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BY MONICA DOBIE

THE CANADIAN government has approved the use of advanced American technology to detect harmful noroviruses within the country’s prolific oyster beds. This ‘reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction’ method effectively separates norovirus genetic materials from within oyster tissues. Canada’s health ministry has recently published its details within its Compendium of Analytical Methods reference guide for scientists.…

BY MARK ROWE

THIS year marks the 20th anniversary of the catastrophic steam explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power station, when a plume of radioactive fallout from Chernobyl-4 drifted over the western parts of the former Soviet Union, Poland, Scandinavia, Britain and the east coast of the United States.…

BY JANE MOIR, in Hong Kong

CONSTRUCTION is on the up, people are eagerly buying homes, cars are being churned out at a rapid pace and the 2008 Beijing Olympics are just around the corner. The demand for paint and coatings in China should never have been better.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Union’s (EU) competition commissioner has indicated she could push for regulatory reform to improve competition in EU energy markets, in parallel with legal enforcement action using existing rules. Neelie Kroes highlighted "bundling of generation, supply, pipelines, grids, and distribution (as) at the heart of the current EU energy market failure."…

BY MONICA DOBIE

A DECLINE in smoking has reduced the number of cancer deaths in the United States for the first time in 70 years, according to the American Cancer Society. The drop occurred in 2003 (the latest available figures), when there were 556,902 cancer deaths, 369 fewer than in 2002.…

BY DAVID HAWORTH, in Brussels

THE EUROPEAN Union’s (EU) pending directive on the control of pyrotechnic substances which activate safety devices in vehicles got a robust public endorsement from the auto supply industry today (3/21).

Addressing a "mini-hearing" of the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium, Klaus Pilatus on behalf of the European Association of Automotive Suppliers (CLEPA), told legislators of the industry’s "full support" of the legislation and would like to see it adopted throughout the 25 nation grouping as soon as possible.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

BSE is on the decline around the world, with the good news being mirrored by a fall in cases of the human-version variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has claimed. The number of BSE cases have dropped at 50% annually over the past three years, claims the FAO, with just 474 animals dying of the disease worldwide in 2005, compared with 878 in 2004 and 1,646 in 2003.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
INTRODUCTION

THE WORLD’S multilateral food trading system today stands at a crossroads: faced with the suspension of the World Trade Organisation’s Doha Development Round, it can either retreat to protectionism, leavened by a series of competitive bilateral trade deals, or it can grasp the nettle of liberal free trade, slash subsidies and tariffs, and then watch the economic rewards roll in.…

BY ALAN OSBORN, in London

EUROPEAN and US regulatory bodies have agreed to co-operate to develop common testing and engineering standards for mobile air conditioning systems such as those used in automobiles. Because some of the gases used in these systems, such as HFC 134a, are far more lethal to the environment than carbon dioxide, the European Union (EU) has agreed to start phasing them out in 2011 and stop using them in new autos from 2017.…

BY RAGHAVENDRA VERMA, in New Delhi

THE INDIAN economy is booming and so, as a result, is the country’s US$1.8 billion paint and coating industry, which registered a 10 to 12% annual growth for third consecutive year, taking 2002-03, 2003-04, and 2004-05 into account.…