Search Results for: England

BY ALAN OSBORN

ALL is not well with the European Union (EU)’s ambitious ‘water framework directive’ (WFD). The 2009 timetable has slipped. The 27 EU member states were required to establish their first river basin management plans (RBMPs) for all 110 river basin districts in the EU by the end of this year and include specific measures to ensure that all EU waters reach "good" status by 2015.…

BY EMMA JACKSON and MONICA DOBIE

USA researchers and health advocates have called in an influential journal for heavier taxes on sugary soft drinks, in an effort to curb consumption and raise funds for new health programmes.

Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, New York City health commissioner Dr Thomas Farley and academics from the Harvard School of Public Health and Yale University proposed an excise tax of 1% per fluid ounce for any beverages with added caloric sweeteners.…

BY ALAN OSBORN and GEORGINA OLIVER

ACCORDING to Jean Castarède, author of a lay-reader’s guide to the luxury industry published in 2008 in the popular ‘Que sais-je?’ (What do I know?) paperback series, France’s couture and high-end ready-to-wear sector then represented one third of the world’s Euro 30 billion luxury fashion market.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE UK’S construction industry has protested after 103 companies in England were fined GBPounds 129.5 million by Britain’s Office of Fair Trading (OFT) for illegal collusion when securing building contracts. The OFT acted over so-called ‘cover pricing’ where contractors uninterested in a job overbid for a tender, allowing another firm to secure work with an inflated price.…

BY MARK ROWE

ACCORDING to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), today’s world aircraft fleet is about 65% more fuel-efficient than in 1970. Between 1990 and 2000, fuel efficiency improved by 17%. Furthermore, the clean technology of modern aircraft engines has almost eliminated emissions of carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons.…

BY ANDREW CAVE

Food commodity prices are seldom out of the news nowadays, due to a mushrooming global population, the food-for-fuel controversy, an increasing focus on sustainability and the continued growth of the organic sector. However, beyond the generality of crop prices spiralling to new highs in 2007 and 2008 and then plummeting – in some cases – back to where they were before the boom, the picture is far from uniform.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

COUNTERFEITERS often claim their crime is victimless – the only losers are rich corporations who enjoy healthy profits anyway from their brands. But what if you drink the fake, and it kills you? It happens, Keith Nuthall explores the murky world of drinks counterfeiting.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

YOU might think, given the preponderance of doomsayers predicting drought and desertification in Europe because of global warming, that the rainfall data would back them up.

But on a continent-wide scale, it does not.

A report on water scarcity issued by the European Environment Agency (EEA) earlier this year noted that "precipitation in Europe generally increased over the twentieth century, rising by 6-8 % on average between 1901 and 2005".…

BY KEITH NUTHALL and EMMA JACKSON

COUNTERFEITERS often claim their crime is victimless – the only losers are rich corporations who enjoy healthy profits anyway. But tell that to the families of 1,069 duped Moscow consumers who died after becoming intoxicated by counterfeit alcoholic beverages in the city during 2008, according to the city’s board of health.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL, LEAH GERMAIN and MONICA DOBIE

MAYBE the best sign that renewable energies have hit the mainstream is that they now have their very own international organisation: the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). Launched in Bonn, Germany, this January, with the support of 76 countries, including its host nation, Spain, Italy, France and Sweden, the roster of signatory nations has since been swollen by India and Belarus.…