Search Results for: Climate change

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Parliament has approved a proposed regulation tightening and harmonising EU food and animal feed controls. As it informally agreed amendments in advance with EU ministers, the law is now expected to be rubber-stamped. One change insists that national governments erect “effective, proportionate and dissuasive” sanctions to breaches of these controls and another says relevant information held by food authorities must be publicised quickly, except data “covered by professional secrecy”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE PARIS-based International Energy Agency (IEA) says more efforts must be undertaken to decouple energy consumption and economic growth. Although its report ‘Oil Crises and Climate Challenges’ found that since the 1970’s wealth has increased much faster than energy use, it found 1970’s oil crisis sparked more effective energy conservation measures and greenhouse gas emission reductions than recent Kyoto Protocol linked policies.…

BY MARK ROWE
MENTION Albania and money, and the image that comes to mind is of the extraordinary pyramid schemes that gripped the country in the mid-1990s as the country stepped out into a post-Stalinist dawn. Albanians poured their assets into the schemes, with an enthusiasm that was as remarkable as it was misguided.…

BY PHILIP FINE

EMPLOYEE pension fund managers from three US states (including New York) have used their shareholder voting rights to press 10 North American oil companies to share their business plans on climate change. They have targeted Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco, Anadarko Petroleum and Devon Energy, for instance.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
AMERICAN spirit producers are toning their marketing muscles these days because of the broader scope for advertising they have enjoyed since the end of a prohibition-hangover induced 50-year self-imposed ban on electronic media advertising.

It has only been since 1996 – when this Seagram defied this moratorium – that distillers have been able to realise this advertising potential.…

BY MARK ROWE
IN tough economic times, an industry has to sell itself harder. It is no surprise, then, that if you glance at the websites of Singapore’s leading paint companies, you will see plenty of buzzwords such as “technology”, “improvement” and “development”.…

BY PHILIP FINE, in Montreal

HOW micro is micro? That seems to be the question in Pennsylvania after a tax credit reserved for microbreweries quintupled its production volume criteria. The move has angered both Miller and Coors, who have been pushing to repeal the change.…

KEITH NUTHALL
BRITISH and American scientists are installing scientific instruments in the Atlantic, between the Bahamas and the Canary Islands, calibrated to detect possible changes to the North Atlantic Drift that provides one million nuclear power stations’ worth of heat to Europe.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A MASS vaccination campaign against bird flu might result from the ongoing outbreak in Asia, with the UN Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) moving away from a pure pro-culling policy. Following meetings with the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Office International des Épizooties on animal health the FAO said that a targeted vaccination campaign in heavily affected countries maybe required.…

BY ALAN OSBORN, in London
THE EUROPEAN Commission has ordered a study of the merits of inter-specific vines, or hybrids, signalling the possible future acceptance of such vines in the European Union wine industry. Until now EU regulations have banned their use for

appellation wines, largely because of pressure from France and other countries anxious to preserve the “pure” traditional varieties grown in natural habitats.…