Archive

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has again convened the European Union’s (EU) Oil Supply Group, as war in Iraq threatens the security of Europe’s oil deliveries. The panel’s experts discussed the risks of the conflict escalating and broadening into the Middle East generally, debating measures that would be required by EU Member States if Gulf oil and gas supplies were threatened.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
NUCLEAR energy security experts have called at a conference in Vienna, Austria, for improvements in international security standards for the protection of radioactive sources that could help make a terrorist ‘dirty bomb’. This International Conference on Security of Radioactive Sources was staged by the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A NEW international water college has been founded in the Netherlands, with the particular aim of developing new techniques and technologies to secure future water supplies in arid areas. The UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, Delft, is a joint venture between the UN scientific body and the Dutch government, which had run a purely national water institute on the college’s site.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
CONTRACT standards that can be applied to e-commerce are being drawn up by the Europe-based UN Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT). Jointly prepared by e-business consortia RosettaNet, telecoms and IT e-commerce forum EDIFICE and ESIA/EECA, (European Semi Conductor Industry Association/European Electronic Component Manufacturers Association), representing more than 500 high tech companies, this deal would lay the foundations for standardised global contracts covering Internet business exchanges, (whether machine to person or machine to machine).…

BY ALAN OSBORN
After six years of negotiation the 15 EU countries have agreed to introduce binding minimum tax rates on natural gas, coal and electricity and to raise taxes on other energy products in order to curb usage of fossil fuels.…

BY DEIRDRE MASON
TECHNOLOGY may have produced many different ways of checking underground networks of pipes and sewers by remote control, but one problem remains the same: secure access. Even the smallest aperture can invite vandalism or, at its worst, deliberate contamination if it can be forced or broken easily.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN INTERNATIONAL team of experts has successfully controlled a newly discovered species of parasitic wasp that was threatening to destroy the Lebanon’s iconic cedar woodlands, descended from Levantine forests probably walked by Jesus Christ. From Biblical times to the Nineteenth Century, much of the steep Mount Lebanon range that towers over the eastern Mediterranean was cloaked in ancient cedars.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
CEDARS are elegant ornamental and timber evergreen conifers of the genus Cedrus (family Pinaceae); three are native to Mediterranean mountains and one to the western Himalayas. Cedrus libani, the Lebanon’s native species is also found in the Taurus Mountains, Syria and southern and northern Turkey.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
MEMBERS of the European Parliament want tougher rules over the composition and labelling of soap and detergents on sale in the 15 EU member countries. Parliamentary officials said, should the amendments tabled by the EP’s environment committee become law, they could lead to the phasing out of phosphates, or strict controls over their use, as an ingredient in soap and some perfumery items.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission and the European Food Safety Authority has launched a database containing the latest information about the risks posed by acrylamide in food, which has been highlighted as being possibly dangerous in baked and fried foods.…