AUSTRALIAN premier Paul Keating called it .an act of stupidity," and the rest of the world exploded in anger - but Paris remained undeterred. In the wee hours of Septembei 6, the French did what

FRANCE's nuclear testing shenanigans the Mururoa atoll have caused an international furore (see Down to Earth, 31, 1995). Among the most hostile ics of the French moves on the atol the

France obstinately plans to ahead with nuclear testings in the South Pacific just after the NPT conference held by the Big 5

The much-maligned diesel fuel is being cleaned up. Rhone-Poulenc, the French chemicals and pharmaceuticals group, has developed a technology which it claims reduces carbon emissions from the fuel by

IN A French government report on the space sciences, strong recommendations have been made to the authorities to move away from the European Space Agency (ESA) partners who are allegedly holding

The UK-based NEC Corporation and Ezaki Glico, a Japanese confectionary company, claim to have mastered the art of controlling and altering the catalytic properties of enzymes. For instance, the

French prime minister Edouard Balladur has stirred up a hornet's nest by reviving the Rhine-Rhone Canal project first proposed and also rejected in 1961. The environmentalists, including France's

Fresh charges levelled against some French scientists and politicians for allowing untreated blood transfusion have taken the country by storm

By harvesting the world's first crop of genetically-engineered wheat, the Swiss-owned Ciba Seeds has shown that scientists can alter the characteristics of important cereals reliably, by giving them