Search Results for: France

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE POWER of photographs to inspire sustainable development has been highlighted in a UN Development Programme (UNDP) contest. The ‘Picture This: Caring for the Earth’ competition, organised with the Olympus Corporation and the Agence France-Presse (AFP) was designed to show how "ordinary people work to preserve the environment and reduce the effects of climate change in their communities", said a UNDP note.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A HOPEFUL sign that European Union (EU) and American energy policies could become more complimentary in the future has come with the launch of a new EU-US Energy Council in Washington. It will formalise transatlantic discussions on strategic energy issues such as security of supply and developing low carbon energy sources.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A MAJOR European research project is to spend Euro 44 million on developing tiny components to help electric vehicles improve their performance, so that they can better compete with models powered with liquid fuels. The Fiat and Audi-backed E3CAR (Energy efficient electrical car) project will especially focus on emerging nanotechnologies as its researchers aim to boost electric cars’ often less than stellar driving abilities.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A MAJOR European research project will spend Euro 44 million developing tiny components to help electric vehicles improve their performance and compete with liquid fuel models. The Fiat and Audi-backed E3CAR (Energy efficient electrical car) project will especially focus on emerging nanotechnologies to improve "semiconductor technologies, devices, circuits and sub-systems" increasing energy efficiency by 35%, boosting power and battery life.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

The European Commission will spend around Euro 3 million on promoting sales outside the European Union (EU) of French spirits, Italian and Portuguese wines over the next three years. It is spending Euro 1.2 million on marketing and information campaigns in Japan and north America coordinated by Italian wine federation Federdoc; Euro 1 million promoting Portuguese ‘vinho verde’ wines within China, Norway, Latin and north America, campaigns organised by the Comissão de Viticultura da Região dos Vinhos Verdes; and Euro 912 million on promoting Cognac, with campaigns in China, Russia and north America coordinated by France’s Bureau National Interprofessionnel du Cognac (BNIC).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

OUTSPOKEN European Union (EU) information society Commissioner Viviane Reding is to leave her position in Brussels when the new European Commission is confirmed in January. The Luxembourger will be replaced by a tough Dutch free-market liberal Neelie Kroes who takes on a renamed post of digital agenda Commissioner.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

FRANCE has secured control of the key European Commission internal market portfolio for the next five years, according to the new team unveiled today by the Commission’s president José Manuel Barroso. The move, if confirmed by the European Parliament in January, is sure to spark concerns amongst supporters of liberalisation given the French government’s usual support for bureaucratic controls on the economy.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

MEASURED by what’s been happening in the European cigarette market over the past 10 to 15 years, 2008 – and what we’ve seen of 2009 so far – hasn’t been that bad. It may not have been good, exactly, but considering the global recession few people will have been looking for uplift.…

By Paul Cochrane, in Beirut

Sanctions are one of those political issues that can make amiable dinner conversation turn unpleasant, as the battle lines are drawn down the table between those for and against. They have certainly had mixed success, starting with the first recorded case of a trade embargo some 2,400 years ago between Athens and neighboring Megara. That embargo failed and sparked a war.

Some argue they have had a spotty record since, while others prefer to pick-and-mix examples from embargoes through the ages to argue their case. The more pragmatic approach would be not whether sanctions “work,” but when and under what circumstances.

On one hand, those that are meant to oust a dictator but result in the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians – in Iraq for instance – can be considered counter-productive.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

AWARENESS amongst British nurses, especially senior nurses, of fraud and corruption in the National Health Service (NHS), is high today – thanks in part to the NHS’ Counter Fraud and Security Management Service (CFSMS). Its work has encouraged honest nurses to blow the whistle on such crimes in British healthcare systems, and has recently been praised by the European Healthcare Fraud and Corruption Network (EHFCN), which was formed in 2005 to fight the problem across Europe.…