The European Commission is seeking to fine France more than $200,000 a day for failing to implement safety standards for biotech experiments.
The case primarily involves research and industrial use of genetically modified viruses and bacteria.
The European Union’s executive agency told the EU’s high court Wednesday that France had not adopted legislation the EU passed in 1990. The rules require member nations to set up emergency plans for dealing with accidents in biotech labs and inform emergency services about the hazards.
Some scientists are concerned that without adequate controls, microscopic bugs engineered with novel genes taken from other species could get loose from laboratories and mix with naturally occurring species, creating combinations that could be lethal or unchecked by natural predators.
Plant-based vaccine for chickens approved: The U.S. Department of Agriculture has approved for use in chickens a vaccine produced by genetically engineered plants, the first time it has signed off on such a plant-based manufacturing process.
Normally vaccinations involve injecting whole viruses that are dead or have their infectious and dangerous elements removed. Here, scientists inserted bits of the genetic material from the virus into tobacco cells to produce a protein that provokes an immune response in chickens to Newcastle disease.
Several biotechnology companies and university researchers are, to save manufacturing costs, splicing human genes into crops such as tobacco and rice to produce drugs to fight cancer and other diseases.
Those projects are still experimental and confined to small plots. Still, these biotech developments generally incite angst among those who fear food crops spliced with animal DNA to produce drugs will accidentally mix with conventionally grown crops, tainting the food supply.
But in this case, Indianapolis-based Dow AgroSciences LLC teased out the vaccine from tobacco plant cells confined to the factory rather than in whole plants grown outdoors.
Dow doesn’t intend to immediately sell the Newcastle disease vaccine, which would be administered by injection. Dow says the commercial market is already crowded.
We’re getting more mobile: Worldwide shipments of mobile phones reached a record 242 million units in the fourth quarter, surpassing the previous peak of 200 million units during the 2004 holiday quarter, according to research firm iSuppli Corp.
For all of 2005, 813 million units were shipped, up 14 percent from 713 million in 2004.
Finland-based Nokia Corp. led the pack, grabbing a 32 percent share of the market, followed by Motorola Inc. at 18 percent, according to iSuppli. Samsung Electronics Co., LG Electronics Inc. and Sony Ericsson, respectively, rounded out the top five.
Siemens AG’s mobile phone unit, acquired last year by BenQ Corp., ranked fourth in 2004 with a 6.9 percent share but fell to sixth place in 2005 at 4.7 percent.
During 2005, both Nokia and Schaumburg, Ill.-based Motorola posted strong gains in share at the expense of smaller, lesser known rivals.
For planning the perfect party: The events invitation site Evite is adding features for planning parties, giving hosts such tools as a drink calculator to figure out how much alcohol to buy based on whether guests are light or heavy drinkers.
Hosts enter the duration of the party and the number of light, average and heavy drinkers attending. They also specify whether they’ll serve beer, wine, liquor or any combination. The tool then calculates the number of cases or bottles needed.
A chart is provided to substitute alcohol with soda or juice, but amounts must be manually calculated.
Another tool lets hosts automatically set budgets for food, drinks, decorations and entertainment, based on the number of guests, duration and the party type – baby showers and birthdays are among the options.
Catch those Super Bowl ads again: Super Bowl party so much fun you’ve missed some of those vaunted TV commercials?
No worries: Just go online.
Yahoo Inc. will feature on its video home page, at http://video.yahoo.com, links to this year’s Super Bowl ads, hosted at MTV Networks’ ifilm.com. There will be a delay from when the ads air but the first of the ads should start appearing before the game ends.
Ifilm is making the ads available at www.ifilm.com/superbowl, where ads from last year’s game are currently kept. Although Ifilm has never acquired rights from advertisers since it began carrying Super Bowl ads in 2002, no one has ever complained, said Roger Jackson, Ifilm’s vice president for content and programming.
“The reality is they love the notion that their ads get recycled for no additional charge,” he said.
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