Search Results for: Czech Republic

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WORKING hours in Britain exceed those in most new European Union (EU) member states from eastern and southern Europe says a report showing how western Europe workers generally work fewer hours. Britain’s usual weekly work hours, said the European Industrial Relations Observatory are 43.1, only exceeded in the expanded EU by Latvia’s 43.3.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has accused nine European Union (EU) governments of dragging their feet over promoting biofuels in their countries. It has sent critical formal notices to Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, Poland and Slovenia accusing them of failing to submit national reports framing 2005 targets for biofuel consumption, as required under the Biofuels Directive.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
PRESIDENT George W Bush’s re-election last November has pretty well ruled out any change in the US ban on Cuban cigars for the next four years – if anything, things are likely to get tougher. One of the last things the previous Bush administration did last October was to actually tighten the import ban by barring Americans travelling to Cuba from bringing back up to US$100 dollars worth of Cuban cigars.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Commission is drafting an action plan to improve transparency in its infamously opaque accounting procedures, with resulting legislative reforms maybe demanding the public unveiling of the recipients of European Union (EU) funds. At a speech in Nottingham before European Foundation for Management Development the EU’s new Commissioner for anti-fraud Siim Kallas noted with disapproval: “At the moment, in most member states, data on end beneficiaries (of Brussels’ agricultural spending) are not publicly available”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Health Organisation (WHO) has reported an outbreak of pneumonic plague at a “very unsanitary (diamond) mine” in Zobia, Ituri district, in the northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Since late December, said the WHO, 61 diamond miners had died from the disease, which infects humans from the air they breathe.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Health Organisation (WHO) has reported the deaths of 61 diamond miners in the Democratic Republic of the Congo from pneumonic plague, which ravaged Middle Ages Europe as ‘the Black Death’. Today 98.7% of the three types of plague cases are found in Africa: worldwide, in 2003, nine countries reported 2,118 cases and 182 deaths, also in the ex-USSR, the Americas and Asia.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE NETHERLANDS government has shown how rich countries can fulfil their Kyoto Protocol commitments by promoting the overseas development of efficient green energy production, claimed the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). The Dutch are funding a Euro 5 million conversion of a Bulgarian paper mill from generating energy via oil and gas to biomass via the EBRD-managed Euro 32 million Netherlands Emissions Reduction Co-operation Fund.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE HONDURAS government is seeking to improve its victory over the Dominican Republic in its disputes case at the World Trade Organisation (WTO), where a panel ruled last December that the Caribbean island state had unfairly restricted the import of Honduran cigarettes.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE WORLD Health Organisation (WHO) is warning that around 100 million people fall into poverty every year because of medical care payments they cannot afford. It adds that an additional 150 million people spend nearly half their incomes on medical expenses.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE MULTILATERAL Investment Guarantee Agency, or MIGA, is the international organisation companies turn to when they want to invest in a jurisdiction where their assets might not be that safe. Mining companies have long used MIGA to cover risks that are too tasty for the private insurance industry, and the agency has issued 58 guarantees for the sector since it was formed in 1988.…