by Andy Beharrell and John Sloman
The rise of the new Germany?
2005 was the year that Germany elected its first female Chancellor, Angela Merkel. However, given the tight nature of the vote, it took many weeks of complex negotiations with coalition partners before she was finally confirmed as Chancellor and sworn in. The elections were so close that the previous Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, was extremely reluctant to concede defeat and eventually a coalition was agreed between Mrs Merkel's Christian Democratic Party (CDU) and Mr Schroeder's Social Democratic Party (SPD) and some smaller coalition partners.
The WTO in Hong Kong - what did it achieve?
The World Trade Organisation (WTO) has 149 members and its main purpose is the promotion of free trade. As part of this brief it aims to reduce protectionist measures such as tariffs, quotas and embargoes . It also acts as the global police and court for world trade issues relating to its agreements.
Gas prices - what's inflating them?
In the past, Britain has been self-sufficient in gas with all its supplies coming from the gas fields of the North Sea . However, as stocks have declined, so Britain has had to start importing increasing amounts of gas from overseas. This has exposed the country increasingly to the vagaries of the international gas markets, and 2005 and the start of 2006 saw some unstable times on these markets.
The winds of change are blowing through markets?
2005 and the start of 2006 have seen a lot of emphasis on markets and in this short series of news articles we look at a few of these issues. Many of us will not have noticed it yet, but the start of 2006 marked a major change in the postal market with the opening up of the market to other firms and the effective loss of the Royal Mail monopoly of the letter post.
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