Search Results for: Dominican Republic

BY KEITH NUTHALL

PRESSURE is being applied to non-ferrous metal mining companies to follow an Organisation for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD) code of practice that prevents them fuelling armed conflicts in the Great Lakes region of Africa.

Its countries have been witness to come of the worst human rights abuses and violence of the last 50 years: the genocide in Rwanda and the bloody civil war of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

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A UNITED Nations campaign could – if successful – significantly increase worldwide demand for soap. Its Global Handwashing Day has highlighted how diarrhoeal and acute respiratory diseases kill 3.5 million children aged under five annually, and that washing their hands after using toilets and before handling food can reduce such deaths by 40% and 23% respectively.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE CONSUMER protection authorities of Portugal have been busy with unsafe cosmetics products in September, with five withdrawals reported by European Union consumer safety network RAPEX. Some covered Spanish made products – such as Isdruc ‘Crema despigmentante’ skin lightening cream; plus Tempting ‘Vitamine vital shampoo’ and ‘Live Mask repair’.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

EUROPEAN chemical industry federation CEFIC has called for a review of administration under European Union (EU) chemical control system REACH to help small-and-medium-sized paint and other chemical companies (SMEs) deal with its burden. As the first key REACH chemical deadline of November 30 approaches, CEFIC director general Hubert Mandery said REACH costs hit smaller firms hard, especially for the oncoming two REACH registrations, involving smaller tonnages of chemicals.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE INTERNATIONAL Organisation for Standardization (ISO) is developing standards for natural gas fuelling stations to help promote vehicles using this alternative fuel. A new committee ISO/PC 252 will coordinate the work, developing two standards: on fuelling stations for compressed natural gas (CNG) and liquefied natural gas (LNG).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

HOUSTON, Texas, and Vancouver, British Columbia-based oil and gas company EnerGulf Resources is selling 10 million shares to raise Canadian dollar CAD4 million (USD3.89 million). This will finance hydrocarbon exploration of the onshore Lotshi Block (western Democratic Republic of Congo), the offshore ‘Block 1711’ (Namibia) and working capital.…

By Emma Jackson

Researchers say they have secured the future of Europe’s huge volumes of digital data, having created an open source software that will protect digital data from becoming unreadable or unusable because it is incompatible with newer technologies. This has been developed by the European Union (EU)-funded CASPAR (Cultural, Artistic and Scientific knowledge for Preservation, Access and Retrieval) programme.…

BY DEIRDRE MASON

IF those responsible for the numerous ‘ghost’ and unfinished estates in the Republic of Ireland had been hoping that overseas property companies might be tempted to take them on, following a slight recovery in the Irish market, the news that Ireland has once more sunk into recession makes that now very unlikely for the foreseeable future.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

SUGAR has been at the centre of continuing concern about fraud draining European Union (EU) budgets of duty revenue. The latest operational report from EU anti-fraud unit OLAF (which reviewed 2009) recalled how fraudsters made millions of Euros from exporting 3,400 tonnes of sugar from the EU to neighbouring non-member state Croatia via the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.…

BY MAKKI MARSEILLES, PAUL COCHRANE

CYPRIOTS are Europe’s heaviest smokers, according to figures from European Union (EU) pollsters Eurobarometer. For those living in the internationally recognised predominantly Greek Republic of Cyprus (RoC) portion of the island, consumption of consumers aged 15 and above during 2009 averaged 21.7 cigarettes daily, and those in Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus 21.6.…