Search Results for: Dominican Republic

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE NUMBER of personal care products reported last year through the European Union’s (EU) RAPEX consumer alert service as being potentially unsafe or breaching the EU cosmetics directive fell in 2010 – to 66, down from 86 in 2009.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) and Georgia have struck a deal over recognising each other’s protected geographical indications for wines and spirits. Caucasus republic Georgia has a long-established wine industry, and under the agreement, its traditional wine names will be recognised across the EU, preventing non-Georgian winemakers from using them in all member states.…

BY MARK ROWE

THE PROBLEM of what to do with Kyrgyzstan’s depleted uranium problem has been passed around the international community for more than two decades, but it now looks like some degree of remediation action is set to take place.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission is undertaking a series of detailed studies on water scarcity, which will feed into a major policy initiative planned for 2012, almost certainly including legislative reform. The work follows growing concern that Europe is doing too little to conserve its drinking water resources, and that a firm hand from Brussels may be needed to secure future supplies.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A WORLD Bank-administered Japan-fund is financing the development of a domestically-operated silk yarn industry in Laos, to help boost the country’s valued silk manufacturing sector. Despite making distinctive quality silks, the south-east Asian country’s silk sector imports 80-90% of its silk yarn, a problem to be tackled by a US dollar USD1.8 million Sustainable Silk Production Partnership in Rural Lao PDR [people’s democratic republic] grant.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

Big European food retailers have been delighted with a new ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) slapping down regulations imposed by the Spanish government to restrict the location and operations of hypermarkets in Catalonia. The court, whose decisions are legal precedents throughout every country and region in the European Union (EU), said Spain had failed to fulfill obligations imposed by the "freedom of establishment" provision of the EU treaties.…

BY NEIL CALLANAN

THE CHOICE of The Shelbourne Hotel on Dublin’s St Stephen’s Green for Ireland’s first major post-recession property auction could not have been better. The grand dame of Irish hotels in many ways serves as a microcosm of the boom and the bust of the Irish property market over the last decade.…

BY ZLATKO ?ONKA?

IF one European country exists that demonstrates the need for the European Bank for Reconstruction & Development (EBRD), it is surely Bosnia & Herzegovina (BiH), whose political and economic recovery from war has been halting. The EBRD has worked with the Bosnian government and its Serb and Bosniak/Croat sub-national entities for 15 years and its latest project could be the jewel in the crown of this cooperation – the revamping of Sarajevo International Airport.…

CZECH PAINTS SECTOR BACK ON TRACK

THE CZECH paints industry last year experienced a second difficult year in a row – although it was not as bad as in 2009. Sales fell 14% year-on-year compared to 2009, but market players believe that the worst is over.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

WHEN the offices of the Czech Republic’s registry for the European Union (EU) Emissions Trading System (ETS) received a fake bomb threat on January 18, it was an annoying interruption for some Prague office workers. But when returning to their desks, they realised their real bomb had gone off in their computer terminals.…