Search Results for: Environmental health

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Health Organisation has recommended the composition of a influenza vaccine for the 2002 southern hemisphere flu season. It has concluded that the medicine should include an A/Moscow/10/99(H3N2)-like virus, an A/New Caledonia/20/99(H1N1)-like virus and a B/Sichuan/379/99-like virus.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
THE UNITED Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has announced it will give Lebanon a US$3.4 million grant to finance a new initiative aimed at boosting renewable energy generation, as well as increasing energy efficiency and environmental protection in this eastern Mediterranean country.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
DEVELOPING countries have banded together at the World Trade Organisation to call for its Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (TRIPs) to be interpreted as allowing their governments to take any steps “to protect public health,” including the authorisation of generic production of medicines under patent.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
IMPORTANT reforms in air safety have been approved by the European Parliament in its first reading of legislation to create a new European Aviation Safety Agency. In particular MEP’s want to set up a new independent authority, on the lines of the US National Transportation Safety Board and separate from the EASA, to investigate aircraft accidents and make recommendations.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
POLITICAL agreement on the creation of a new European Aviation Safety Agency has been forged in Brussels, with the approval by both the European Parliament and the EU Council of Ministers that such a body should be set up.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
MEP’s are sticking to their guns in a political battle with European Union ministers over whether there should be EU legislation laying down noise limits or particular forms of transport operations across the continent. The parliament’s environment committee is resisting a decision by the European Union Council of Ministers to reject amendments that would have strengthened a planned noise directive, making it include commitments to set specific and binding EU noise limits for road vehicles, trains, rail tracks and aircraft.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
IN the years of the Cultural Revolution, when the bamboo curtain separated the world’s most populous country from the rest of the globe, the idea of sending bulk agricultural exports to China would have seemed laughable. Even today, Chinese export markets buy up a fraction of British farming produce, but in the future, this could change.…

BY KATE REW
AMERICAN bra manufacturers are responding to growing demand from larger women who are no longer content to wear cumbersome, corset-like structures but would prefer flimsier, sexier bras which are both comfortable and flatter their fuller figures. For a long time this market, which stands at around 40 per cent of intimate wear and is growing all the time, has been overlooked, according to Joyce Baran, Vice President of Merchandising and Design, Liz Claiborne Intimates.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
MOST governments are keenly concerned about the quality of food their people eat, and quite rightly so. They pass laws to ensure food purity and safety and that’s all very commendable – but it can be overdone.

Regulations can, sometimes deliberately, be drawn up so tightly that they effectively bar the sale of food produced in other countries, thus constituting an impediment to free trade.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
LIGHT drinking may be healthier than not drinking or heavy drinking, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, adding yet another angle to the on-going debate of health risks or benefits associated with alcohol consumption.…