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/ 22 October 2007
Microsoft ended three years of resistance on Monday and finally agreed to comply with a landmark 2004 antitrust decision by the European Commission. The defeated software giant announced it would not appeal against a decisive European Union court ruling two months ago that backed the commission.
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/ 18 October 2007
The European Union has given a cautious welcome to the outcome of a summit of three big developing countries. The leaders of Brazil, India and South Africa on Wednesday reaffirmed their commitment to seeking a deal in the long-delayed World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Doha round of global free-trade talks that was ”fair and acceptable to all”.
European Union and Chinese trade officials have agreed on a new way to handle Chinese textile exports to the bloc when quotas expire on December 31. Officials said the plan might help improve cooperation between the EU and China over the Asian economic powerhouse’s snowballing trade surplus with the 27-nation bloc.
The European Union is to hold an extraordinary meeting of national gas experts to discuss the dispute between Ukraine and Russian gas monopoly Gazprom, officials said on Wednesday. The EU Gas Coordination Group will hold an ad-hoc meeting later this month to ”evaluate the situation” and assess its ”possible consequences”.
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/ 14 September 2007
A key European Union and Africa summit remains under a shadow cast by Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, whose attendance is demanded by African leaders but could spark a boycott by Britain. The Europeans are tempted to try for a compromise ”Myanmar-style”, by proposing that Zimbabwe be represented at a lower level.
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/ 12 September 2007
Should Belgium break up? Would anyone in the rest of the world notice? Should they care? These are some of the questions being raised in a media frenzy both in and outside the country as a political impasse has fanned the flames of separatism in the Dutch-speaking north.
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/ 11 September 2007
The European Union (EU) should invite Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe to a planned summit with Africa because barring him would jeopardise relations between Africa and Europe, the Commonwealth’s secretary general said. The EU and Africa want to hold their first summit in seven years early December in Portugal.
Sudan has expelled the European Union and Canadian envoys from the war-torn African country, state radio and Western officials said on Thursday. The Sudanese Foreign Ministry had declared them persona non grata ”for involving themselves in activities that constitute an interference in the internal affairs of the country,” Sudan radio reported.
Exports of fresh meat, live animals and milk products will be banned from all of mainland Britain following its recent outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, the European Commission said on Monday. A spokesperson said the commission, the executive arm of the European Union, would formalise the decision — which was agreed with Britain — later on Monday.
The European Union’s top antitrust regulator has charged that Intel tried to use its huge market share to push smaller rival Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) out of the central processing unit business. The two companies make all the chips at the processing heart of the world’s personal computers and servers, but Intel has about 80% of the business.
Bulgaria said it was hopeful of an agreement with Libyan authorities on Monday that would pave the way for the release of six foreign medics convicted of infecting Libyan children with HIV. Prospects for the release of the five Bulgarian nurses and Palestinian doctor appeared to rise after France’s first lady and a top European Commission official flew to Libya.
The European Union (EU) is set to take a tentative step on Monday towards sending forces to Chad to help the United Nations protect refugees from Sudan’s Darfur region. UN peacekeeping chief Jean-Marie Guehenno had urged the 27-nation bloc on Tuesday to send troops and helicopters.
The European Union’s Court of Justice on Wednesday annulled a European Union (EU) antitrust decision that had prevented South African giant De Beers from buying rough diamonds from Russian rival Alrosa. The EU court said that European Commission efforts to curb business between the two diamond operations was ”manifestly disproportionate”.
A Belgian court sentenced a former Rwandan army major to 20 years in prison on Thursday for the murder of 10 Belgian peacekeepers and an undetermined number of Rwandan civilians at the start of the 1994 genocide. The public prosecutor had asked for a life sentence for the accused’s role in the genocide.
Europe’s major consumer group BEUC said on Wednesday that it fears internet search giant Google’s takeover of online ad tracker DoubleClick would damage European Union privacy rights and limit consumers’ choice of web content. The association has asked European authorities to look into privacy concerns.
Charles Taylor will get hundreds of thousands of dollars of legal aid to defend charges of war crimes in Sierra Leone, despite suspicions he is hiding huge personal wealth. The former Liberian president faces 11 charges at the United Nations-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone, including instigating murder, rape and terrorism.
European Union officials have signalled that they will ban subsidies for biofuels in cases where their production causes serious environmental damage. Staff at the union’s executive arm, the European Commission, have now recognised that the production of biofuels can be ecologically destructive.
The European Union is failing to prioritise health and education in its plans for spending aid in poor countries, according to a new study, which also found that the EU appears to be using development aid to promote Western political and commercial interests, rather than to alleviate hardship.
European Union leaders clinched agreement on Saturday on a mandate to overhaul the 27-nation bloc after persuading Poland to end a stand-off that nearly torpedoed a marathon summit. The leaders agreed to negotiate a reform treaty by the end of this year, to be ratified by mid-2009.
Prime Minister Tony Blair ended his swansong appearance on the international stage on a high note on Saturday, helping clinch a deal for a new European Union treaty and trumpeting that Europe was turning Britain’s way. And tributes flowed from his fellow EU leaders after a marathon summit in Brussels, which he said allowed the reforming bloc to ”move on” after two years of institutional inertia.
European Union leaders reached broad agreement on Friday on a single post to run EU foreign affairs, the first success at a summit on the bloc’s future, but Poland help up progress towards a treaty to reform the union. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, hosting the summit, struggled to break Poland’s resistance.
Families of foreign medics sentenced to death for infecting Libyan children with the virus that causes Aids urged European Union leaders in Brussels on Thursday to help clinch a deal. Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor were convicted in December of deliberately infecting 426 children.
Zimbabwe’s opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said on Wednesday time may be running out to organise free and fair elections next March. The Zimbabwe government and Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change re holding talks in South Africa seeking to solve the political crisis that reached new heights earlier this year.
World leaders must follow a move by the United States to impose fresh sanctions against Sudan for its refusal to allow a major United Nations-led peacekeeping force into war-torn Darfur, South African Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu said on Tuesday.
Nato allies are studying a request from the African Union to provide air transport for its troops in Somalia, an alliance official said on Wednesday. ”We are seeking military advice on how to respond to the request. There is an intention among allies to help,” said the official of an AU request he said Nato received in recent days.
A three-week wave of massive cyber-attacks on the small Baltic country of Estonia, the first known incidence of such an assault on a state, is causing alarm across the western alliance, with Nato urgently examining the offensive and its implications. investigate and to help the Estonians beef up their electronic defences.
Ghana Foreign Minister Nana Akufo-Addo, whose country heads the African Union, insisted on Tuesday that Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe should be invited to a European Union-Africa summit in December. ”We can’t have a situation where people pick and choose which Africans they deal with when they deal with Africa on a continental basis,” he said.
The European Union and South Africa on Monday signed a new agreement aimed at strengthening political ties and vowed to step up cooperation in migration and climate change. Discussions also focused on the future status of Serbia’s breakaway region of Kosovo.
The European Commission said on Thursday that the European Union’s Galileo satellite navigation system would need to be entirely financed with public money to get the troubled programme back on track. The private consortium building the project was supposed to give plans on Thursday to overcome the current impasse.
The European Commission has dropped its attempt to ban imperial weights and measures in the face of British opposition, a European Union spokesperson said on Tuesday. The news was hailed in the United Kingdom by Neil Herron, campaign director of the Metric Martyrs Group.
The European Commission has laid the legal groundwork to force Ryanair to sell some or all of its one-quarter holding in Aer Lingus if the European Union turns down its takeover bid. People familiar with the statement of objections say it concludes that Ryanair would lock up the Irish air market if it acquired the partly state-owned peer.
A year after its launch, 2,5-million Europeans and companies have registered a .eu domain name, making it the seventh-most-widespread website address suffix in the world and the third in the European Union. Air France KLM and Italian design house Versace are among the firms that have registered and have functioning websites.