Search Results for: South Africa

BY DAVID HAWORTH, in Brussels, and KEITH NUTHALL

1. The Commission is a keen supporter of creating increased gas storage capacities. But who should pay for developing these facilities?

The Commission believes that investment in storage should be left to the market, and the costs allocated through market forces.…

BY MARK ROWE

OFFICIALS in the central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan have called for urgent action to tackle the country’s uranium dumps, a legacy of the country’s role in the nuclear industry of the former Soviet Union. Their call has highlighted increasing concerns about how depleted uranium is stored, at a time when the United Kingdom and other governments look set to press ahead with a new generation of nuclear power stations.…

BY MARK ROWE

WHEN it came to accession to the European Union (EU) in 2004, the Baltic States were something of a special case. Though unable to compete on the same scale as their neighbours in Poland, or further south, Ukraine and the Czech Republic, the economies of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia quickly gained a reputation for being micro economic powerhouses – and the same has applied to their paint industries.…

BY PAUL COCHRANE

BEIRUT: The month long war waged by Israel against Hizbullah has caused considerable damage to Lebanon’s environment.

The coastline is marred by an oil spill, the air has been polluted by burning fuel oil, destroyed factories, forest fires and dust kicked up from bombings, and there is the possibility that depleted uranium (DU) and phosphorous bombs were used by the Israeli military.…

BY LIZ HALL

SIX years ago, government representatives from nine South American countries gathered in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, to sign a document of great importance to those concerned with fighting money-laundering (ML) and terrorism financing (TF).

On December 8, 2000, representatives of the governments of the following countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay, signed the Founding Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) formally establishing GAFISUD, a regional body modelled on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).…

BY MARK ROWE

THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is planning to boost to the Russian car market by pumping up to Euro 300 million into the Russian Standard Bank, financing existing auto loans, and enabling the bank to make Euro 300 million’s worth of new car loans – worth more than 30,000 smaller autos.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

EUROPEAN Union (EU) environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas has unveiled European Commission plans to next year launch comprehensive legislation boosting effective carbon capture and storage.

The laws would remove legal barriers impeding research and development into this environmental technology and would also lay down rules on liability, for instance, if stored CO2 leached into the environment.…

BY KEITH NOYAHR, in Colombo

THE RESUMPTION of war in Sri Lanka is bad news. Period. But, ironically, there have been some benefits. One of these is a concentrating of the mind amongst law enforcement officials within Sri Lanka and their counterparts abroad into tracking down and stopping both terrorist financing and money laundering.…

BY PAUL COCHRANE

The Iranian tobacco market has been partly opened up to international players in the past five years and growth is expected to rise strongly, but development of the sector is beset by extraordinarily high rates of smuggling and governmental regulations.…

BY STEVEN SWINDELLS, in Johannesburg

THE SOUTH African government has delayed the imposition of import quotas on China-made clothes and textile imports, following pressure from the country’s big clothing retailers. Chinese exporters will now be unfettered until January 1, 2007, rather than September 28.…