Search Results for: Climate change

BY ALAN OSBORN
IS there a role for the insurance companies of rich countries to play in developing “micro finance” in the world’s very poorest regions? The question has become relevant following the launch earlier this month (November) of the International year of Microcredit 2005 by the UN’s Agricultural Fund for Development (IFAD).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE NUCLEAR industry is likely to be disappointed with the transfer of Hungary’s Lazlo Kovacs away from the energy portfolio in the new European Commission expected to take office this week. (NOTE – NEXT WEEK IN REAL TIME) His removal follows a lacklustre performance at a European Parliament hearing that led MEPs to brand him “incompetent” as a potential energy Commissioner.…

BY DAVID HAWORTH
LAST summer’s European Parliament elections plus the delayed inauguration of the new European Commission under José Manuel Barroso has meant many quiet months in developing European Union (EU) policies affecting museums. What changes to EU cultural policy might be expected under Slovakia’s Jan Figel, the new education and culture Commissioner for the next five years will also not be evident until 2005.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE BRITISH and German governments have agreed to combine their efforts to fight climate change, sharing expertise and holding high-level meetings on issues ranging from transport to energy efficient buildings. German and British scientists will also share research vessels and high-latitude long-range monitoring aircraft.…

BY MARK ROWE
CHOCOLATE sells in eastern Europe. One of the curiosities of the old Soviet Empire was that, even in the darkest days of rule by Stalin and Brezhnev, the USSR imported vast amounts of cocoa, simply because the Kremlin thought it was good for the masses.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN ARCTIC Climate Impact Assessment by scientists from Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russian, Sweden, and the USA has warned global warming-generated melts of ice and permafrost could damage oil and gas pipelines. Their stability would be threatened by thaws turning tundra into plains of mud.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
CHANGES made by Italy’s prime minister Silvio Berlusconi to his country’s accounting laws, helping him fight charges of false accounting in his many businesses, break European Union (EU) law a senior European Court of Justice (ECJ) official has advised.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WHILE the voters of many European Union (EU) countries express misgivings about greater continental integration, Bulgaria has been making great efforts to join the Brussels club by 2007. But its reputation for commercial crime and the lack of strong governmental structures able to tackle the problem are hampering efforts to clean up the country’s reputation.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
ISSUES of commercial crime have been moving up the European Union’s (EU) policy agenda in recent years. With the arrival of a 25-member European Commission under Jose Barroso, the subject has even greater prominence and involves the responsibilities of three new Commissioners.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FRANCE has been found in breach of its European Union (EU) legislative commitments on free trade by failing to sufficiently legalise the parallel trade in pharmaceutical products, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled. Judges found that France had recognised in 1999 it had breached EU regulation 2309/93 which liberalises the pan-EU trade in medicines, but had been too slow to respond to pressure for change from the European Commission.…