Archive

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union’s anti-fraud office OLAF has been called in to investigate financial corruption at the EU’s Committee of the Regions, the Brussels body which represents the view of local government across Europe.

Its investigators are checking allegations made by Dutch socialist MEP Michiel van Hulten to the European Parliament that the record of financial probity at the CoR “can only be described as alarming.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
IMPROVEMENTS to Afghanistan’s air traffic control systems are to be made with a US$19.3 million World Bank credit. It said that “deterioration of air traffic control equipment and a shortage of qualified operators has reduced the safety and availability of flights, Afghanistan’s most practical means for long-range domestic as well as international travel.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Parliament is investigating whether it could launch legal action at the European Court of Justice against a joint EU-USA decision made in February allowing European airlines to transfer to US Customs data on passengers flying to American airports.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE FIRST trials in African airspace of the European global navigation overlay service (EGNOS) have taken place (Feb 27-29) on board flights into the Senegalese capital of Dakar. The tests, staged by the European Space Agency (ESA), the European Commission, and ASECNA, (the aviation navigation safety agency for Africa and Madagascar), were carried out as a first phase of plans to install global navigation satellite system (GNSS) services over central Africa.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
TRAVEL insurance companies should not have to cover the risk of already-ill European Union (EU) pensioners travelling within the EU, the European Court of Justice has ruled. If they need medical attention they should use an E111 form to get free medical treatment.…

BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKA
INDIAN pharma Lupin Ltd is to set up a new plant for manufacturing lovastatin, the cholesterol lowering active pharmaceutical ingredient. The new plant is being built to meet US Food and Drug Administration standards and will have an initial capacity of more than 12 metric tonnes per annum.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Union guidelines on checking the effectiveness of near infrared spectroscopy methods used to identify pharmaceutical substances have been drawn up by EMEA’s Committee for Proprietary Medicinal Products and Committee for Veterinary Medicinal Products. The guidelines include notes on the validation of the data that is produced through these methods.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
INFORMAL guidelines have been drawn up by the Committee for Proprietary Medicinal Products of the European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products (EMEA) on the production of live attenuated influenza vaccines. In an introduction to the note, the committee says that existing inactivated flu vaccines guidelines do note address the requirements of producing these live medicines “in embryonated eggs based on cold-adapted influenza virus master strains.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products has released a detailed paper proposing that guidelines are drawn up for the development and application of medicines designed for use by children. It has suggested that a Paediatric Pharmacovigilance Guideline is written by the European Union’s (EU) CPMP Pharmacovigilance Working Party, “to underpin” other strategies currently being considered by EU regulators.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN Commission advisory group has criticised biotechnology companies that advertise genetic tests on the Internet, offering web-surfers the chance to check paternity of children and their predisposition to several diseases, such as diabetes and coronary problems. The European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies has released a formal statement saying that the “mass marketing of genetic tests raises several serious problems in ethical, social and legal terms, which (it) considers to require urgent attention.”…