Archive

BY KEITH NUTHALL
STONE discards stored by a quarry for future sales, should be classified as waste under European Union regulations, even if they do not “pose any real risk to human health or the environment” the European Court of Justice has ruled.…

BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKA
MINERAL processing is set to resume in earnest at the Pulmoddai beach mine in northern Sri Lanka, because the ceasefire between the island’s government and the Tamil Tiger separatists has removed the threat of violent disruption to its operations.…

KEITH NUTHALL
An American marketing agency has developed new technology called “observational research” which follows customers in shops through a hidden video camera, monitoring how they react to merchandise on sale.

Fame, a subsidiary of U.S advertising giant Omnicom Group, uses people’s expression like raised eyebrows because of a high price, the length of time a person holds an item or if they struggle to open and sample a product to test whether the displayed item will sell well or should be altered in price or look.…

BY MONICA DOBIE, in Montreal
ROTHMANS, Benson & Hedges Inc. has launched a legal bid to overturn the Saskatchewan provincial government’s recent Tobacco Control Act, which bans the display in shops of tobacco products.

The case filed in the prairie province’s Court of Queen’s Bench, claims that the legislation that came into effect on March 11, 2002, violates Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms and federal tobacco legislation.…

BY MONICA DOBIE, in Montreal
THE FIRST steps have been taken towards making cigarettes – a cornerstone of small shop revenue – an under-the-counter product worldwide. Laws have already been passed in Canada and Ireland banning the public display of tobacco products, dismaying shopkeepers’ representatives.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
IN an increasingly borderless world, the power of international intellectual property conventions is growing ever stronger and the garden trade is being affected by this trend as much as mining and IT.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
IN an increasingly borderless world, the power of international intellectual property conventions is growing ever stronger and the garden trade is being affected by this trend as much as mining and IT.

Take new plant varieties. In the EU, since 1995 Community Plant Variety Office (CPVO) has been established.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
NATIONAL governments of the European Union should be prevented from imposing weekend or holiday driving bans on lorries carrying fresh flowers or horticultural products on international journeys, the European Parliament’s transport committee has said.

Voting to amend long debated proposals regulating the ability of Member States to restrict HGV movements on designated international main roads in the so-called Trans-European Network, (to reduce noise and nuisance), the EP’s transport committee has proposed limiting these powers regarding the garden trade sector.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SOCIOLOGISTS and police have gathered together at Europol’s headquarters in the Hague, to share intelligence on a number of killings across Europe that appear to have been ritualistic in nature; these include the “Adam” case, where the savagely dismembered torso of a boy about five years old, was found in the Thames last September.…

BY MARK ROWE
BRITISH museums and historic buildings are being encouraged to bid for funding from a GBPounds 80 million financial support package launched by the European Union, designed to build links between neighbouring EU countries.

Its grant awards will be focused on projects that have economic, ecological and social benefits.…