Word: belgians
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...Aquitaine, France's state-owned petroleum company, spent more than $150 million for research and development on the equipment in the 1970s. Yet no oil was ever found. In fact, there is no evidence that ' the expensive devices worked at all. A Belgian count who sold them to Elf has vanished, along with the money. As a result, the leftist government of President Francois Mitterrand is accusing its center-right predecessor of lying and incompetence, an investigation has been launched, and the French public is savoring the oddest political scandal in years...
...preferred, as the pro-government daily Le Monde put it, "to preserve his virginity in this affair while encouraging the government to move to the front with it." Meanwhile, Count de Villegas's chateau outside Brussels was burglarized last week, and his files were rifled by what Belgian police describe as "professionals." In Ventimiglia, Italian authorities offered police protection to would-be inventor Bonassoli after noticing unknown people around his house. Bonassoli, who left Villegas's employ in 1979 after a falling-out over money, reported that he is still perfecting the oil-detection device. But, says...
Roads built by European engineers are being gradually swallowed up by the bush. When Zaïre, then known as the Belgian Congo, gained its independence in 1960, it had 58,000 miles of good roads; now only 6,200 miles are passable...
...Atomic Energy Board. Israel had reportedly already effected an exchange of South African enriched uranium for Israeli nuclear technology. A British team of investigative reporters, after surveying the evidence available at the time, concluded that the 1979 nuclear blast was an Israeli-South African warhead fired from a Belgian and American-made howitzer...
DIED. Leopold III, King of the Belgians, 81; of a heart attack; in Brussels. In 1940, instead of fleeing to set up a government in exile, the urbane, willful monarch surrendered to Hitler's invading army and was held prisoner during World War II. Self-exiled after the war because of Belgian bitterness about his surrender and disapproval of his second marriage to a commoner, Leopold returned in 1951, but violent riots broke out, persuading him to abdicate to his son, the bashful, 20-year-old Baudouin, who has since presided over a stable, prosperous Belgium...