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BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union’s Scientific Steering Committee has approved two new rapid BSE post-mortem tests that will widen the choice of checks available to environmental health authorities seeking to control the disease. The European Commission said that they were “comparable to already approved tests…(and)… should help to create more competition in the field.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Investment Bank (EIB) has drawn up plans to finance renewable energy projects in Germany, marking a change in mood towards supporting such green schemes. Up to Euro 200 million would be invested, mainly in wind power plants, and to a lesser extent geothermal, small-scale hydro power, solar energy and biomass based energy projects.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WITH the World Trade Organisation in the midst of key negotiations to update its agriculture agreement, Geneva diplomats are often stressing the raison d’etre of the WTO Doha Development Round, namely that commerce helps the poor.

The idea is that by ripping down bureaucratic hurdles, duties and restrictive quotas for goods that developing countries produce in abundance – such as food – the WTO will provide their entrepreneurs with an opportunity to seize export earnings.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE NEED to help Bulgaria improve the environmental performance of its energy sector has led the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) to break new ground by brokering an unprecedented private loan to clean what has been considered a dirty power-generating source: lignite.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
CONCERN has been raised by the European Commission about a fall in European investment into biotechnology, which has matched the declining confidence of EU consumers in genetically modified products in general. Brussels’ first progress report on its action plan for European life sciences says that “urgent action” is needed to reverse this trend, especially as EU legislation has now been agreed regulating the development of GM technology and its potential adverse effects.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN INTERNATIONAL financing consortium is to fund a previously abandoned Euro 166 million project to build a waste water treatment plant in St Petersburg, Russia. Its aim is to prevent pollution in the Gulf of Finland, which causes environmental health problems in neighbouring Finland and Estonia.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE FRENCH government is to operate a special aid fund that is designed to promote projects that reduce transport emissions and hence help the country meet its Kyoto Protocol commitments. The Environment and Energy Management Agency will grant aid totalling more than Euro 20 million annually until the end of 2007.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A LEGALLY binding civil claims code has been drawn up by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) that insists on compensation being paid out for industrial accidents damaging rivers, lakes and seas that span national boundaries.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
PRIVATE financing of Euro 235.9 million will be combined with loans of Euro 112.2 million from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) to help rehabilitate, improve the environmental performance and extend the life of Bulgaria’s privately owned lignite-fired 840 MW power plant Maritza East III.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
ANOTHER Briton has been appointed head of a key EU environmental health organisation. This time, Professor Jacqueline McGlade, an environmental scientist, will become the next Executive Director of the European Environment Agency. Prof. McGlade, 47, is currently Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Professorial Fellow in Environmental Informatics and Mathematics at University College, London.…