Word: pact
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Deficit Mending Last week, during negotiations among E.U. Finance Ministers, Luxembourg 's Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker sounded like a calculus professor who'd run out of blackboard space. He's struggling with a difficult problem: how to revamp the stability and growth pact - the much-violated E.U. doctrine designed to govern fiscal rectitude - a task that falls to Juncker while his country holds the rotating E.U. presidency. The pact caps euro-zone countries' deficits at 3% of GDP; Germany and France want to change the rules on what spending gets counted in deficit calculations. Germany, for example, wants...
...proposed exemptions: defense spending, R&D costs and contributions to the E.U. budget. The proposals drew fire. "Adding a long list of exemptions would blur the picture," says an Estonian diplomat. "Inflation, investment and credit ratings are all at stake." Juncker even warned the pact could be left as is, which would rile France and Germany. Next week, he'll bring ministers together again to try to find a compromise. But few expect a solution until E.U. leaders meet in Brussels later this month - if then. BA Gets A New Pilot Talk about getting an upgrade. Willie Walsh, former boss...
...year cross-strait standoff, and isn't likely to nix what appears to be a minor thaw between Beijing and Taipei. The recent Lunar New Year holiday saw the first nonstop commercial flights between the mainland and Taiwan, and last week Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian made a pact with James Soong, a rival politician who wants better ties with China, not to declare independence, change Taiwan's formal name from the Republic of China, or rule out eventual unification with China...
...system has implications well beyond Europe's borders. Under the provisions of the Kyoto pact, industrialized countries can receive emissions credits if they pay for projects that reduce or avoid emissions in poorer nations or other industrialized countries. For example, West European nations could build clean-energy facilities in Russia or its former satellites...
...China have one thing to look forward to?a nonstop trip home. Under an agreement reached in Macau last weekend between China's Civil Aviation Administration and the Taipei Airlines Association, 48 round-trip charter flights will be allowed to carry passengers to Taiwan from three mainland cities. The pact marks the first nonstop trips between China and Taiwan since the Nationalists banned direct transportation links after fleeing to the island...