Search Results for: Environmental Health⊂mit=Search

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INTERNATIONAL Chamber of Commerce (ICC) wants the European Commission to call for changes to the USA’s 1789 Alien Tort Statute, allowing non-American companies to be sued in US courts for alleged human rights, labour and environmental offences committed in third countries.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Union ministers have welcomed the European Commission’s plan to develop the EU’s first environment and health strategy (for 2004-2010), calling on Brussels officials to develop research models assessing the health impact of public policies, (and associated socio-economic affects).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN INNOVATIVE nanotechnology technology has been trialled in the United States, effectively spraying a protective crystal crust on a New Mexico mountainside that had been left exposed to erosion by a fire. Its flames destroyed 5,000 acres of land considered sacred by the Taos Pueblo Native Indian group.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission made a formal call for nuclear specialists involved in collaborative studies with experts from other European Union (EU) Member States to submit proposals for grants from the EU’s sixth framework programme for research. Brussels has set aside a budget of Euro 61 million – paid via EURATOM – for this work and has released a detailed guide of the research topics it will favour in grant applications.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and the European Union (EU) are to introduce a new manufacturing standard in Europe, reducing the flammability of materials – including textiles – used inside cars. The draft UNECE regulation (which the EU is expected to support) covers “the burning behaviour of materials…ensuring a high level of safety and environmental protection.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations (UN) ‘fourth committee’ (on special political affairs) has started debating atomic radiation, based on a report on the subject by the UN scientific committee. It warns that ill health is still being created worldwide by environmental ionizing radiation, notably in the Ukraine, Russia and Belarus because of the Chernobyl disaster.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INTERNATIONAL Finance Corporation (IFC), of the World Bank, will invest US$22 million into modernising and restoring Bulgaria’s Stomana steel mill, part of a US$94 million investment programme dominated by Greek steel producer Sidenor. The money will improve the efficiency of the plant – in the Pernik industrial region – enabling it to better produce a wider product range that commands higher values than its current output, as well as improving production methods and environmental performance.…

BY MARK ROWE
UZBEKISTAN has been at the forefront of international AML efforts in the central Asia region, a spokesman for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) told the Money Laundering Bulletin. Uzbekistan has the most advanced AML legislation and apparatus of all the former Soviet Central Asia and has signed more than 20 bilateral and multilateral agreements on cooperation in fighting illicit drug trafficking with its Central Asian neighbours, as well as with Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, Pakistan, Russia and Turkey, according to the International Money Laundering Information Network (IMOLIN), (whose contributing members include the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the Asia Pacific Group on Money Laundering, the United Nations and the World Customs Organisation).…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission’s (EC) proposals for the EU tobacco regime, published in detail last month (September), essentially recognise that subsidised tobacco growing in Europe on any significant scale is now coming to an end. If these plans are put in place it seems likely that in little more than three years’ time the only tobacco grown in the EU will be to serve small niche markets.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FOR ramblers strolling along Denmark’s sandy west Jutland coast last October, there was a disturbing sight: hundreds of dead fish, crabs, shrimps and marine worms swept ashore. It seemed that the shallow Kattegat, the Baltic Sea’s westernmost reach, had been poisoned by cyanide.…