54 million animals could fall to REACH
“To protect Europeans from the effects of chemicals, will it really be necessary to sacrifice 54 million laboratory animals over the next decade rather than the 2.5 million originally estimated?” wonders Le Monde. The French daily reports that, according to two scientists, Europe is liable to have a hard time implementing REACH (2006 EU regulation on “Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals”). This EU legislation requires the chemical industry to prove that products put on the market before 1981 are not hazardous to our health or the environment.
In an article published in the scientific journal Nature, toxicologist Thomas Hartung and chemist Costanza Rovida warn that “toxicologists do not have the appropriate tools – whether high-throughput methods or acceptable alternatives to animal testing – to meet these expectations.” The chemical industry has already “pre-registered” 140,000 substances for analysis.
In a time of crisis with high unemployment, young Lithuanians are following in the footsteps of their emigrant ancestors. Tens of thousands have left the country in search of a better life, mainly in the British Isles and Scandinavia. The weekly Veidas reports: 
The new Eurogroup meeting on February 9 is not enough to banish the spectre of a Greek bankruptcy. While Athens may largely be responsible for the crisis, the EU and its partners are not blameless themselves. La Stampa argues that their confused messages and the absence of any strategy have transformed a resolvable problem into an explosive chaos. 
Two camps, two theories, and two visions of France: 18 years after the massacre of 800,000 Tutsis, the precise role played by Paris is still the subject of heated debate, fueled by the findings of successive criminal investigations.