Archive
International News Services archives articles supplied to clients one year or more after initial publication. These articles are protected by a password and not made available to readers without permission from clients. They are used as a background resource by agency journalists. Upon client requests, International News Services will remove such articles from the archive or not upload them in the first place. They are included to demonstrate the breadth of topics undertaken by the agency and also to help promote clients’ coverage.
LOCAL BOOKSHOP STUDY
BY PHILIP FINE
LOCAL book merchants contribute more to a community’s economy than do retail chains, according to a study of one US neighbourhood. It reported that local retailers return more than three times as much economic value back to the community than do chains such as Borders and Barnes & Noble.…
BHUTAN TOBACCO SALES
BY MONICA DOBIE and KEITH NUTHALL
THE HIMALAYAN kingdom of Bhutan has launched a ‘tobacco free’ programme, aimed at persuading its mostly Buddhist citizens from abiding by a often ignored 1729 law banning them from smoking; indeed 18 of the country’s 20 districts have banned the sale of tobacco, leaving only the capital, Thimphu, as a safe haven for selling tobacco products.…
BRISTOL CIGARETTE RAID
BY MARK ROWE
CUSTOMS and Excise officers in Bristol have made the biggest ever seizure of contraband cigarettes in Britain’s West Country region. More than 10 million cigarettes with an estimated duty value of Pounds 1.75 million were found in a crane imported at the city’s Royal Portbury Dock on board a Bulgarian timber ship.…
CANADA PIX CASE
BY MONICA DOBIE
THE QUEBEC Superior Court has thrown out a lawsuit brought by Canada’s three major tobacco companies, JTI- Macdonald, Benson and Hedges and Imperial Tobacco who argued graphic health warnings on cigarette packages violated their right to freedom of expression.…
EU TOBACCO FUND
BY KEITH NUTHALL
REFORMS to the European Union’s Community Tobacco Fund have been tabled by the European Commission, which wants to earmark half the money earned from deductions from tobacco growing premiums spent on anti-smoking campaigns and research. The Commission says Euro 18 and 27 million will be made available by respective two and three per cent deductions.…
ECJ - INGREDIENTS
BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Court of Justice has rejected a bid by Britain’s Imperial Tobacco and British American Tobacco to annul European Union Directive 2001/37/EC on the composition and designation of cigarettes on the grounds that its commercial restrictions were illegally based on freedom of trade powers.…
TOBACCO ADVERTISING - EU
BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union has – almost certainly – a new tobacco advertising directive, which its framers will hope will be more legally robust than its predecessor; struck down by the European Court of Justice. The EU Council of Ministers saved the European Parliament from having to debate the proposal a second time by accepting the few amendments that were agreed at a parliamentary plenary session in November.…
CAMBODIA/NEPAL
BY KEITH NUTHALL
EU ministers have ordered that new textile trade agreements agreed last month between the European Commission and Cambodia and Nepal be provisionally implemented from January 1, pending formal ratification. All parties have agreed they should last until December 2004.…
CANADA-BRAZIL-USA - WTO
KEITH NUTHALL
CANADA has joined formal World Trade Organisation (WTO) disputes talks initiated by Brazil against the United States regarding American government subsidies to producers, users and exporters of upland cotton. The Brazilians claim that these payments break the WTO’s Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures, Agreement on Agriculture, and General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).…
BIOTRADE FUND
KEITH NUTHALL
SWITZERLAND has donated US$2.5 million to a new international BioTrade Facilitation Programme which will fund the development of export industries in poor countries based on under-exploited natural resources, notably fibre plants. The scheme will be run by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and its International Trade Centre joint venture with the World Trade Organisation.…