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TAX BREAKS FOR ITALY
Italy has won European Commission approval for regional tax breaks to help businesses, on condition that the scheme is extended to cover banking and insurance. The green light from Brussels gives a boost to Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi’s so called “cuneo fiscale” - an economic plan to increase growth by cutting companies’ labour costs. Prodi hopes the policy will encourage job creation and strengthen the economy.
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GAS SUIT DISMISSED
A U.S. federal judge has tossed out a lawsuit by California’s attorney general seeking hundreds of millions of dollars from six automakers for damaging the state with climate-changing greenhouse gases. Martin Jenkin, a federal judge in the Northern District of California, said the issue of global warming should be decided in the political rather than legal arena. The suit, filed in September, targeted General Motors Corp, Ford Motor Co, Toyota Motor Corp, the U.S. arm of Germany’s DaimlerChrysler AG and the North Amer
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AIR TRANSPORT IS A “STUPID BUSINESS” - RYANAIR CEO
Air transport is a stupid business and usually loss-making, the head of Irish budget airline Ryanair was quoted as saying by a Belgian magazine in September.
Asked what drove his passion for air transport, Michael O’Leary told Trends magazine: “Nothing. It’s a stupid business, which generally loses a lot of money.”
O’Leary said it was likely he would stay as CEO for another three or four years rather than the two or three that he had previously indicated, and suggested he might then take up farming.
“My hobby is
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FEWER STEAKS MAY SAVE PLANET
Eating too much red meat is not only bad for your health - it is also bad for the planet, according to scientists.
Worldwide, agricultural activity accounts for about a fifth of total greenhouse-gas emissions and livestock production has a particularly big impact because of the large amount of methane emitted from belching cattle.
Tony McMichael of the Australian National University in Canberra and John Powles of Britain’s University of Cambridge, writing in the Lancet journal, said worldwide average meat consumpt
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SAFER, CHEAPER AND GREENER AIRCRAFT
A new EU project, coordinated by the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, is to develop a new computer-aided holistic solution for the early phase of aircraft design.
With knowledge from many fields, it is possible to propose the right solution for the aircraft’s control system at an early stage. This reduces the risk of wasted efforts on faulty designs, which in turn entails lower developmental costs and enhanced safety.
When a new airplane is projected, designers need knowledge and competence from
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IBM’S FREE SOFTWARE
IBM has declared that it will start offering free word processing and other office software, joining a growing group of companies providing free applications challenging a core Microsoft product. IBM has said it will offer document, spreadsheet and presentation software in a group of tools called Lotus Symphony. Microsoft’s Office suite of products, the industry standard for many years, already faces some stiff competiton from Google Inc’s online tools, called Google Apps.
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£1BN TO INNOVATE
The UK government will invest £1bn over the next three years to boost business innovation and technology devlopment and will create a new science and innovation strategy, to help position Britain as a key knowledge economy at the forefront of 21st century innovation. A review of science and innovation by Lord Sainsbury, published in October, will be used as a blueprint to drive success. The review found Britain needs to do more to produce the best conditions for innovation.
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MORE EUROPEAN COMPANIES SWITCH TO GREEN POWER
A growing number of European companies are switching to renewable energy for their manufacturing plants, stores and office facilities. Renewable energy is allowing more companies than ever to power their operations while realising a number of business benefits in the process.
The Green Power Market Development Group – Europe (GPMDG-EU) has announced the completion of its first 100 megawatts (MW) of green power projects at 50 corporate facilities across 16 European countries. GPMDG-EU, a coalition of leading European
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CALL FOR GLOBAL BIOMASS STANDARDS
The government has called for global standards for the growing of biomass used to produce biofuels.
Speaking at a conference organised by the Renewable Energy Association, climate change minister Phil Woolas said a regulatory balance must be struck between the growth in biofuels and environmental cost.
“The global community must as a matter of urgency work towards the development of internationally recognised standards for biomass grown to produce biofuels,” he said.
He pointed out deforestation and rising food
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ENGINEERING AS AN ART FORM
Europe’s largest labels and nameplates manufacturer GSM Graphic Arts is revolutionising the world of contemporary art using the innovative Primodise technology.
GSM has teamed up with a Leeds based artist, Christopher Dayman, to print his unique musically inspired art into the surface of large aluminium sheets using the sub-surface printing technique.
Primodise combines the process of anodising - opening up the pores of the aluminium substrate - and digital print which is applied into the surface and the pores are
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| Brains and beauty |
Furness and West Cumbria’s West Coast is about to experience a major investment that will strengthen the tourism and industry s ...
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| National Stadium, Beijing |
At the pinnacle of its construction, the National Stadium in Beijing had 7,000 workers toiling over the infrastructure. ...
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No smoke without fire
It seems that commentators, industry heads, central bankers and, dare I say it, Industrial Focus’s own journalists have made so ...
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Innovation for the nations
Hope for the future has arisen from the turmoil of the last few months, as industrial technologies have spun out some marvels o ...
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Supposedly the construction
materials of the future, composites are increasingly seen in
applications where optimum efficiency is paramount including
aircraft construction and renewable energy. As two research
examples show in this video, composites really are the future
for efficiency.
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