Search Results for: Russia

BY MARGUERITE-JEANNE DESCHAMPS, MINI PANT ZACHARIAH and WANG FANGQING

While sales of alcohol in pubs and bars in North America, Europe and the UK have seen a steady decline since the global economic downturn, experts are saying the shift from on-trade to off-trade sales of alcohol has not really had a financial impact on the alcoholic beverage industry as a whole.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A EUROPEAN Union (EU)-funded Russo-German research project has been developing a plasma neutron source using a so-called ‘Gas Dynamic Trap’ to incinerate radioactive waste. Scientists from Germany’s Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, and the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics (BINP), Novosibirsk, Russia, have been investigating the coupling a sub-critical fission reactor and a DT-fusion plasma device to generate 14 MeV neutrons: the aim to burn and transmutate long-lived isotopes of nuclear waste, including plutonium, minor actinides and fission products.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

RUSSIA has been invited by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD) to join its anti-bribery convention. This is despite Russia languishing at 154th out of 178 countries ranked in Transparency International’s 2010 corruption perception index. The OECD acted after its President Dmitry Medvedev signed in May legislation criminalising foreign bribery, with a significant increase in fines for companies and individuals who bribe foreign public officials to gain business advantages.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

INTERNATIONAL football federation FIFA is struggling to protect its reputation against corruption claims sparking the provisional suspension by its ethics committee of vice-president Jack A Warner, from Trinidad, and Qatari executive committee member Mohamed bin Hammam. Both were accused of trying to bribe Caribbean Football Union (CFU) members for votes in an upcoming FIFA presidential vote.…

BY LENA SMIRNOVA

RUSSIA’S Dixy Group will spend US dollars USD25.5 million on a marketing overhaul that will start on June 1, the company announced in Moscow last night (May 30).

As part of the new strategy, the company will redesign the look of its stores and roll out a Russia-wide advertising campaign to solidify its identity as a friendly, neighbourhood supermarket.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

ARGENTINA, Uruguay and Iran are among almost 100 countries expected to lose tariff breaks for their food exports to the European Union (EU), under a planned reform of the EU’s Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) system, which lowers EU import duties for emerging market and developing countries for more 6,200 tariff lines, including many food products.…

BY JOHN PAGNI

FINLAND is bucking the post-Fukushima trend of abandoning nuclear power, pushing ahead with its reactor construction programme.

The cost of building Olkiluoto 3, the 1,600MW European pressurised water reactor nuclear power plant is currently Euro EUR3.2 billion. Although four years behind schedule, project supporters remain positive: "Once we were told it would be delayed, the timetable didn’t matter.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

BRAZIL and Argentina are among almost 100 countries expected to lose tariff breaks for their knitwear exports to the European Union (EU), under a planned reform of the EU’s Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) system.

The European Commission announced yesterday (May 10) it wanted to focus import duty concessions on poorer countries and so henceforth those regarded by the World Bank as high or upper middle income states would no longer qualify from January 2014.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Chemicals Agency (ECHA) has told manufacturers of intermediate chemicals – including those used in the paint, coatings and solvent sectors – they may have to submit more information under REACH chemical control system. ECHA screened more than 400 dossiers of substances declared as intermediates and has said that 86% have not proved that this special status should apply – the agency requires less information on intermediates than standard chemical substances.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

ENERGY companies and non-government organisations (NGOs) participating in the development of a European Union (EU) long-term energy plan to 2050, have identified fossil fuel costs as the main motor of change in future public policy. In consultation staged by the European Commission for developing an ‘Energy Roadmap to 2050’, about half of all respondents believed "global fossil fuel prices in relation to costs of domestic energy resources and long term security of supply will be the most likely key drivers…" This conclusion comes in a summary of responses released by Brussels.…