A concerted effort by twitter users 13 October has forced a London law firm to alter the terms of a high court injunction which prohibited the Guardian newspaper from reporting a story on toxic waste dumped off the coast of Ivory Coast. Less than an hour after “twitterati” and bloggers broke the news themselves, the law firm that demanded the injunction, Carter-Ruck, telephoned Guardian lawyers to say that they had asked for the injunction to be altered.
The Guardian received the injunction from Carter-Ruck on 11 September in response to a story about an oil and gas exploration firm, Trafigura, which allegedly had dumped toxic waste in the sea off the Ivory Coast and is being sued by 31,000 Ivoreans. The terms of the injunction prohibited the newspaper from reporting on a parliamentary debate about a report into the alleged incident. The Guardian, Wall Street Journal
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Brazil is increasing pressure on the UK to take back the 1,400 tons of hazardous waste in 41 containers exported from the UK to Brazil early July 2009. The foreign ministry has asked its permanent mission in Geneva “to report the traffic of hazardous waste from the UK under the terms of the Basel Convention”, according to Brazil’s official government (Por) site.
Update 12:23 Geneva, Switzerland and Brazil (GenevaLunch) – Brazil is being widely reported as saying it will lodge a complaint with the Geneva-based World Trade Organization over illegal waste shipments from Britain, the government announced Friday 24 July.
A large number of containers (Ed. note: reports vary from 41 to 99) of possibly toxic waste that were shipped from Britain to Brazil have been at the centre of heated debate and diplomatic discussions since the waste was discovered in mid-July in Brazil. Three men have been arrested in Swindon, Wiltshire, UK while officials investigate if they used loopholes in the law to mix household and clinical waste illegally.
The Times, UK, reports that “The Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Resources (Ibama) said that the waste included syringes, bags of blood, condoms, nappies and used bandages. The shipping manifest stated that the contents were recyclable plastic.” Shipping waste is subject to the Basel Convention and, according to Reuters, Brazil’s plans to return to England the rotting piles of some 1,600 tons of garbage could run into problems.
Related, Guardian, UK
