Archive

BY JONATHAN THOMSON
THE Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) has claimed a boost in the number of Improvement Notices is helping it win its battle against the country’s unhygienic takeaways, cafes and restaurants.

The FSAI said that just fourteen Republic food outlets were closed down in the first six months of the year, ten less than in the same period last year and its food safety officials say the reason is an increase in the number of these Notices it has issued to proprietors.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
Seventy nature conservation projects in the EU and candidate countries have been awarded 72 million euros (pounds 44.6 million) in grants under the EU’s LIFE-nature scheme. Total cost is 130 million euros (pounds 80.6 million).

In the UK the EU will pay 60 per cent of the pounds 1.28 million cost of a network of 19 protected sites for the bittern, aiming to double the population to 65 within ten years.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has formally asked all European Union Member States to provide information about how they are controlling substances that damage the ozone layer. Member States were required to provide this information by the end of last year, but the data has not been submitted.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WIDERANGING public consultation on the use of the European Union’s planned satellite-based environmental monitoring system (GMES) has been launched. The European Commission will be staging a series of open meetings on the system, operational by 2008. Advice culled from these forums will be included in a report to be published next year.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
AN INTERNATIONAL campaign group Health Care Without Harm (HCWH) has recently published a report claiming that in tests, 52 out of 72 name brand beauty products contained industrial chemicals known as phthalates; HCWH claims these can cause birth defects.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE ITALIAN government has been censured for failing to abide by European Union freedom of trade laws by imposing tough labelling laws for perfumes or cosmetic fragrances, which insist that packaging declares whether they are natural or artificial.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
WORK is a lot more dangerous and unhealthy in the countries that will join the European Union in 2004 and later, than it is in the existing EU. A study by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions finds there is “nearly double the risk to health and safety at work in the candidate countries.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE ISRAELI Foreign Trade Risks Insurance Corporation has reinsured US$53 million of US$83.5 million in guarantees posted by the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) of the World Bank. The security covers Israeli telecommunications company ECI Telecom’s investment in Brazilian company Global Village Telecom Ltda, which wants to construct and operate wireless telephone networks in Brazil.…

BY JONATHAN THOMSON
BMW is developing a new high-tech system to prevent drivers falling asleep at the wheel, after research by the German Insurance Association (GdV) revealed that tiredness caused a quarter of all fatal accidents on autobahns.

BMW’s “driving alertness assistant” operates using a small camera fitted inside the car, which examines eye blinking patterns to assess how watchful or tired the driver is.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A SPECIAL exemption for the insurance sector from European Union laws insisting on free and unfettered competition between companies in Europe is to be extended, albeit with changes improving the rights of policy-holders and other consumers.

This ‘block exemption’ from EU competition legislation is due to expire next March 31, and the European Commission is now consulting the industry on reforms to the system that it wants to put in place on its renewal.…