• In mid-July, The Genetic Engineering Network attacked and partly destroyed two stands of genetically modified poplar trees planted at the AstraZeneca agriculture research center near London. The Network's anonymous statement released after its attack on the defenseless, immobile, life forms said that AstraZeneca was showing "contempt for our planet and the life it supports, including human life." The trees have lowered levels of lignin and were being developed as part of an EU-funded research project to explore environmentally friendly sources of raw materials for paper and pulp production. According to AstraZeneca, English Nature (the UK government's advisors on the environment) had written to the company three years ago telling it that there was negligible risk to native flora and fauna.

• Thousands of people in Britain exposed themselves to the outdoor dangers of sunlight and non-GM crops in support of a call for a five-year moratorium on commercial planting of GM crops. While protestors consumed allegedly GM-free food and beverages at 50 sites around the UK, picnickers in Devauden (Scotland) had to face an additional hazard: the premiere of the anti-GM opera, "Soya Susie and the Gene Dictators."

• Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (Tokyo) has suspended safety trials of crops into which the gene for the Bt insecticidal protein has been inserted until it has formulated guidelines to indicate how pollen toxicity should be assessed. The short-term moratorium does not affect imports of GM corn into Japan from the US.

• The environmental protest group Greenpeace has threatened to sue the EU unless the EC withdraws marketing authorizations it has already granted for Bt-maize developed by Monsanto and Novartis .

• UK parliamentarian Alan Simpson is proposing that company directors should be personally liable for any damage caused by the supply of GM crops to the environment. The MP for Nottingham South is sponsoring the GM Food and Producer Liability Bill, a private measure that stands no chance of becoming law. Simpson contrasted the warnings about risks to human health displayed on pesticides that can be bought in garden supply shops with the absence of such warnings on plants that produce their own lepidopteran-specific toxins.