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BY RUSSELL BERMAN

THE INTERNATIONAL cosmetics industry is watching closely for signs of regulatory changes that could be afoot under the incoming Obama administration and a new Congress in the United States, with increased Democratic majorities.

Maybe the biggest question is over environmental policy, where the president-elect has pledged to be much more aggressive than George W Bush and may push for added regulations that would prove costly to leading cosmetics firms.…

BY DEIRDRE MASON, JAMES BURNS, and JULIAN RYALL

With technological change being forced upon the auto manufacturing industry by high oil prices, plants are being retooled faster than in living memory. At such a time, companies are always looking for new ideas and technology.…

BY PHILIPPA JONES, DOMINIQUE PATTON and LUCY JONES

The growth in outsourcing within the clothing and textile sector worldwide has highlighted a key issue, and that is the relative merits of running an integrated company that handles basic production and design, or relying on a string of specialist suppliers to deliver the goods, from fibre supplies, to textile manufacture, design, clothing assembly and retail.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE CHINESE government has run out of legal options to fight the United States, the European Union (EU) and Canada over maintaining certain import duties it imposes on foreign auto-parts. The tariffs in question are levied when China-based assembly plants fail to use a designated minimum proportion of China-manufactured parts, and they have now been declared illegal once-and-for-all at the World Trade Organization (WTO).…

BY MICHAEL ROSTON

ENERGY policy has been at the front and center of American politics, and played a major role in the 2008 presidential election. The candidates, Senators Barack Obama and John McCain, skirmished often on the best ways to deal with the cost of energy and global climate change, with Obama making the creation of millions of green jobs a centerpiece of his appeal to American voters.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) Council of Ministers has approved harmonising EU chemical labelling rules with those of the United Nations Globally Harmonised System. This will change some warning messages and pictograms on some products – such as aerosols, hair dyes and nail varnish – and some cosmetics ingredients, to make potential health hazards better understood.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

UNITED Nations experts have said the global food price crisis continues, despite the global recession and linked oil price falls. Economists from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) told a World Trade Organisation agriculture committee meeting its global food price index is still 51% higher than in September 2006, albeit at its lowest for nine months.…

BY CRISTINA MUNTEAN

THE SECURITY of energy supply, including oil and gas storage capacity, dominates the current energy agenda of the Czech Republic, which took over the six-month rotating presidency of the European Union (EU) from January 1, 2009.

This is no surprise: on July 10, 2008, Russian oil pipeline operator Transnieft cut monthly contracted oil deliveries by almost half from 500,000 tonnes to 300,000 tonnes via the Druzhba pipeline.…

BY ERIC LYMAN

BATTLE lines have been drawn in negotiations to renew the Kyoto Protocol over the future shape of energy policy within future United Nations efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. At December’s climate change summit, in Poznan, Poland, a key power industry issue has emerged as a primary point of discord: whether or not carbon capture and storage technologies should be allowed in a revised Kyoto Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).…

BY LEE ADENDORFF, in Lucca, Italy; PHILIPPA JONES, in Paris; DOMINIQUE PATTON, in Beijing; KARRYN CARTELLE, in Tokyo; and LUCY JONES, in Dallas

Where is the best cutting edge research for the textile and clothing industry? Which are the best design schools, the best fabric developers and the best industrial innovators in the sector?…