From Mr Norman Crabtree

From Ms Lilli Matson

Sturge Names in lawsuit

BRITAIN'S official air pollution watchdog is set to urge ministers to make heavy cuts in emissions which may kill more than 10,000 people across the country each year. The Government's Expert Panel on Air Quality, made up of independent doctors and scientists, is to meet on Friday to recommend a limit on small particulates, the most deadly air pollutants in Britain, which, up to now, have been unregulated.

Rivers polluted by heating oil spill

JOHN Major intervened last week to stop Dr Brian Mawhinney's transport department from contemptuously dismissing the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution's call to revolutionise Britain's transport policy.

Westminster City Council is planning to introduce on-the-spot fines for drivers whose cars belch out too much pollution. Fines of between pounds 20 and pounds 150 could be handed out to motorists who fail roadside checks.

Athens - More than 150 Athens residents were taken to hospital as soaring pollution levels and temperatures hit the city. The authorities banned most traffic from the city centre and radios broadcast advice that the elderly, children and sick should not go outside. AFP

Britain suffered its worst summer smog of the year over the weekend, with concentrations of low-level ozone reaching double the air quality limit recommended by Government-appointed experts.

Sir: I refer to your leading article 'The bill for even cleaner rivers' (1 June) in which you suggest that 'there is still no system of making polluters pay for the damage they do'.

PETER MIDDLETON, Lloyd's chief executive, said the market's reserves were robust and losses for 1991 would be an improvement on the previous year, writes Diane Coyle.

PETER Middleton last night warned that the survival of the Lloyd's of London insurance market, where he is chief executive, depended upon the success of NewCo, a ring-fence for present and future capital from the increasing number of pollution and absestos claims.

A Cornish river was polluted yesterday when a 40,000-gallon farm slurry tank collapsed. Half the slurry was stopped by trenches in farmland, but about 20,000 gallons polluted a tributary of the Neet, near Bude.

The High Court backed the National Rivers Authority when it ruled that companies can be convicted of causing pollution even though the offence was the result of employees' actions.