Search Results for: Research

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE DEVELOPMENT of so-called smart houses, specially designed for the elderly and disabled, is being promoted by the European Commission, notably through schemes to finance adapted electronic devices built into these homes.

Speaking to a conference on Vitality in the Age of the Information Society, in Tilburg, the Netherlands, EU information society Commissioner Erkki Liikanen said that the concept of promoting products and services for householders with impaired mobility was central to Brussels’ high-tech strategies.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has published new proposals for tobacco growing subsidies for the 2002, 2003 and 2004 harvests; they underline Brussels’ policies to phase out the cultivation of unpopular leaf varieties and also to channel money into helping growers abandon the industry.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Parliament has widened health research under the oncoming EU Sixth Framework Programme to include studies on traditional diseases, widening European Commission plans to limiting its life science work to genomics and biotechnology. By contrast, the parliament wants money spent on cancer, cardiovascular diseases, degenerative nervous system illnesses, (including CJD), diabetes, viral hepatitis C, allergies, rare diseases and ageing conditions.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EU Council of Ministers, (health), has adopted formal guidelines on the prudent use of antibiotics and other anti-microbial agents in human medicine, to contain the spread of resistance in viruses and bacteria to these pharmaceuticals.

This non-binding Recommendation asks national governments to provide public information on the subject, to use a precautionary ‘by prescription only’ approach, to carry out more research and to improve monitoring of consumption of these drugs.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, (UNICRI), has released a report on environmental crime, which includes detailed case studies on illegal dumping and trading of waste, including hazardous waste, and the illicit trade in materials that damage the ozone layer and that are radioactive.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INSTITUTIONS of the European Union should be given an explicit authority to help formulate and shape its Member States energy policies, the European Parliament’s industry committee has said. Responding, to the European Commission’s green paper on energy supply, the committee has called for energy to be made a key priority of the EU, by including a chapter on the subject in the next revision of the EU treaties.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
The European Commission has announced a significantly tougher regime for EU tobacco growers for the period 2002 to 2004, openly admitting that the revised scheme “sets the scene for allowing the phasing out of subsidies.” EU leaders agreed at their summit meeting in Gothenberg in June that the subsidies should be brought to an end in parallel with measures to develop alternative sources of income for tobacco workers and growers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
ENVIRONMENTAL crimes are in many ways the most damaging of offences, given that they can harm millions of people, whether through damaging the ozone layer, increasing pollution levels or damaging biodiversity. The United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, (UNICRI), has published a study on this modern scourge.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
DESPITE the disruption caused by the BSE and Foot and Mouth crises to the smooth operation of the EU bovine leather market, the epidemics may actually help the industry prosper in the future, a new European Commission study has claimed.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EU ministers have backed the initial stages of development of the GMES, (global monitoring for environment and security), project, where observation satellites will work alongside ground level sensors to collect environmental data. The idea is that it will help the EU form policies on climate change, sustainable development, scientific research and the management of natural disasters such as floods.…