Search Results for: United Nations

BY MARK ROWE
LEADING Thai car and electrical appliance manufacturers have said they are prepared to switch to direct imports of cold-rolled steel amidst a looming shortage and expected subsequent price rise for domestic hot-rolled coils, a raw material for cold-rolled sheets.…

BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKA
THE PROSPECT of significant underwater monosite, ilmanite, rutile and zircon off the Sri Lankan coast has attracted the attention of 10 international companies, two from Australia, two from India and two from Sri Lanka. Their applications to mine the 11 heavy mineral seabed deposits, whose estimated worth exceeds US$330 million, are being considered by the island’s Marine Pollution Prevention Authority (MPPA).…

BY ALAN OSBORN
FORGET all those stories you used to hear about weak regulation and cosy financial set-ups in Britain’s offshore dependencies such as the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and the crown colony of Gibraltar. They may once have been good places to launder money but not any more they aren’t.…

BY MARK ROWE
IN the days of the Soviet Union, many millions of men and women had a choice of one state-manufactured brand of shampoo, toothpaste or soap. If anything, the authorities managed to limit even further access to such “indulgences” as perfume.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A UNITED Nations Environment Programme report has urged governments to take better care of the underground aquifers that they plunder for drinking water supplies, warning that many countries are pumping groundwater at unsustainable rates.

The paper singles out Spain’s Segura river basin for particular concern.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A UNITED Nations Environment Programme report has urged governments to take better care of the underground aquifers that they plunder for drinking water supplies, warning that many countries are pumping groundwater at unsustainable rates.

The paper singles out Spain’s Segura river basin for particular concern.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A CALL has been made at the World Trade Organisation for this September’s summit in Cancún, Mexico, to agree to compensate least developed countries for the economic pain wreaked on their cotton producers by subsides paid out in rich developed countries.…

BY PHILIP FINE

AN AMERICAN labour tribunal has ruled that retail giant Wal-Mart broke the law by refusing to bargain with meat department workers whose local union branch had been essentially dismantled by the retailer moving to pre-packaging meat products.

The National Labor Relations Board has ordered Wal-Mart to bargain with a group of Jacksonville, Texas, in-house meat cutters and their union about the effects of the company’s decision to turn what had been a fully-equipped on-site butcher shop into a pre-packaged meat department, eleven days after a majority of the dozen workers voted to unionise.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union has struck a research cooperation deal with the United States over the development of hydrogen fuel cells. Both sides have agreed to pool efforts, including staging demonstrations of fuel cell vehicles and fuelling networks, writing codes and standards for the technology and assessing the economics of exploiting rare earth materials to build special high-temperature cells.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED States and the European Union have traded barbs over their respective policies regarding genetically modified food. During a US-EU summit in Washington, President George W Bush claimed European reticence over GM was preventing starving African countries from importing a valuable food resource.…