Search Results for: United Nations

BY KEITH NUTHALL
HAVING a crystal ball can be useful for environmental health teams wanting to get ahead of the game and know what regulatory changes might be coming in a few years time. But how can they achieve such prescience?…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) has launched a European Union (EU)-funded Euro 725,000 research aimed at improving health standards within the food industries of Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. The studies aim to suggest ways of promoting a “new decision-making culture on food quality and safety among managers and policy makers”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) has launched a European Union (EU)-funded Euro 725,000 research aimed at improving health standards within the food industries of Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. The studies aim to suggest ways of promoting a “new decision-making culture on food quality and safety among managers and policy makers”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations University’s Institute of Advanced Studies (UNU-IAS) has launched a research project in Zambia, to identify failings within its important non-ferrous metals sector, regarding sustainable development, general wealth and environmental management.

The Tokyo-based international higher education institution wants to publish findings generating “clear policy implications” for the Zambian government, noting while copper exports have increased from 201,000 tonnes in 2000 to 423,000 in 2005 – generating GDP growth averaging 4.8% per annum – in December 2005, 67% of the population lived on under US$1 a day.…

BY MARK ROWE
INTERNATIONAL cosmetics companies are increasingly casting an eye over south-east Asia. In the middle of the first decade of the 21st Century it would appear to offer all things to all companies.

With Asia (including nearby China) representing half of the world’s population and an economic growth rate ranging between 5 and 10%, many companies are interested in entering or developing these markets.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has called in its annual report for more resources spent examining the environmental and health affects of nanotechnology. UNEP said while Euro 7.7 billion has funded European Union and USA studies on potential economic benefits, just Euro 30 million has gone on assessing nanoparticles’ impact on health and the environment.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A TRIAL over two years of a new global voluntary compact to reduce mercury poisoning is now being staged by the United Nations, which says it will press for an international and binding treaty on the problem if the guidelines do not work.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EXPERT space agencies worldwide have been encouraged by the United Nations to consider the risk of a collision between orbiting satellites with nuclear power sources and debris increasingly orbiting the Earth, littering space. The UN committee on the peaceful uses of outer space has published the first of a series of reports following a December resolution from the UN general assembly to consider the problem.…

BY MARK ROWE
EASTERN Europe, thanks mainly to the preponderance of Soviet-era facilities and Soviet-era standards of maintenance, has long been seen as a potential weak link for the nuclear power industry in safety terms. A vast group of international experts devotes time and resources to maintaining the industry’s record and the nuclear power industry has various arrangements for cooperation among utilities and internationally, among government and United Nations nuclear agencies.…

BY DAVID HAWORTH, in Brussels
POLITICAL battle lines have been drawn within the European Union’s (EU) executive body over whether minimum excise duties paid on diesel should be imposed on motorists across the 27 nation bloc. The European Commission’s Laszlo Kovacs, who is the Commissioner responsible for tax policy, wants to hike tax levels to Euro 359 per 1,000 litres by 2012 and up to Euros 380 per 1,000 litres by 2014.…