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... GLOBAL NEWS ... NEWS EUROPEAN UNION CAN LEGALLY SUPPRESS DISSENT found naturally in any food on Earth. The study was conducted in 1998 under the auspices of two prominent pro-irradia- tion organisations. It was performed at one of the most prestigious food irradiation labs in the world: the Federal Research Centre for Nutrition in Karlsruhe, Germany. And it was co-funded by the International Consultative Group on Food Irradiation, a United Nations—sponsored organisation that promotes food irradiation worldwide. Public Citizen released an English trans- lation of the study at a meeting on 13 February at the US Food and Drug Administration in Washington, DC. The meeting was held to preview the March meeting of the Codex Alimentarius Commission, which sets food safety stan- dards for most nations of the world. Codex officials considered a proposal to remove completely the maximum dose of radiation to which food can be exposed. The current maximum dose is 10 kilo- grays—the equivalent of 330 million chest X-rays, and enough radiation to kill a per- son 2,000 times over. (Source: Public Citizen, 11 March 2001; http://www.citizen.org) rulings, demolishing the British Government's pretence that the document has no real legal status. The door could be soon be open for the ECJ to start ruling on free speech cases involving ordinary EU citizens or, indeed, Euro-sceptic newspapers. We now have two rival sets of European rights law, over- seen by rival courts with very different views of civil liberty: the ECJ and the Charter on one side, set against the Human Rights Court and the Convention on the other. The battle is just beginning. (Source: By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Telegraph, London, 10 March 2001, www.telegraph.co.uk) Ihe European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled in March that the European Union can suppress criticism to protect its reputation. The Court ruled that the Commission could restrict criticism that damaged "the institution's image and reputation", and that it could do so by resorting to a legal device used by fascist governments to sup- press dissent in the 1920s and 1930s: "the protection of the rights of others". This ECJ ruling defies half a century of case law by Europe's other court, the non-EU Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, and also resurrects the ancient offence of "sedi- tious libel", banned by the House of Lords. The Human Rights Court has ruled repeatedly that governing bodies may not restrict criticism in such a way. Specifically, the term "protection of the rights of others" does not apply to public bodies. The ruling shows that the ECJ (despite paying lip-service) does not con- sider itself bound by the European Convention on Human Rights, drafted by British lawyers after the Second World War to safeguard liberty in Europe. This is an extremely serious develop- ment, because the EU's new Charter of Fundamental Rights extends the ECJ's competence into the area of civil liberties, transforming it from a commercial court dealing with single market issues to a fully fledged supreme court. The ECJ has already begun referring to the charter in its NEW SMART BARCODES RAISE PRIVACY CONCERNS we a few years, unobtrusive tags on retail products will send radio signals to their manufacturers, collecting a wealth of information about consumer habits—and also raising privacy concerns. It's 2010, and an ordinary day on an assembly line. A bottle of root beer is stamped with an innocuous little tag that immediately begins sending messages into cyberspace. The tag radios the soda com- pany's website to report the bottle's where- abouts, allowing computers to track the bottle as it moves from the factory, through warehouses and distribution cen- tres and into a refrigerator at a corner store. When the bottle is sold, the manu- facturer is alerted and orders a new one to take its place. Finally, facing reincarnation OESTROGEN MIMICS ARE COMMON IN SUNSCREENS Gis pendine chemicals that mimic the effect of oestrogen are common in sunscreens, warns a team of Swiss researchers. Margaret Schlumpf from the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and her colleagues tested six common UV screen- ing chemicals used in sunscreens, lipsticks and other cosmetics. All five UVB screens—benzophenone-3, homosalate, 4- methyl-benzylidene camphor (4-MBC), octyl-methoxycinnamate and octyl- dimethyl-PABA—behaved like oestrogen in laboratory tests, making cancer cells grow more rapidly. One of the most common sunscreen chemicals, 4-MBC, had a particularly strong effect. When the team mixed it with olive oil and applied it to rat skin, it doubled the rate of uterine growth well before puberty. "That was scary, because we used con- centrations that are in the range allowed in sunscreens," Schlumpf said. (Source: New Scientist Online News, 18 April 2001, www.newscientist.com) Wart To PUT INTO SOMETHING, SHORT-TERM HIGH YIELD. ETHICAL | iT —_— JUNE — JULY 2001 NEXUS 7 S ete www.nexusmagazine.com