Search Results for: Spain

BY ALAN OSBORN

THE TASTE for liquorice is surprisingly well defined in geographical terms in Germany and its neighbouring countries. There seems to be a cut-off point at the Rhine Valley. "They don’t like the taste in the southern part of Germany and if you go south of the Rhine valley you don’t find liquorice products in the shops," said Jens Milt, head of the liquorice division at the leading German liquorice supplier Alfred L Wolff, based in Hamburg.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

PREDICTING oil seed production for a given year is always an imprecise science. If accurate projections could be made year-after-year, bio-based oil and fats specialists would all be commodity market millionaires. And they are not. However, as with betting on racehorses, the more information that is available, the better opportunity there is for getting something right, and with oil seed production – the more analysts know about market conditions, weather forecasts and regulation, the better.…

BY PAUL COCHRANE and KEITH NUTHALL

SYRIA is such a staple of Middle East political turmoil, it is easy to forget that it is a near neighbour of Europe: less than 200 miles of sea separate it from Cyprus and it borders Turkey, which could be a European Union (EU) member by 2020.…

BY LEE ADENDORFF, ERIC LYMAN and KEITH NUTHALL

INTRODUCTION

THE ITALIAN wine industry hit rock bottom a generation ago, when thousands of bottles of Italian wine were found laced with deadly levels of methanol, a key ingredient in antifreeze that had been used to raise the alcohol content of the wine.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A YEAR of struggle would be the best way to sum up 2009 as far as the global clothing and textile industry is concerned. The depth and severity of the worldwide recession left many clothing and textile companies reeling, even impacting upon China, which had previously been dominating global markets.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE PLANNED shape of a new European Commission for the next five years has been unveiled, and it includes recreating a new single directorate general (DG) for energy. Since 2000, the Commission has operated a joint directorate general for energy and transport, but with the growing importance of the energy brief to the European Union (EU), energy policy will receive a new separate directorate general.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

AIRPORT customers worldwide will assess their flights’ fuel-based carbon footprints when buying an e-ticket in future. The International Civil Aviation Organisation is allowing Spain-based travel IT company Amadeus to use its official ‘carbon calculator’. It assesses CO2 emissions considering aircraft type, route data, passenger load, cargo carried and other factors.…

BY EMMA JACKSON and KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission has earmarked Euro 275 million in its 2010 budgets to eradicate, control and monitor common diseases, giving priority to those which could be transmitted to humans who eat or come in contact with contaminated meat.…

BY JOHN PAGNI

HAILING from arguably Europe’s most egalitarian country, Finns take equality seriously. So when it appears that some are being treated differently from others, even the normally phlegmatic, taciturn Finnish trucker may be roused into voicing an opinion.

Being a large country with a small population and a good road network, congestion is rare.…

By Katherine Dunn, International News Services

The travails of Roman Polanski in Switzerland this autumn have offered some lessons to the world’s wanted over extradition laws and how to deal with them. The Polish director has of course been living in France, with little fear of extradition, since 1978, when he fled the USA facing statutory rape charges. Only now of course this autumn was he arrested on an American warrant on a visit to Switzerland, while movie stars and directors crowed for his release.

Now, he is out on bail, secured with the help of French president Nicholas Sarkozy and his wife, Carla Bruni, who intervened on Polanski’s behalf. 

As Polanski languishes in Alpine house arrest in a luxury Swiss chalet, it’s clear that extradition is still, at base, a political decision – and to avoid it, one key is not supporting international causes unpopular with powerful governments.…