Search Results for: South Africa

BY RICHARD HURST, in Johannesburg
SOUTH Africa’s first bio-diesel refinery is to be built in Isando, near Johannesburg at an estimated cost of Rand 83 million, (US$9.7 million). The refinery is expected to produce 60,000 tonnes of diesel fuel annually for either the local market or for export.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL AND ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Parliament today, (Wednesday), approved the creation of a new European Aviation Safety Agency, (EASA), but extended the proposed legislation to include the setting up of a new independent authority similar to the US National Transportation Safety Board to investigate aircraft accidents and make recommendations.…

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 RICHARD HURST, in Johannesburg
THE SOUTH African government is considering a request from Zimbabwe and Mauritius to expedite the removal of tariffs on textiles and clothing imports from their countries. The existing agreement in the Southern African Development Community, (SADC), caters for the removal of such tariffs by the year 2006.…

BY RICHARD HURST
THE MANAGING director of an online learning company in South Africa has announced at a national conference on the theme of learning in the Internet age that his group is about to launch his country’s third substantial e-learning initiative.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A SPECIALIST monitoring unit in the EU’s Joint Research Centre, has been using the latest satellite radar technology to track deliberate and accidental discharges of oil and other pollutants from shipping, encouraging the European Commission to take a stronger line in its maritime pollution policies.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE DISMANTLING of the Indonesian price regulator APKINDO and short-termist over-production in the south east Asian country has been blamed by the United Nations as the source of continual instability in world markets for this key timber product. Since the abolition of the organisation, said the new 2000-2001 World Commodity Survey from the UN Conference on Trade and Development, (UNCTAD), “the plywood market has witnessed extremely volatile prices.”…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission’s LIFE-Nature programme is meet half the costs of a pounds 1.65 million scheme to eradicate the American mink from the Western isles of Scotland where it is beginning to decimate important bird populations. Remaining cash will come from Scottish National Heritage and others.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INDIAN government has sought formal talks at the World Trade Organisation with Argentina over what it claims is discriminatory treatment of its pharmaceutical exports. The south Americans insist that for medicines to enter Argentina, they must have been made in a country included on one of two official Buenos Aires lists, linked to specific inspection regimes.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has tried to make up for its failure to strike fishing access deal with Morocco by forging an improved agreement with its north African neighbour Mauritania which Brussels claims its “the most important with a third country” that it has made.…