An internal recommendation on October 10 by one of the working groups within the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) flagged ethanol as a toxic substance

International News via Reuters:

The EU is weighing a ban on the usage of ethanol as an active ingredient in biocidal products, including hand sanitizers, over increasing risks of cancer, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.

An internal recommendation on October 10 by one of the working groups within the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) flagged ethanol as a toxic substance, which increased the risk of cancer and pregnancy complications and needed to be replaced in cleaning and other products, the FT said.

The ECHA’s Biocidal Products Committee is set to meet between November 25 and November 28.

The ECHA told Reuters in an emailed statement that the regulator was currently assessing ethanol for biocidal use.

The regulator said if its expert committee concluded that ethanol had the potential to cause cancer or harm human reproduction, it would recommend its substitution.

It added that assessments were still ongoing and no conclusions had been made. The final decision will be taken by the European Commission following the committee’s scientific opinion.

The World Health Organization classifies both ethanol and isopropanol as safe to use for hand hygiene.

Reporting by Disha Mishra and Gnaneshwar Rajan in Bengaluru; Editing by Jamie Freed and Kate Mayberry

Cintula told reporters when leaving court on Tuesday he would “for sure” appeal the verdict

International News via Reuters:

A Slovak court ruled on Tuesday that a man who shot and wounded Prime Minister Robert Fico last year was guilty of terrorism charges and handed him a 21-year jail sentence.

Juraj Cintula, 72, shot at Fico five times from just over a one-metre distance as the prime minister greeted people in the central Slovak town of Handlova in May 2024.

The verdict of the Specialised Criminal Court in the city of Banska Bystrica closes a trial that began in July and whose main question was whether Cintula, who admitted shooting Fico, was guilty of terrorism or less serious crimes of murder or attack.

Fico, 61, was struck four times and was seriously injured in his abdomen, and also suffered injuries to his hip, hand and foot. He made his first public appearance in July last year, a few months after the attack and returned to work shortly after.

DEEP DIVISIONS IN SLOVAK SOCIETY

Cintula appeared in court in a blue shirt and black hooded sweatshirt, accompanied by guards with automatic weapons. He has said he wanted to hurt but not kill Fico, because he wanted to stop him from continuing his policies which he said damaged Slovak freedom and culture.

Cintula told reporters when leaving court on Tuesday he would “for sure” appeal the verdict. “It was unjust,” he said.

The shooting laid bare deep divisions in Slovak society, and animosity between the populist Fico and the opposition. Fico, who has held power for 11 years over three stints since 2006, has blamed the mostly liberal, pro-EU opposition for fostering a climate of anger that led to the shooting.

The opposition accuses Fico of eroding democratic standards, media freedom, and covering up corruption.

Judge Igor Kralik cited Cintula’s own reasoning for the attack when reading his justification for the terrorism count.

“The court considers proven that the defendant did not attack a citizen but specifically the prime minister,” Kralik said.

The sentence was less than the maximum of life in prison.

The defence counsel for Cintula, a pensioner and former mine worker, stonemason, writer and public activist, argued that not every attack on an official was terrorism. It had sought a lesser sentence for an attack on a public official.

FICO HAS SOUGHT BETTER TIES WITH MOSCOW

David Lindtner, a lawyer for Fico, said it was clear that the defendant was “no pensioner but a terrorist” who wanted to set a precedent that “political confrontation should be resolved by violent means”.

Fico returned to power in 2023 and ended state military assistance to Ukraine, sought better ties with Moscow, overhauled the public broadcaster and introduced some new criminal codes – changes critics say hurt democracy.

Cintula has said he opposed the prime minister’s policies on Ukraine, media and culture and at his trial described the attack as a “scream against fear that is paralysing the society”.

Fico, who has suffered ongoing health problems related to the shooting, has said he has forgiven Cintula.

Reporting by Jan Lopatka, additional reporting by Jason Hovet; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Ros Russell

Only a small pool of criminals would be capable of such a job as Sunday’s audacious robbery in Paris and may already be known to police

International News via Reuters:

Crime gangs around Europe are increasingly robbing valuable jewels and gold from cash-needy museums like the Louvre, but while police often catch the thieves, they struggle to recover the priceless goods, law enforcement and art experts say.

Only a small pool of criminals would be capable of such a job as Sunday’s audacious robbery in Paris and may already be known to police, the specialists say. But the objects themselves could be quickly broken down into component parts and sold on.

“If I steal a Van Gogh, it’s a Van Gogh. I can’t dispose of it through any other channel than an illicit art market,” said Marc Balcells, a Barcelona-based expert in crimes against cultural heritage. “But when I am stealing … jewellery, I can move it through an illicit market as precious stones.”

The brazen heist of crown jewels from the Louvre, the world’s most visited museum, has been decried by some as a national humiliation and sparked security checks across France’s multitude of cultural sites.

“If you target the Louvre, the most important museum in the world, and then get away with the French crown jewels, something was wrong with security,” said art investigator Arthur Brand.

Officials at the Louvre, home to artworks such as the Mona Lisa, had in fact already sounded the alarm about lack of investment.

And at least four French museums have been robbed in the last two months, according to media reports.

On Tuesday, prosecutors said they had charged a Chinese-born woman for the theft of six gold nuggets worth about 1.5 million euros ($1.75 million) from Paris’s Museum of Natural History last month. She was arrested in Barcelona trying to dispose of some melted gold, they said.

Christopher Marinello, founder of Art Recovery International, which tracks stolen art, said museum heists were on the rise across Europe and further afield.

He cited cases in the Netherlands, France, Egypt.

“If you have jewels or gold in your collections, you need to be worried,” Marinello said.

WHODUNNIT?

Paris prosecutors have entrusted the investigation to a specialised Paris police unit known as the BRB, which is used to dealing with high-profile robberies.

Former police officer Pascal Szkudlara, who served in the unit, said the BRB handled the 2016 Kim Kardashian probe, when Paris thieves stole her $4 million engagement ring, as well as a recent spate of kidnappings of wealthy crypto bosses.

He said the BRB has about 100 agents, with over a dozen specialised in museum thefts. Investigators will look at video footage, telephone records, and forensic evidence, while informants will also be activated.

“They can have teams working on it 24/7 and for a long period,” Szkudlara said, expressing “100%” confidence the thieves would be caught.

Police will be poring over security footage going back weeks, looking to identify suspicious people casing out the joint, Brand said.

Corinne Chartrelle, who previously worked at the French Police’s Central Office for the Fight against Trafficking in Cultural Property, said the jewels could feasibly end up in a global diamond centre like Antwerp where there “are probably people who aren’t too concerned about the origin of the items.”

The diamonds could also be cut into smaller stones and the gold melted down, leaving buyers unaware of their provenance.

If the thieves feel the net closing, they could chuck or destroy the loot altogether.

Police are clearly in a race against time.

“Once they’re been cut into smaller jewels, the deed is done. It’s over. We’ll never see these pieces again intact,” said Marinello. “It’s a very small percentage, recovering stolen artworks. When it comes to jewellery, that percentage is even less.”

Any theory about the objects being ordered up by a mysterious buyer was laughable, said Brand. “That’s unheard of,” he said. “You only see it in Hollywood movies.”

Cultural authorities across Europe will be looking at how to better secure museums at a time of tight public finances.

Brand said it was impossible to properly safeguard a museum, so the best thing was to slow down the time it takes to steal objects and escape, giving police longer to respond by making windows or display cases thicker, or adding more doors.

“They know they have only five, six minutes to get away with it because after six minutes, the police show up. So if they go into a museum … and they find out that it takes more than six, seven, eight minutes, they will not do it,” he said.

Finland’s National Gallery Director General Kimmo Leva said financial realities meant tough decisions.

“A tightening everyday economy is, naturally, not the best basis for making the investments needed to mitigate potential threats,” Leva said.

($1 = 0.8575 euros)

Reporting by Gabriel Stargardter, Juliette Jabkhiro, Elissa Darwish; Additional reporting by Anne Kauranen, Vitalii Yalahuzian, Ilze Filks, Javi West Larrañaga; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne