Search Results for: Belgium

BY KEITH NUTHALL

DESPITE the binge drinking, fatty fast food, appalling public transport and bad weather, Britons have less medical hypertension than Italians, despite their sunshine, excellent diet, red wine and general supposed joie de vivre. That is the verdict of a European Union (EU)-funded research project IMMIDIET.…

BY PAUL RIGG

ROBBERIES, competition from immigrants and the state of the economy are the issues of most pressing concern for Spanish hauliers, according to drivers interviewed in truck stops on the outskirts of Madrid by Commercial Motor.

"I woke up with my kidneys and head hurting like I’d drunk a bottle of whisky," said Elias Calyo, 46, from Andalucia in the south of Spain.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

CUTTING-EDGE research discovering that yeast actually behaves socially may offer brewers a way of controlling yeast-clumping and control how long yeast should remain in a brew. Scientists from the USA, Belgium and France have discovered that yeast cells with the gene FLO1 will stick together to protect against threats, which includes alcohol and antibiotics.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE OLD 15 member European Union (EU) will hit its Kyoto Protocol collective target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 8% for the period 2008-2012 from 1990 levels, but only by financing pollution cuts in poor countries abroad.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE DIPLOMATIC fallout over Russia’s attack on Georgia has continued to impact on European Union (EU) energy policies, although signs of an early thaw in relations are evident. At an EU-Ukraine summit in Paris, the EU promised to sign an Association Agreement with Ukraine mid-2009, bringing Kiev closer to becoming a member state, although no timetable for membership negotiations was set.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

DESPITE widespread scepticism about its viability, the ITER project to build the world’s first commercial nuclear fusion reactor is now under way. It is employing specialists (nearly 300 staff and rising at the end of 2008); releasing Euro millions in research and procurement funding; and in November moved into its headquarters, in Cadarache, southern France, which is where the first nuclear fusion reactor will be built on a 180 hectare site.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

THE EUROPEAN Union’s (EU) third money laundering directive should have been transposed into national legislation by December last year across the EU. But some EU member states and professional organisations have found its provisions difficult, particularly the introduction of a risk-based approach to the application of anti money laundering disciplines.…

BY MARTINA MARE?KOVÁ

THE CZECH haulage industry is struggling to replace retiring drivers, and a planned government measure to ban motorway lorry driving on Friday afternoons between 3pm and 6pm could make the situation even worse.

This restriction, said Martin ?pry?ar,…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

EUROPEAN nuclear regulators have been alerted about a release of Iodine-131 gas from the Institut National de Radio-éléments (IRE) in Fleurus, Belgium. The leak was reported by the Belgian Federal Agency for Nuclear Control as a Level 3 incident on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES) scale, which had seven grades of incident severity.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE PLANNED establishment of a joint coordination centre offering daily grid electricity availability forecasts by French operator RTE and Belgium’s Elia has been welcomed by the European Commission. From February 2009, the centre "will develop grid forecasts and support real-time monitoring of electricity flows", said the two network operators, saying the initiative would promote "market coupling".…