following informal agreement by trade ministers on how to proceed. They have decided to change tack and focus on agreeing duty cuts to individual products, before setting an overall cut for food and industrial tariffs and subsidies.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
IN today’s highly competitive energy sector, oil and gas companies and their suppliers are always looking for an edge over rivals, especially in technology. So it can only be good news that the European Union (EU) will from this year until 2013 be spending Euro 2.3 billion on energy studies through its ‘seventh framework programme’, its largest ever research spending scheme, commanding budgets worth Euro 53.2 billion in total.…

BY ANDREW SALMON, in Seoul
LAST October, South Korea was admitted as an observer to the world’s premier group of money laundering fighters – the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and given the nation’s recent moves to strengthen its anti-money laundering regime its path to full membership in approximately two years appears smooth.…

BY DAVID HAWORTH, in Brussels
THE EUROPEAN Commission’s proposal to simplify the organisation for milk and dairy products, announced last month, is already having profound effects on the industry says Dr Joop Kleibeuker, Secretary General of the Brussels-based European Dairy Association in an exclusive interview with just-food.com.…

BY MARK ROWE
AN EXHIBITION centre in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou will next month (March) be the venue for Asia’s largest personal care trade conference. Manufacturers, formulators, scientists and suppliers will converge to promote new ranges to what is now recognised as being the world’s most burgeoning market: China.…

BY PAUL COCHRANE, in Damascus
OVER the past six years Syria, once a byword for proto-Soviet state control and autarky, has opened up its economy and implemented investment laws that allow foreign companies to set up shop. But few multinational food companies have wised up to the opportunities within an emerging market of 18 million consumers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Union (EU) ministers have been asked to approve changes to a 1997 trade and political cooperation deal with Mexico, so that EU textile and footwear manufacturers are better able to exploit its export opportunities. This involves large annual low duty quotas, but under the existing treaty, these are allocated by Mexico through an auction.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
A CENTRAL purpose of the European Union’s (EU) second money laundering directive (sometimes called 2MLD amongst officials) that came into effect in 2003 was to extend to estate agents, along with other similar professions, the anti-money laundering (AML) controls until then had applied only to banks and one or two other financial institutions.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Environment Agency (EEA) has released a report calling on water authorities to better plan ahead for possible supply shortages and flooding caused by global warming. Existing planning often focuses on “vulnerability to current climate variability but not addressing long-term climate change”, said the agency, which wants more “adaptation planning and implementation” in water resources, ecosystems and related public health management.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A study made for the European Universities Association has found that while universities in Europe are providing a “solid research base” they are failing to extend this into the areas of research applicability and technology knowledge transfer. “Some adjustments are still needed in order to prepare graduates and to adapt their skills to the challenges of the current and expanding regional knowledge economy,” says the report The Rise of Knowledge Regions by the Swiss-based higher education consultant Dr Sybille Reichert which is based on studies of four European city-regions: Barcelona, Brno, Manchester and øresund.…