Search Results for: Spain

BY LEE ADENDOORF and ALAN OSBORN

THE HIGH profile arrest in 2009 of a Sicilian businessman involved in the renewable energy sector and the subsequent seizure of his assets worth over Euro EUR1.5 billion in 2010, threw the international spotlight onto a problem Italian authorities have been grappling with for some time: the use of ‘clean energy’ industries such as wind and solar farms to launder mafia funds.…

BY ALAN OSBORN and LEE ADENDORFF

AS a rapidly growing sector with heavy funding and lax controls, Italy’s green energy industry has increasingly attracted infiltration from Mafia groups seeking to intercept investment and escape notice. With shady international dealings only recently coming under scrutiny, authorities are stepping up countermeasures with hopes of curbing a spreading trend.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A EUROPEAN Union (EU) research project is trying to create consensus over scientific principles affecting complimentary and alternative medicine (CAM), sufficiently robust to inspire EU regulation. The CAMbrella project involves academics from Germany, Britain, Hungary, Switzerland, Italy, Norway, Romania, Spain, France, Denmark, Austria and Sweden, ending December 2012.…

BY JOHN PAGNI

FINLAND is bucking the post-Fukushima trend of abandoning nuclear power, pushing ahead with its reactor construction programme.

The cost of building Olkiluoto 3, the 1,600MW European pressurised water reactor nuclear power plant is currently Euro EUR3.2 billion. Although four years behind schedule, project supporters remain positive: "Once we were told it would be delayed, the timetable didn’t matter.…

BY ALYSSA MCMURTRY

Illicit tobacco problem is reborn in high tax Spain

In the 1990’s Spain was a by-word for smuggled tobacco, but then the country successfully stifled the black market. Now, with higher taxes, contraband tobacco is back in Spain, and legitimate traders are worried.…

BY PAUL COCHRANE

Turkey taxation hike encourages smuggling

Increases in tobacco taxation in Turkey have helped prompt a surge in smuggling. Turkey is geographically poorly placed to resist illicits given its proximity to Iran and Bulgaria – known sources of contraband.…

BY ALYSSA MCMURTRY

TO imagine fashion intrinsically and traditionally Spanish, one may imagine long, flowing flamenco dresses, shoes built for stomping, or big flowers gently placed behind tightly pulled-back hair. While this exists still in the costume world, Spanish luxury clothes designers do play on the history and culture of Spain to create apparel that is modern, sophisticated and internationally recognised.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

Big European food retailers have been delighted with a new ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) slapping down regulations imposed by the Spanish government to restrict the location and operations of hypermarkets in Catalonia. The court, whose decisions are legal precedents throughout every country and region in the European Union (EU), said Spain had failed to fulfill obligations imposed by the "freedom of establishment" provision of the EU treaties.…

NATIONAL governments across the European Union (EU) have been put on warning by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) – they risk legislating to restrict the construction of hypermarkets at their peril. The EU’s senior legal body has declared illegal blocks imposed by the Spanish government on building hypermarkets in Catalonia.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

SCIENTISTS from a Euro EUR14.6 million research project are to unveil progress at a June 1-3 nanotechnology conference in Budapest on their goal of using nano-medicine to fight Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers in the NAD Project have tried to make a virtue out of the environmental concern that nano-particles can breach the blood-brain-barrier.…