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BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE USE of more and increasingly sophisticated monitoring equipment to detect radioactive steel scrap, that might otherwise be melted and cause health problems for workers and the public, has been urged by a European Commission report. It warns: “The problem of rogue sources shows no sign of diminishing”.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations’ Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) says developing countries can prosper more from tourism through locally-run websites enabling potential customers to research, reserve, and buy trips and hotel stays. This stops money leaching back to western tourism companies, it says, especially if “well-linked websites allow domestically owned hotels, banks and travel firms to provide the entire package of services”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has opened a formal state aid investigation into Hungary’s long-term power purchase agreements, concluded between state-owned electricity network operator MVM Rt and foreign-controlled power generators. These deals say MVM Rt must buy a fixed quantity of electricity at a fixed price, guaranteeing, said Brussels, a “return on investment to the generators without any risk”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) has released details of how it helped a cluster of Indian knitwear producers deal with liberalisation following India’s accession to the World Trade Organisation. The knitwear industry of Ludhiana, the Punjab, was helped to cope with a skilled worker shortage, a limited product range and excess reliance on a domestic market that was no longer protected.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SUGAR, honey and biscuit supply companies paid together hundreds-of-thousands of dollars in kickbacks to the toppled Saddam Hussein regime, the Independent Inquiry Committee into the UN Iraq Oil for Food programme scandal has claimed. There were 79 suppliers of these confectionary-related products (76 supplied sugar) named in a report, who paid Iraq to secure humanitarian supply contracts under the scheme, out of 2,200 companies overall.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SATELLITE images of the shrinking Aral Sea in central Asia have long horrified environmentalists, but now similar creeping disasters are threatening the many fresh water and brackish lakes of Africa. These are illustrated by disturbing satellite images within an atlas produced by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
DETAILS of a rich nine-year fishing access deal struck between the European Union (EU) and the Federated States of Micronesia, in the western Pacific, have been released by the European Commission.

Noting that the western Pacific is “the richest tuna fishery ground in the world (it accounts for 50% of total tuna catches world-wide)”, the Commission stressed: “The current state of the stocks is good and that, for certain species, the maximum safe level of exploitation has not been reached yet.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE ORGANISATION for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has claimed rich country governments spend far too little on educating citizens on reducing environmental health problems. It has claimed that OECD countries spend, on average, only 3% of their healthcare budgets on prevention and public awareness programmes.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
PAINT and coating supplies companies paid together tens-of-thousands of dollars in kickbacks to the toppled Saddam Hussein regime, the Independent Inquiry Committee into the UN Iraq Oil for Food programme scandal has claimed. A report said they paid Iraq to secure humanitarian supply contracts under the scheme, out of 2,200 companies overall.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
A GERMAN beer company has created a beer containing nicotine, designed for smokers trying to quit, especially as researchers have proved smokers have difficulty resisting a cigarette when drinking, because they associate the two pastimes. Its beer NicoShot, has three milligrams of nicotine and a 6.3% alcohol content.…