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BY KEITH NUTHALL
CONSERVATIONISTS have welcomed a controversial United Nations (UN) report identifying wealthy western companies allegedly involved in wartime projects in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) they say may endanger rare great apes.

It says Barclays Bank, diamonds giant De Beers, British mining corporation Anglo American, Belgian bankers Fortis, South African miners Iscor, and the United Arab Emirates’ Standard Chartered Bank and 79 other companies have broken OECD multinational good behaviour guidelines by their association with mining, logging or road building in the Congo.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
ENVIRONMENTALISTS have gained significant new access rights to information held by public authorities and others under legislation agreed by the Council of Ministers of the European Union (EU) and the European Parliament. In what was welcomed by environmental campaigners as a victory over some EU member governments, the agreement goes well beyond the United Nations’ 1998 Aarhus Convention on information, decision-making and redress in environmental matters by widening the range of what can be accessed and simplifying the procedures.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED States has lifted a ban it imposed last December last year on imports of Spanish clementines because cargoes had been infected with fruit flies.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations Economic Commission for Europe has drawn up a set of standard meat cuts for sheepmeat sold in Europe and approved quality control guidelines on importing pineapples from west Africa to Europe.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED States Department of Agriculture has made its National Nutrient Database adaptable to handheld Personal Digital Assistants; the database lists more than 6,000 food items. See http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
IRAQ is to receive two power plant gas turbines worth US$80 million under a United Nations oil-for-food programme contract, pending for nearly two years, but released under new rules speeding up project approvals. The turbines will produce power for the northern governorates of Erbil and Sulaymaniyah, reconnecting them to the national electricity grid.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A FINAL report has been issued by the European Union’s (EU) High-Level Group of Company Law Experts which recommends reforms to EU company law. The group’s mandate had been extended this April, to consider the lessons on the Enron affair and other accounting scandals in the United States.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations Economic Commission for Europe has drawn up a set of standard meat cuts for sheepmeat sold in Europe, to ease confusion amongst exporters and traders faced with such terms as banjo cuts, oyster cuts, spare ribs or tenderloins.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A RESTRICTED trade in wool from captured wild vicuna in Argentina, Bolivia and Chile has been approved by a conference of parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

The United Nations (UN) convention’s members agreed in Santiago, Chile, to lift a ban in trading these small beasts “for the purpose of allowing international trade in wool sheared from live animals…bearing the label vicuna Argentina, Bolivia or Chile.”…

BY ALAN OSBORN
EUROPEAN consumers are being ripped off by fraudsters making illegal use of the CE mark according to evidence submitted to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). The CE mark denotes that a product was made in the European Union (EU) and conforms with EU safety legislation.…