Archived material from historical editions of The Generator
US Senator, Ted Kennedy is one of many high profile figures who has reversed their normally environmental stance to oppose plans for the world’s largest wind farm in Nantucket sound, opposite the Kennedy compound in Hyannis. The Boston Globe reports that Congress is likely to pass legislation allowing the Governor of Massachusetts, or the Coast Continue Reading →
Nine of the current 25 European Union (EU) members were involved in 18
infringement notices issued by the European Commission (EC) involving
four separate pieces of climate change legislation, according to a
press release issued in Brussels on Thursday, 6 April.
The nine members are Austria, Cyprus, Germany, Greece, Italy,
Luxembourg, Malta, Poland and Spain. Cyprus, Luxembourg and Malta each
received
three infringement notices; Italy, Poland and Spain two each; and
Austria, Greece and Germany one each.
The press release said the EC had
the power to take action against a member state that was not meeting
its obligations. The first step was the first written warning to the
member state requesting it to submit its observations by a specified
date, usually two months later.
Titus Natkime, 31, the son of a tribal leader who encountered the first Americans to walk into the wilderness of Papua newly 50 years ago, is clearly upset with his employer, the American mining company Freeport-McMoRan, reported The Australian Financial Review (6/4/2006, p. 61).
For generations, Natkime’s clan has laid claim to much of the land in Papua, the Indonesian province where Freeport mines some of the world’s largest copper and gold reserves.
And now it is time for a payback. Natkime brings out a draft document showing Freeport’s offer: $US250,000 to set up a foundation for the clan, plus $US100,000 annually, a sizeable amount in Indonesia’s most remote and poorest province.
"Why should I accept it?’" asks Natkime, who works in the company’s government-relations department, although he is hardly an ardent spokesman. "It’s an insult."
In comparison, he says, Freeport is making tens of millions of dollars every day.
Smorgon Steel is expecting earnings growth of as much as 15 per cent in
the second half following a rebound in scrap metal prices, marking a
significant improvement on management’s former guidance of flat
earnings for the half year, reported The Australian Financial Review (5/4/2006, p. 49).
Smorgon said on 3 April that since the
release of its first-half results, selling prices for scrap had
rebounded more strongly than expected. “Smorgon is on track to report a
2006 profit of as much as $130m.”
HMS-1 (heavy melting scrap) grade ferrous scrap is now trading at more than $US250 a tonne compared with $US210 in January.
Terry Peabody, chairman of Transpacific Industries, migrated to
Australia because he saw it as a “land of opportunity”. And he didn’t
take too long to find one, reported The Courier Mail (5 April 2006, p.42).
Fly ash or pozzolanic – discarded
by coal burning power plants – was beginning to be introduced as an
extender and reactive agent in lightweight cements. Peabody quickly
noted that NSW power stations were paying to have this “waste” dumped,
and he cornered the market.
Tamiflu, the patented vaccine against influenza H5N1, otherwise known as bird flu, is owned by Gilead. US secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld was a major shareholder of Gilean until recently. Doctor Pushkar Kulkarni, a toxicoligist at the Bombay Veterinary College points out that Tamiflu is actually an extract of Star Aniseed, a major component of Continue Reading →