Search Results for: united nations⊂mit=Search

BY PHILIP FINE

UNITED States private-label garment retailers will be asking themselves whether they should in future demand more stringent labour relations codes with external clothing manufacturers, after chain Wet Seal settled a case involving questionable third-party labour practices. Four garment workers had filed wage claims against their employer, DT Sewing, as well as Wet Seal, the 619-store national chain with which DT did business.…

Keith Nuthall
THE PACIFIC island of Nauru, already ecologically scarred by open cast mining of its guano reserves, has a new problem to content with: its shores are clogged with discarded cans of Fosters and Victoria Bitter. Independent state Palau’s waste disposal systems are so poor, its coast is “blue green”, not from the surrounding azure waters, but from “mounds of discarded Fosters and VB” says the United Nations Environment Programme.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
AS PART of its strategy to fight the obesity epidemic in the United States, the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is urging drinks producers to include more realistic caloric intake listings on the labels of their brands.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SHOE industry members of a specialist United States committee have strongly backed the US-Australia free trade agreement. Representatives on the sector advisory committee on footwear, leather and leather products welcomed its restrictive rules of origin (protecting shoe-makers) and lengthy 10-year tariff phase-outs for 17 protective footwear items of particular concern.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) is prolonging its dispute with the United States at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) over Washington’s assessment of benefits enjoyed by privatised steel companies from past public subsidies. Following a protracted WTO dispute, the US was last January (2003) ordered to reform its “change in ownership” methodology, through has justified countervailing duties protecting American steel producers.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
A CONSORTIUM of seven major power companies is to apply for a license to build a new commercial power plant in the United States. EDF International North America, a subsidiary of Électricité de France, and the Westinghouse Electric Company, a BNFL subsidiary, are participating.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
AMERICAN researchers have developed a ‘curtain of air’ system that could keep disease-carrying insects from boarding civil aeroplanes. The technology, created by the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) in the United States, is a high velocity fan system used in passenger walkways that excludes 99 per cent of mosquitoes and flies.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN EU-supported research scheme has developed practical guidelines on recycling waste from 19 food production processes. AWARENET worked out technical solutions for recycling its oils, sugars, vitamins, colorants and antioxidants. *http://ica.cordis.lu/search/index.cfm?fuseaction=proj.simpledocument&PJ_RCN=5059864&CFID=58430&CFTOKEN=21966306…

BY MARK ROWE
Mention Albania and money and one is drawn back to the extraordinary pyramid schemes that gripped the country in the mid-1990s as it emerged into a post-Stalinist dawn. Albanians poured in funds with an enthusiasm as remarkable as it was misguided.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A SPECIALIST United States government committee has criticised the USA-Australia free trade agreement. The agricultural technical advisory committee for trade in animal and animal products said the deal failed to remove “unscientific” sanitary regulations restricting US pork and poultry exports, and noted opposition from American cattle producers to widening import quotas for Australian beef.…