Search Results for: International law

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE PARIS-based International Energy Agency (IEA) says more efforts must be undertaken to decouple energy consumption and economic growth. Although its report ‘Oil Crises and Climate Challenges’ found that since the 1970’s wealth has increased much faster than energy use, it found 1970’s oil crisis sparked more effective energy conservation measures and greenhouse gas emission reductions than recent Kyoto Protocol linked policies.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
A CONSORTIUM of seven major power companies is to apply for a license to build a new commercial power plant in the United States. EDF International North America, a subsidiary of Électricité de France, and the Westinghouse Electric Company, a BNFL subsidiary, are participating.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
THE MOST fortified frontier in the world, Korea’s Demilitarized Zone, (DMZ) is being touted by the (South) Korea National Tourism Organisation as a future destination for wildlife-based eco-tourism. The DMZ, a strip of land four kilometres wide and 250 kilometres long divides North and South Korea and is littered with countless numbers of land mines, a no-mans-land since the end of the Korean War more than 50 years ago.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SIGNIFICANT delays are now expected to the introduction of a package of European Union (EU) food hygiene laws, with the European Parliament sticking to its guns over the need to allow public officials to inspect the slaughter of pigs and veal calves, a job the European Commission would allow abattoirs to undertake themselves.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is threatening Spain with legal action at the European Court of Justice regarding its 1987 law requiring labels on textile products to include the name and address of the manufacturer, wholesaler or importer. Brussels says this requirement breaks EU free movement of goods treaty commitments by creating additional costs for imported products.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has agreed to formally associate itself with the international Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). The bank will henceforth work with the initiative, developing “practical ways to promote its principles”, notably that mining companies disclose their financial relationships with governments.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BRITAIN has been given a relatively clean bill of health in the latest Transparency International corruption rankings, being viewed as joint-11th least-corrupt country in the world, sharing its billing with Canada and Luxembourg. Finland was the most honest place in which to do business said the pressure group’s survey, followed by Iceland and the Denmark plus New Zealand at joint third.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INTERNATIONAL Finance Corporation (IFC) of the World Bank is lending US$40 million to Turkish steel pipe specialist Borusan Holding A to help improve its financial and operational performance, implement quality control initiatives, and strengthen the Borusan group’s corporate governance.…

BY EDWARD PETERS
DEPENDING on who you ask, Taiwan is either a renegade province or to all intents and purposes an independent nation, albeit one that currently lacks full international recognition. To suggest that it could be a fully functioning country in its own right to anyone in Beijing – the capital of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) – is tantamount to treason.…

BY MARK WILSON
AWASH with recently-passed legislation and newly-established Financial Investigation Units, the small nations of the Caribbean have transformed their money laundering controls since the mid-1990s. In 2000, five Caribbean island jurisdictions made up one-third of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) list of fifteen non-cooperative countries and territories, each of them with ‘serious systemic problems,’ in the words of a FATF review published on June 22 of that year.…