Search Results for: Germany

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.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
LEGAL final warning letters have been sent by the European Commission to Britain, Belgium, Germany, Greece, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Finland, Spain and Sweden, calling on them to swiftly implement a directive guaranteeing consumer protection when insurance companies are wound up.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INTERNATIONAL Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has called on member countries to contribute US$10 million to upgrade and overhaul the computer system it uses to ensure civil nuclear programmes are not exploited for military uses. IAEA inspectors are complaining that delays caused by their existing 1970’s hardware and software hamper their ability to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE CURRENT European Commission leadership, under Italy’s Romano Prodi, was supposed to be the clean-hands team, ridding the institution of the corruption and mismanagement that thrived under his predecessor Jacques Santer. The ongoing Eurostat scandal is undermining that reputation.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
GERMANY Sweden and Denmark must do more to prevent nutrient-rich water run-off from their rivers and coasts killing thousands of fish in the western Baltic Sea, said an international research project. The official Baltic Sea international environmental watchdog The Helsinki Commission – tasked with investigating mass deaths of fish in the region in 2002 – has concluded that higher levels of nutrients from agriculture, urban wastewater and air pollution poured into the sea after heavy rain and snow the previous winter, creating algal blloms that starved the lower levels of the western Baltic of oxygen over the summer and autumn of last year.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN Commission proposals to boost nuclear energy safety in Europe have come under fire from the British and German governments as well as the European Parliament, making it highly unlikely that they will be approved unscathed. In an unusual joint letter to the Commission, UK prime minister Tony Blair and German chancellor Gerhard Schröder criticised Brussels’ proposed directive, claiming that it would not deal tangible benefits in nuclear security.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A REFORM of the European Union’s Euro 12.5 million-per-year hop subsidy regime has been proposed by the European Commission. It wants at least 75 per cent of these payments to be de-linked from the amount of hops produced by a grower, fighting overproduction in an industry where supply has been exceeding demand.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has approved the acquisition of full control of the Finnish pharmaceutical distributor Tamro Oyj by German pharmacist Phoenix International Beteiligungs GmbH. The decision followed a cursory examination of the potential competition problems. The Commission swiftly decided there were none and fast tracked the decision, after being notified about the deal on August 29.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A PLANNED reform of the European Union’s (EU) Euro 12.5 million-per-year hop subsidy regime could push hop producers towards promoting speciality varieties, of interest to brewers seeking an edge in flavour and bitterness, a National Hop Association of England spokesman has said.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission is providing Euro 850,000 to fund a study into whether the use of mobile phones causes deafness. The GUARD project, which involves teams from seven countries including the UK, will report in December. No scientific evidence yet exists to suggest mobile phones affect hearing but this will be the first extensive study on humans.…