• EU trade ministers have agreed to phase out six toxic chemicals -- phthalates -- used to soften vinyl plastic in children's toys. Three chemicals are not to be used at in any product for children. The other three have been banned in those products for children aged below three years that can be sucked or chewed.
• The UK recently admitted that it could have exported thousands of mad cow-infected blood products to 12 countries in the late 1990s. Though it did not name the countries, media reports said India, Ireland and Brazil were among them.
• The Ecuador government has permitted Brazil's oil company, Petrobras, to extract oil from the country's largest national park, the Yasuni National Park. The move follows Brazilian President Luiz Incio Lula da Silva's recent offer to invest US $100 million in Ecuador's development.
• British drug major GlaxoSmithKline has allowed Kenya's Cosmos Limited to make generic copies of its patented AIDS drugs, Epivir and Retrovir, and sell them in east Africa, Rwanda and Burundi. This will reduce the prices of these antiretrovirals by 40 per cent.
• Insisting on a broad EU definition of eutrophication (dead river), the European court of justice has condemned France for breaching the EU urban wastewater treatment directive. In a five-year-old case, the court said France had disregarded the definition of eutrophication to designate fewer water areas as "sensitive".
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