Search Results for: Russia

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BEEF consumption within the European Union has continued to rise, despite the Foot and Mouth crisis, according to EU agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler, who maintains there is a “slow but steady recovery.” He has claimed that consumption is now just 5.7 per cent lower than the same period last year.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has signed an agreement with Russia on space research cooperation. EU research commissioner Phillipe Busquin and Russian space agency director general Youri Koptiev agreed a joint document on the Euro-Russian Space Partnership. The deal focuses on mutual assistance in the development of satellite navigation systems such as Galileo and Glonass, Brussels’ “global monitoring for environment and security” (GMES) initiative and launch services, notably the launch of Soyuz rockets from the European Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana.…

KEITH NUTHALL
BRITISH hauliers may not in future find themselves at such a competitive disadvantage with eastern European competitors regarding the commercial transport of animals, because of a planned updating to a Council of Europe welfare convention.

Its commitments apply to countries both outside and within the European Union, where hauliers already have to comply with expensive rules on trailer standards, journey times, rest periods and the watering and feeding of livestock.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL AND ALAN OSBORN
EUROPEAN Union countries will have to ensure that at least two per cent of their transport fuel supplies are in the form of bio-fuels – made from sugar beet, cereals, maize and rape-seed – by 2005, under a European Commission directive to be proposed very shortly, said Franz Fischler, agriculture Commissioner.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
PRACTICAL guidelines on steps that governments should take to fight digital piracy have been released by the Council of Europe, an organisation whose members include Russia and other eastern European countries, and where such crimes are known to have taken place in the past.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
RUSSIA has ratified the Council of Europe’s Convention on Laundering, Search, Seizure and Confiscation of the Proceeds from Crime, a move that could herald a tightening in Russian government policy towards the fighting of money laundering.

Signatories have to ensure that their national legislation provides for the confiscation of the proceeds of crime.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union Council of Ministers has imposed definitive anti-dumping duties on imports into the EU of certain steel and iron cables from the Czech Republic, Russia, Turkey and Thailand.

Its decision – by the written procedure used during Brussels’ summer break – follows an inquiry, which “confirmed” concerns that the sale of cut-priced cables from these countries was harming EU producers.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
ALBERTA- based Talisman Energy Inc., of Canada, has acquired Lundin Oil AB, of Sweden for CAN$529 million. The deal will bring Talisman exploitable land in Malysia and Lundin’s interests in the North Sea, Malaysia, Vietnam and Papua New Guinea.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
MULTILATERAL sea and river organisations are usually created to deal with existing problems that cross national borders, but a new body has been making progress on a shipping issue that has yet even to happen: the exploitation and transport of subterranean solid mineral deposits.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Bank has called on eastern European and central Asian governments to improve their woeful record of judicial reform, in a region where independent justice is still struggling to emerge from the region’s communist legacy.

Speaking at a regional conference in St Petersburg, Russia, Johannes Linn, bank vice president said: “It is quite clear…that the countries of the region need to focus much more effort, not only on ensuring the development of clear and comprehensive legislation, but also on strengthening the capacity, independence, and accountability of the judicial system necessary to interpret and enforce the law.”…