Search Results for: Environmental Health

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has offered to open up the European Union’s market in environmental services to suppliers based outside the EU, as part of the ongoing Doha Development Round at the World Trade Organisation.

If its trading partners offer adequate concessions in return, Brussels is offering to remove regulatory restrictions to foreign providers of waste water, sanitation, solid and hazardous waste management, soil clean-ups, air pollution reduction and similar services.…

BY PHILIP FINE

TEAMS of microbiologists have concluded that it is not just unsafe to swim in sewage infiltrated waters, but that the amount of sickness caused by such pollution is actually far more predictable than previously thought. The findings have prompted them to call for global health-based legislation on the quality of the world’s bathing waters.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission has given the Spanish government two months to provide full information about the environmental impact of its highly controversial National Hydroelectric Plan (NHP) or face a possible action in the European Court of Justice. The Commission says Spain has not responded to a request for information made last September on how it assessed a proposed hydro-electric project in the catchment area of the River Ulla in Galicia.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE FINNISH government is being threatened with legal action at the European Court of Justice for allegedly failing to protect the vulnerable Siberian flying squirrel (Pteromys volans). Finland is the only European Union home of this species, which lives in old forests.…

KEITH NUTHALL
INNOVATION from European Union-funded research has continued to offer improvements to the way that EU water utilities work. For instance, the European Commission-funded MicroChem initiative has developed miniaturised laboratory-on-a-chip systems suitable for rapid field testing of water streams. They examine water in tiny pictolitre quantities, flowing through microbore channels produced by photolithographic etching.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
SPAIN is facing legal action at the hands of the European Commission over its failure to respond to a request for information on how it has applied the EU’s environmental Impact Assessment Directive with regard to a waste-water treatment plant serving tanneries at Lorca in Murcia.…

KEITH NUTHALL
AN INITIATIVE to transform natural gas burnt off in Russia’s oil fields into electricity and consumable heat has been developed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). It is granting a six year US$80 million loan to a key subsidiary of Russia’s Lukoil group – CSJC Lukoil-Perm – to help it cut gas flaring to 20 per cent by 2005, compared with 52 per cent at typical Russian oilfields.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
POLITICAL pressure has been placed on European Union ministers to press for reforms to the world coffee trading system, which has experienced a 50 per cent drop in producer prices over the past three years, slashing the income of producers.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
EUROPEAN Union (EU) ministers yesterday (Wednesday) formally agreed an amending directive that will allow member countries which do not apply International Accounting Standards (IAS) to all companies to bring in matching transparent, high quality financial reporting, so preparing the way for like-for-like financial comparisons throughout the EU.…

BY MARK ROWE
RUSSIA and vodka are inseparable bedfellows but is there room for a ménage-a-trois? Its domestic market for beer is booming, while abroad both Russian immigrant communities and western European and north American drinkers are enjoying the novelty factor of a quality brew from the traditional home of vodka.…