Search Results for: International law

BY EDWARD PETERS
FOR a snapshot of the current state of the Chinese tobacco industry, casual observers need go no further than the massive adverts blanketing some of the main highways in Shanghai, which is generally considered to be the most go-ahead city in the People’s Republic (PRC).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development is promoting a set of guidelines it has drawn up with anti-corruption groups Transparency International and Social Accountability International to help businesses confront bribery in their operations and commercial dealings. These Business Principles for Countering Bribery are, said Jermyn Brooks, Transparency International’s Executive Director, “essentially an anti-bribery framework based on best practice.”…

Keith Nuthall
THE INTERNATIONAL Criminal Court (ICC) has welcomed the conviction of a band of pirates in an Indian court, as a welcome and rare example of a country prosecuting piracy in international waters. Seven-year labour camp sentences were handed down to 14 Indonesian pirates for hijacking the Japanese-owned Alondra Rainbow off Indonesia in October 1999, along with its aluminium ingot cargo.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WEAKNESSES in scientific advice leading the European Commission to propose often controversial catch restrictions in European Union (EU) waters has prompted Brussels to propose a major overhaul of its assessment of stocks.

In a new policy paper (called a Communication) on the subject, the Commission admits the shortcomings of existing systems and suggests ways to better involve the fishing industry itself and other international organisations.…

BY MARK ROWE and ALAN OSBORN, in London, PHILIP FINE and MONICA DOBIE, in Montreal, and RICHARD HURST, in Johannesburg

RATCHETING up security has been a prime concern of the nuclear industry since the September 11 attacks, with all countries possessing commercial reactors addressing the issue to some extent.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE BRITISH government is under pressure from the European Commission to reform its motor insurance legislation, so that compensation is paid to victims of property damage caused by stolen vehicles whose driver cannot be identified.

Brussels has sent a formal request to London requesting that UK legislation allows for such payments, claiming it has a duty to act under the European Union’s (EU) Second Motor Insurance Directive (84/5/EEC) and threatening legal action at the European Court of Justice if it does not.…

BY PHILIP FINE

AMERICAN President George W Bush has still not let it be known how his administration will fund a seminal sea safety bill that recently came into law. Earlier this month (February), Bush unveiled his 2004 budget request and, oddly, offered no money for the provisions of The Maritime Security Act of 2002, which requires

detailed port security plans, more screening of cargo, upgraded navigational equipment and an increase in off-shore surveillance to 12 miles from three,.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is planning to lend international private equity group Advent International Euro 10 million, to help it, and an associated consortium, buy 65 per cent of the Bulgarian Telecommunications Company (BTC), which is being privatised.…

BY MARK ROWE
RUSSIA has been warned that it faces retaliatory trade measures if it does not remove import barriers on meat from the USA. Robert Zoellick, the United States Trade Representative, told the US Senate Finance Committee that he would not shrink from taking such steps in order to put pressure on Russia to drop the restrictions.…

BY MARK ROWE AND KEITH NUTHALL
A RUSSIAN entrepreneur, Oleg Udolin, is making a tidy living out of making windscreen-cleaning fluid out from confiscated contraband vodka. In a neat reversal of the traditional Russian penchant for drinking anti-freeze, the Moscow region man’s company Spiritprompererabotka has been extracting ethyl alcohol under licence from bottles of vodka confiscated by Russia’s police and customs forces.…