Search Results for: japan

BY KARRYN MILLER

AUSTRALIA’S paint and coatings manufacturers have not felt the burden of the economic downturn equally. "Generally speaking, sales are down, but some product lines have experienced growth because they are replacing products that are being phased out," explained Daniel Wurm, managing director of Greenpainters Ltd, a non-profit network promoting sustainable paint and coatings technology in Australia.…

BY JULIAN RYALL

CITIBANK Japan Ltd. restarted sales activities at its retail banking division on August 14, after the Japanese Financial Services Agency ordered sales be halted for one month because the bank had failed to maintain required standards to control money laundering.…

BY GERARD O’DWYER

FOR those seduced by the idea that Nordic countries are full of healthy statuesque blond super-beings eating perfect diets and exercising regularly, it may come as something of a surprise to learn that obesity is on the rise in the region.…

BY MARK ROWE and GAVIN BLAIR

THE ANSWER to the world’s future fuel needs may be literally all around us, and freely available in abundance, thanks to the throw-away society of the 21st century. Bioenergy, produced from all matter of waste products, from wood chips, to agricultural husks and slurry, has been steadily elevated up the list of potential sources of energy that will be required in a low-carbon world.…

BY PHILIPPA JONES, in Paris; LEE ADENDORFF, in Lucca, Italy; KARRYN MILLER, in Tokyo; and LUCY JONES, in Dallas

IT almost seems commonsense to say that an industry providing such a human product as clothing has to take account of cultural sensibilities in target markets.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

THESE are uncertain times for international aviation deals generally thanks to the global recession, but nowhere is the situation more fraught than in Washington where negotiations for the second stage of the 2007 ‘open skies’ agreement between the European Union (EU) and the USA appear to have run into the buffers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THERE is a sense, in the rivers of documents pouring from international talks to replace the Kyoto Protocol with a new global warming treaty in Copenhagen this December that the chickens are really coming home to roost.

For the first time – at July’s G8 summit in Italy – there was a common near-universal declaration that humankind has been messing up the climate and has to stop filling the atmosphere with carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.…

BY MARK ROWE

ACCORDING to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), today’s world aircraft fleet is about 65% more fuel-efficient than in 1970. Between 1990 and 2000, fuel efficiency improved by 17%. Furthermore, the clean technology of modern aircraft engines has almost eliminated emissions of carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A NICHE producer of cashmere in Mongolia is being backed by a European Bank for Reconstruction & Development (EBRD) loan of US$800,000. The bank wants to boost the competitiveness of Ezio Foradori, a Mongolian-owned cashmere production company in the capital Ulan Bator.…

BY WANG FANGQING

GONE are the days when it was only rich developed country markets which punished cigarette sales with high duties. In the past six months, the biggest (and gloomiest) news for China’s cigarette manufacturers has been the change in consumption tax (an excise tax) – it was raised as high as 56% depending on the tobacco product, along with an additional 5% ad valorem wholesale price-based tax.…