Search Results for: united nations

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SHOE industry members of a specialist United States committee have strongly backed the US-Australia free trade agreement. Representatives on the sector advisory committee on footwear, leather and leather products welcomed its restrictive rules of origin (protecting shoe-makers) and lengthy 10-year tariff phase-outs for 17 protective footwear items of particular concern.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
UNITED Arab Emirates (UAE) knitted clothing exports to the United States are expected to be boosted in the future by a new Trade and Investment Framework Agreement signed by the two countries. The US imported US$1.1 billion million in UAE goods in 2003, with knitted apparel a key component of this commerce, (along with woven clothes and oil).…

Keith Nuthall
THE PACIFIC island of Nauru, already ecologically scarred by open cast mining of its guano reserves, has a new problem to content with: its shores are clogged with discarded cans of Fosters and Victoria Bitter. Independent state Palau’s waste disposal systems are so poor, its coast is “blue green”, not from the surrounding azure waters, but from “mounds of discarded Fosters and VB” says the United Nations Environment Programme.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations has created an international advisory board on water supplies and sanitation, which will try to boost these services in developing countries. It will try and mobilise funds for such projects, also offering technical, political and business advice.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
A CONSORTIUM of seven major power companies is to apply for a license to build a new commercial power plant in the United States. EDF International North America, a subsidiary of Électricité de France, and the Westinghouse Electric Company, a BNFL subsidiary, are participating.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED States government will have to reconsider the fate of foreign nationals on death row, after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled it had breached its obligations under the Vienna Convention on consular relations, by failing to inform 51 Mexican convicts of their right to contact diplomats “without delay” after arrest.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
AMERICAN researchers have developed a ‘curtain of air’ system that could keep disease-carrying insects from boarding civil aeroplanes. The technology, created by the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) in the United States, is a high velocity fan system used in passenger walkways that excludes 99 per cent of mosquitoes and flies.…

BY EDWARD PETERS
DEPENDING on who you ask, Taiwan is either a renegade province or to all intents and purposes an independent nation, albeit one that currently lacks full international recognition. To suggest that it could be a fully functioning country in its own right to anyone in Beijing – the capital of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) – is tantamount to treason.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A SPECIALIST United States government committee has criticised the USA-Australia free trade agreement. The agricultural technical advisory committee for trade in animal and animal products said the deal failed to remove “unscientific” sanitary regulations restricting US pork and poultry exports, and noted opposition from American cattle producers to widening import quotas for Australian beef.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A SPECIALIST ferrous metal United States government committee has criticised the recent free trade agreement struck between the US and Australia that will remove tariffs on iron, steel and related products traded between the two countries. The federal inter-sector advisory committee on ferrous ores and metals has concluded the although the deal itself does promote US interests, there are a number of elements that fail to cover concerns “which certainly affect our sector’s economic interests and the equity and reciprocity for the US overall that we seek in US trade agreements.”…