Search Results for: Russia

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INTERNATIONAL Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) has rejected European Union (EU) calls for countries to have the right to impose aviation fuel taxes on all airlines operating within their territories. ICAO’s general assembly listened to opposition from the US, China, Brazil and Russia, postponing any decision until 2007, at the earliest.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
RUSSIA’s Duma is expected to ratify the Kyoto Protocol by the end of December, following the Russian cabinet’s decision to implement the treaty. Taking ratifications past the agreed minimum of 55 countries generating at least 55% of 1990 global greenhouse emissions, a vote would ensure Kyoto is in force early next year.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is making its largest ever loan to the leasing sector in Russia, lending US$150 million to Austria’s Raiffeisen-Leasing for on-lending to Russian businesses. Transport leasing is one of four sectors prioritised in this loan package, designed to “encourage competition in the sector and spread leasing beyond Moscow and St Petersburg”, said an EBRD note.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission under incoming energy Commissioner Lázló Kovács could look to Russia and the Ukraine as the key guarantors of Europe’s future gas and oil supplies. Kovács, a Hungarian, has told the European Parliament that he intends to establish “real cooperation” with these countries as a first priority.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has drawn up plans to sink US$90 million into transforming a dilapidated Moscow shopping landmark into a modern retail complex. The Detsky Mir children’s store block dates back to Soviet times and, said the bank, “has not been properly maintained and is currently in a very poor condition”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INCOMING European Commissioner for health and consumer affairs has shown signs in a European Parliament questionnaire that he could be as feisty as his predecessor, Ireland’s David Byrne, calling for an EU-wide ban on smoking in public.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
CANADA and Russia have blocked the addition of chrysotile asbestos to the Rotterdam Convention’s “prior informed consent”, which would force exporters to secure the consent of an importing government before shipping the carcinogenic material abroad. The two countries claimed at a meeting of parties to the UN convention that the material is safe when processed properly.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A THREATENED renewed ban on EU animal product exports to Russia has been averted. Russia has accepted the EU’s principle of regional controls, where the European Commission can restrict the sale of products affected by disease to a limited area of EU countries.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BRITAIN’S performance in reducing heart disease deaths could be much improved compared with many of its European Union (EU) partners, a new World Health Organisation heart disease atlas, has shown.

Dividing a country’s annual deaths from heart disease with its population, saturated fats and beer loving Britain had a comparative factor of 2, based on 120,530 deaths in 2002 amongst a population of 59 million.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN governments should exploit the scare tactics of the 1980’s when AIDS campaigns shocked promiscuous sex devotees and intravenous drug users into changing their behaviour, stemming HIV infections, the World Health Organisation has claimed. It fears dramatic increases in HIV cases in eastern Europe that are amongst the world’s worst, notably in Estonia, Latvia, Russia and the Ukraine “where the epidemic continues to spread unchecked”.…