Search Results for: International business

Keith Nuthall
THE PURCHASE of adequate accident coverage for all passenger ships operating in European Union waters should become mandatory under proposed EU legislation from the European Commission; it implements last year’s updating of the International Maritime Organisation’s Athens convention on passenger ferries, which limits the liability of a carrier for death or injury involving a traveller to around US$325,000 per passenger.…

Keith Nuthall
Serious doubts have been expressed over the European Commission’s

ability to meet its 2005 deadline for the reform of its accounting system.

In a letter sent on July 2nd to commissioners Michaele Schreyer, who is in

charge of the Euro 79 billion budget, and Neil Kinnock, who handles

internal administration, the commission’s internal auditor Jules Muis said

the proposed timetable was “not achievable.”…

BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKA, in Columbo
THE SRI Lankan government has returned its international airport departure tax fee to SLRupees 1,000 (US$10.29), having temporarily raised it to 1,500 (US$15.44). The move had prompted criticism as the higher tax rate outstripped rival destinations in the region.…

BY MARK ROWE
THE PARIS-BASED perfume business Sephora is in talks to buy L’Etoile, Russia’s largest cosmetics chain. L’Etoile, which is based in Moscow, has 101 stores in the city and also owns outlets in St Petersburg. The company’s sales amounted to US$90 million last year.…

BY MARK ROWE
RUSSIA’S Vsampo-Avisma Group, Europe’s top titanium producer, is planning to sell as much as 27 per cent of its stock at an initial public offering on foreign exchanges. Moscow-based Troika Dialog brokerage will advise on the sale, according to Vsmpo-Avisma’s deputy general director Vyacheslav Bresht.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has drawn up plans to lend Tunisia’s Tunisacier SA Euro 35 million to help modernise and expand an existing steel plant. It is currently producing galvanised steel sheets and the loan would also help transform it into a rolling and coated steel production centre, fully integrated with the upstream and downstream operations of the company’s parent, the Riva Group.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
MASSACRES in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) civil war and the murky business dealings that have fuelled the conflict are to be the first focus of the International Criminal Court (ICC), its chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has said.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission’s new Galileo global positioning satellite project should command enough earmarked frequency to avoid interference problems, following the recent International Telecommunication Union’s (ITU) World Radiocommunication Conference. Its four weeks of negotiations set aside sufficient radio spectrum for Galileo, to the satisfaction of Erkki Liikanen, EU enterprise and information society Commissioner.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE NEW Italian presidency of the European Union has announced that its top key energy priorities – until it leaves office in December – will include the passage into law of the proposed directives on co-generation, (alongside legislation on oil and gas stocks).…

BY PHILIP FINE

FROM Gaudeloupe, Arizona, to Duxbury, Massachusetts, and from Helena, Montana, to Loganville, Georgia, US smoking bans have increasingly been finding a small-town

following ; 78 towns and cities in the United States have now enacted smoking bans in all workplaces and restaurants within their municipalities.…