Search Results for: World Trade Organisation

BY KEITH NUTHALL
ENVIRONMENTAL crimes are in many ways the most damaging of offences, given that they can harm millions of people, whether through damaging the ozone layer, increasing pollution levels or damaging biodiversity. The United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, (UNICRI), has published a study on this modern scourge.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED States has lost a disputes panel case at the World Trade Organisation over definitive safeguard duties that it had imposed on imports of circular welded carbon quality line pipe from South Korea.

Although the panel rejected a number of South Korean complaints, it upheld enough of them to conclude that the US should “bring its safeguard measure into conformity with its WTO obligations.”…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE POSSIBILITY of a major increase in shipping between the European Union and Iran is being furthered by preparations to strike a trade and co-operation agreement between the two sides. Following preliminary discussions with Iranian diplomats, the European Commission has drawn up negotiating directives for such talks, which are expected to be approved by ministers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has cleared the proposed merger between steel producers Usinor S.A. of France, Luxembourg-based Arbed S.A. and Aceralia Corporación Siderúrgica S.A. of Spain, a deal which would create the world’s biggest steel company. To secure regulatory approval, the companies have agreed to sell off steel production and distribution operations in France, Spain, Luxembourg, Belgium, Italy and Portugal.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Bank and the European Investment Bank are to lend US$183 and Euro 55 million respectively to Tanzania, where the money will establish Songas, a privately owned and managed natural gas and power utility. The company will develop Tanzania’s natural gas field on Songo Songo Island and construct a 230 km pipeline to bring the gas to a power plant, which will be refurbished and converted to gas production.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AS the world’s environment ministers meet in Marrakesh, Morocco, to agree detailed rules on the operation of the Kyoto Protocol, the European Commission has formally proposed that the EU should ratify the convention and has also tabled legislation that will bring it to life in Europe.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Trade Organisation has agreed to launch a new wide-ranging round of talks on liberalising global commerce, negotiations that will include the sale of pharmaceuticals.

Ministers at the summit in Doha, Qatar, also set deadlines for the new talks, which must be completed by 2005.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Health Organisation has announced that it has struck an agreement with international sports governing bodies to launch an anti-tobacco campaign; it would aim at persuading sports participants and spectators to abandon smoking, (including in stadiums, and block tobacco advertising, promotion and marketing.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
MEMBER countries of the World Trade Organisation have agreed to speed up the implementation of the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing, in a bid to mollify criticism from developing world governments that their knitwear exporters have not benefited from the ATC as widely as the had hoped.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Trade Organisation has launched a general round at its summit in Qatar, which will include negotiations on liberalising export and import regimes for so-called industrial goods such as fish.

These talks have a final deadline of 2005 and, said the meeting’s communiqué, will try “to reduce or as appropriate eliminate tariffs, including the reduction or elimination of tariff peaks, high tariffs, and tariff escalation, as well as non-tariff barriers, in particular on products of export interest to developing countries.”…