Archive

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has abandoned a review of European Union (EU) anti-dumping duties imposed on imports of threaded malleable cast-iron tube or pipe fittings from Brazil, the Czech Republic, Japan, China, South Korea and Thailand, after affected exporters failed to assist Brussels its investigators.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has proposed the reimposition of definitive anti-dumping duties on imports into the European Union (EU) of grain oriented cold-rolled sheets (GOES) and strips of silicon-electrical steel with a width or more than 500 mm from Russia.…

BY RICHARD HURST
SOUTH Africa’s largest steel producer, Iscor, has given its former sister company, Kumba Resource, notice that it would like to participate in any of its expansion plans, as the ferrous giant fears it may begin running short of iron-ore supplies from next year.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has proposed an overhaul of European Union legislation regulating the use of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in decorative paints, varnishes and car refinishing lines, insisting on tighter and more sophisticated limits for emissions of pollutants from these products.…

BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKA
THE SRI Lankan government will release a ‘National Policy on River Sand Removal’ in the coming weeks, to restrict an environmentally damaging boom in unregulated extraction. The country’s Minister of Irrigation and Water Management Gamini Jayawickrema Perera announced that permits for sand mining had already been blocked in two areas Deduru Oya and Ma Oya, where extraction had damaged river banks and flood protection.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
Flower importers will have to meet tougher requirements over health certification for certain species this year following amendments to the EU’s plant health regime agreed recently by the council of agriculture ministers.

The ministers amended the EU Directive 2000/29/EC, which deals with protective measures against the introduction and spread of organisms harmful to plants or plant products in the Union.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has proposed a European Union (EU) ban of the plant protection product ingredient Aldicarb, which has been shown to be potentially lethal to small birds and possibly damaging to earthworms. It has asked ministers to approve a prohibition on the sale of pesticides containing Aldicarb within six months of a decision and an immediate block on any future approvals of other plant protection lines containing this chemical.…

BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKA
THE NASHVILLE-BASED Vanderbilt University School of Medicine may have discovered a human protein that could hold them create the holy grail of the flower industry: a blue rose. Researchers have discovered an enzyme taken from a human liver that can turn bacteria blue.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE COUNCIL of Europe has awarded its 2003 Museum Prize to the Laténium in Hauterive, Switzerland, which displays exhibits on the La Tène late Iron Age culture from central and north-western Europe. The culture is named after the nearby site on the banks of Lake Neuchâtel where its Celtic artefacts were first identified.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
ITALY has been ordered by the European Court of Justice to cease allowing its museums and other cultural sites to discriminate against foreign European Union nationals over admission charges for its museums and other cultural sites. The European Commission said that in following up complaints from the public it had concluded that “the scheme of preferential rates applicable to persons aged over 60 or 65 years for admission to various Italian museums did indeed entail discrimination.”…