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The Newfoundland and Labrador government will close dozens of landfills and spend $200 million to reach a target of cutting in half the amount of garbage heading to landfills in the next eight years.

The Robin Hood Bay landfill north of St. John’s will serve most eastern Newfoundland communities.
(CBC) The plan which does not include a mandatory recycling component will emphasize three “super-dumps” on the island, with only about 40 smaller landfills remaining open by 2020.

About 160 dumps will close over the next 13 years, and the same tipping fees the charges levied for using a dump will be applied to all users. Those feeswill filter down to individual households at a cost of about $4 per month.

“I think the key to it is getting people to buy into it. Will you get everybody to buy into it? Not likely,” Environment Minister Clyde Jackman admitted Tuesday while unveiling the plan.

“But you hope that you will certainly get the majority, and I think we’re at a stage in this province where we will get the majority.”

The three major landfills will be based at the Robin Hood Bay dump, north of St. John’s, at Norris Arm in central Newfoundland, and an undetermined location near Corner Brook, on Newfoundland’s west coast.

Environment Minister Clyde Jackman says he is confident that ordinary consumers will buy in to a new waste-reduction plan.
(CBC) The plan will also phase out garbage incinerators by 2012.

The plan resembles a similar strategy developed by the former Liberal government.

Municipal Affairs Minister Jack Byrne said this plan is different if only because the current government has committed significant funds to ensure it happens.

“We have the money available to do this project. That’s why you’re going to see it move ahead,” Byrne said.

“I have no doubts, whatsoever.” Local incentives offered for recycling

While the plan to cut weekly garbage dumping in half in less than a generation is ambitious, it will not enforce recycling.

About 80 per cent of the local landfills in Newfoundland and Labrador will close in the next 13 years.
(CBC) Byrne and Jackman said that will be controlled at the local level, where a series of local authorities can set their own policies.

However, communities will be offered incentives to recycle, such asa discount on tipping fees forcommunities that separate recyclables before sending off their trash.

“Those are the types of things that you can expect,” Jackman said.

“If we are going to get into full waste diversion, I mean, that’s where we need to move to and I think people are ready to go there.”

WASHINGTON: The United States and South Korea signed a free trade agreement Saturday that will face a tough battle in Congress because of Democratic Party concerns that it will cost jobs in the U.S. auto industry.

The pact is the biggest such U.S. deal since the North America Free Trade Agreement 15 years ago. Two-way trade between the United States and South Korea, its seventh largest trading partner, is about $80 billion annually.

The agreement concluded April 1 after 10 months of tough negotiating phases out tariffs on nearly 95 percent of trade in consumer and industrial products between the two countries within three years.

It immediately eliminates duties on more than half of U.S. farm exports to South Korea and expands business opportunities for U.S. service providers in sectors ranging from banking to telecommunications to express delivery.

But top Democrats including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and leading presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York have denounced the deal because of its auto provisions.

“While I value the strong relationship the United States enjoys with South Korea, I believe that this agreement is inherently unfair,” Clinton said earlier in June in a speech in Detroit, home of the U.S. car industry.

Democrats complain that the agreement opens the U.S. market to more South Korean cars while failing to tear down non-tariff trade barriers that they blame for a huge imbalance in automotive trade between the two countries.

“Last year, South Korea exported more than 700,000 cars into the U.S., while the United States exported fewer than 5,000″ to South Korea, Pelosi said in a joint statement with other senior House Democrats on Friday.

Bush administration officials say the pact does tackle barriers that have blocked U.S. car exports and immediately eliminates Korean tariffs on a number of U.S. cars and trucks. It also contains a mechanism to reimpose U.S. auto tariffs if South Korea violates its end of the pact.

Within the auto sector, Ford has been the most vocal critic of the pact while General Motors has taken a neutral stance.

Most other U.S. business groups strongly support the agreement, and labor groups are opposed.

Many farm state lawmakers — including Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus of Montana — have tied their support for the agreement to South Korea fully reopening its market to U.S. beef, which was shut after mad cow disease was found in U.S. cattle in December 2003.

Seoul has begun accepting some U.S. beef, but not from cattle older than 30 months or cuts containing bones.

U.S. agriculture officials say there is no scientific reason now for South Korea to ban any U.S. beef imports.

The directors of will be at the highly charged meeting which will range the interests of local businessmen, non executive directors and long-time supporters of the South Coast club Leon Crouch and Patrick Trant against executives Ken Dulieu and Jim Hone, brought in by the club’s previous power broker Rupert Lowe.

Internecine warfare on the board is understood to be the sticking point delaying the takeover by Allen, whose interest - exclusively revealed by the Evening Standard - forced Southampton Leisure to admit it had received a takeover approach two months ago, sending the shares rocketing.

The Evening Standard understands that Allen remains prepared to make an offer of around 65p a share for the club which has debts of nearly 25m relating to the construction of its St Mary’s stadium and which, under Dulieu and Hone’s regime, has dived into the red and racked up further debts.

City investors remain convinced Allen will make a 50m offer. The club’s stock opened today at 58p.

Southampton failed to win promotion to the Premiership last season and recently lost star teenage defender Gareth Bale, pictured, for 5m to , but Allen is understood to see massive upside to investing in the club.

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The watchdog has decided to go after Bermuda-based Sea Containers Ltd, in an attempt to secure pensions for 1,376 former and current workers at its UK subsidiary, Sea Containers Services Ltd.

It is issuing its first ever Financial Support Direction, which calls on the SCL parent company to provide financial support for the two retirement funds.

This suggests it will be using its legal powers, if necessary, to force Sea Containers to honour the 91m deficit within its two UK schemes.

This is the first FSD issued since the Pensions Act of 2004 gave the regulator the powers. An FSD is issued if the regulator believes a company is trying to avoid paying its pension.

Other notices could follow soon, since the watchdog is looking into the pensions situation at a number of other companies.

The actions against Sea Containers come as the regulator faces criticism that it should have intervened at , where directors are accused of selling out to private equity giant KKR without safeguarding the interests of pensioners.

In the case of Sea Containers, both the parent company and its British subsidiary have filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US.

Tony Hobman, chief executive of The Pensions Regulator, said: ‘Our anti-avoidance powers are significant and, as we have always stressed, we will use them proportionately and where reasonable.’

Chasing a firm which is based in Bermuda demonstrates that Hobman is not afraid of reaching to foreign shores to ensure firms don’t shirk their pension responsibilities.

Nicholas Couldrey at solicitors Sacker & Partners, which is acting for one of the Sea Containers schemes, said: ‘This adds significant credibility to the regulator and demonstrates it is prepared to take strong action to protect members’ benefits.’

Sea Containers said it was ‘ disappointed’ at the outcome of the hearing, adding that it takes the pension liabilities ‘very seriously’.

It said it had always expected that any financial restructuring plan would require the backing of the regulator.

Other stories:
MPs press KKR to fund Boots pension
Pensions still sticking point for 11bn Boots bid
Boots pension row hits board
Pensions and retirement Q&A
Does the pension fix add up?

ROCKVILLE, Md., May 30 (UPI) — U.S. firm Neuralstem said Wednesday its human spinal stem cells reversed paralysis in a rat model of a spinal disorder.

The company, which said the finding has significant implications for humans because the condition the rats suffered from also afflicts people, plans to file an investigational new drug application later this year.

In the study, which is published online by the journal Neuroscience, three rats paralyzed from ischemic spastic paraplegia returned to near normal function six weeks after receiving Neuralstem’s human spinal stem cells.

Three other rats did not regain the ability to stand up but showed significant improvement in the mobility of their joints and muscle tone.

Ischemic spastic paraplegia, which is characterized by extreme spasticity and rigidity that leads to paralysis, sometimes results in humans following surgery to repair aortic aneurysms.