Search Results for: Finland

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BRITAIN’S health authorities provide fewer drug addicts with substitution treatment than do a majority of other European Union Member States, a statistical review by an EU drug-use agency has claimed.

The proportion of “problem drug users” given alternative medicines to wean them off their addiction ranges between six and 22 per cent in the UK, taking into account available data, estimates the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
SLOWLY but surely, the world is becoming a little more open and honest in its business transactions. Bribery and corruption have existed as long as people have traded with each other and in some parts of the world remain as matter-of-fact as ever.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
*Finland is the world’s most “honest” country according to Transparency International;

*New British laws will ban payments made to people just for performing their official duties;

*In countries where bribery of foreign officials is a crime, penalties range from a one-year jail sentence (Norway) to life imprisonment (South Africa);

*Half the countries replying to the UN said their legal systems did not make it impossible to obtain tax benefits for foreign payments that would constitute bribery;

*Under American law companies can make payments for “routine government action” such as obtaining licences and permits abroad.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission is expected this month (May) to announce a proposed directive boosting the use of co-generation, although EU electricity association Eurelectric thinks it may at the same time moderate earlier targets for doubling the share of energy represented by the sector.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A FINANCED global action plan to improve safety in the nuclear energy sector has been approved in principle by the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency. A number of countries have pledged around US$4.6 million to fund its programmes, although this falls far short of the US$12 million price tag claimed by the IAEA, which also wants a fund of US$20 million established to handle security emergencies.…

KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN consumers still lack the confidence to buy in countries other than their own, in spite of all the efforts made to open up the internal market, the European Commission reports. A special survey by the Commission shows that only 31 per cent of consumers think their rights are well protected when they shop cross-border in the EU, against 56 per cent who feel well protected in their own country.…

BY MATTHEW BRACE
SCIENTISTS from the Queensland Centre for Schizophrenia Research in Australia claim to have made a crucial step forward in the study of schizophrenia, which could help the pharmaceutical industry develop new vitamin D enriched drugs to treat the condition.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE FINNISH government has been ordered by the European Commission to change legislation that disqualifies car passengers from insurance cover when the driver is drunk and involved in an accident. Brussels says this exclusion of passengers’ injuries contravenes the EU’s second motor insurance directive, which seeks to harmonise national regulations for the sector and to safeguard the interests of persons who may be injured in a motor vehicle accident.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FOOD safety and quality need to be improved in all European countries because of the increase in food-borne diseases in the past decade, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) have said.…

KEITH NUTHALL
A BID by a group of district heating companies to overturn massive fines levied by the European Commission, which found they had been participating in an illegal cartel, has been thrown out by the European Court of Justice’ Court of First Instance.…