Search Results for: Climate change

Keith Nuthall
A CHECKLIST of stopgap reforms to staunch the flow of fraud within European Union (EU) VAT collection systems has been proposed by a European Commission ready to admit that comprehensive change is politically unacceptable to member states. Aware that countries such as Britain are all too ready to veto tax harmonisation proposals, the Commission warns current estimates say governments lose up to 10 per cent of VAT receipts to fraud.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is examining whether the European Union’s (EU) beef labelling system identifying relevant slaughterhouses and farms, should be reformed to enable beef to be stamped ‘made in the EU’. Under the current EU system, countries of origin are named, causing, claims the Commission in a report, some “re-nationalisation” of the beef trade, especially in retail.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) organisation tasked with reviving the war-damaged south-eastern Balkans has released a plan to move Macedonia’s wine industry from a bulk producer of cheap wine towards a higher-end standards, tapping western export markets. The country has a wine-making tradition, but since the rise (and fall) of communism, it has been characterised by a command economy inspired indifference to quality.…

BY PHILIP FINE

AT LEAST no one in today’s America has to contend with Carry Nation. She was the late-19th century Kansas reformer who crusaded against the sale and consumption of alcohol. Known as the original saloon smasher, she would burst into bars and cause as much damage as she could to drinking establishments.…

Keith Nuthall
EUROPEAN Union (EU) internal market Commissioner Frits Bolkestein has admitted that the proposed directive on reforming Europe’s audit oversight rules were tailored to dovetail with American regulations, as amended by the sometimes controversial Sarbanes Oxley Act.

Speaking at a Brussels power breakfast with the US Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) chairman Bill McDonough, the Dutch commissioner said in framing the EU reforms, his officials had reacted to Sarbanes Oxley, in a “constructive, cooperative way forward, jointly, respecting to the maximum degree possible our different legal traditions and cultures”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AIRSHIP owners in the 1930’s would have laughed: hydrogen – the fuel of the future? Remember the Hindenburg? Plunging to the ground over the USA in a ball of fire, crushing a civil airline industry as it fell.…

BY JONATHAN THOMSON
WHY do we change our cars so often? Most drivers spend between two to three years with their car before trading in for a new model, long before the average mechanical lifespan. Perhaps it is because every year car manufacturers claim to improve on vehicle performance, reliability, efficiency, safety and handling?…

BY MONICA DOBIE
A GROWING list of American health insurers are phasing out coverage for obesity related procedures such as gastric bypasses. In the last year, companies such as Kentucky-based Humana Inc. and UnitedHealthcare (SPELLING CORRECT), the country’s largest insurer, have stopped paying for such surgeries.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
MONACO is all about money. A glamorous speck of high-rises looming above the French Riviera, it is famous for wealthy glamour, tax exiles, racing-cars and gambling. Given this cocktail, it is hardly surprising that this, Europe’s second smallest country by geography, has attracted allegations that it has been the site of money laundering.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
MANY professions are engaged in the war against money laundering but it seems increasingly plain that customs officers are at the very forefront of the campaign. Most crime (with some forms of terrorism a conspicuous exception) is committed mainly for financial profit and that profit has to be re-cycled if the criminals are to gain anything at all from it.…