Search Results for: united nations

BY PHILIP FINE

THE UNITED States automobile industry’s main lobby group has acknowledged that Sport Utility Vehicles (SUV’s) and pick-up trucks (small vans) pose serious dangers to smaller vehicles in collisions, and has promised its members will now develop voluntary standards to boost safety.…

BY PHILIP FINE

The United States has offered several trading partners an immediate

elimination of the tariffs it currently places on steel, provided the other

country does the same. U.S. Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick

announced the reciprocal agreement in several key sectors as part of its

first offer for the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas, a trading

bloc of 34 countries.…

BY PHILIP FINE

THE UNITED States says it is offering duty reductions for all agricultural imports from Americas trading partners to create a proposed 34-nation New Word trading bloc. While meat products were not mentioned specifically in its initial Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) offer, the US says it would be prepared to admit at least 56 per cent of agricultural imports from all these countries duty-free by 2005.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A GLOBAL code of practice for the harvesting and manufacturing of fish and fishery products is being drawn up by the world food trade standards body, Codex Alimentarius. Its committee on food hygiene recently endorsed a draft set of worldwide list of rules on handling fish, which are being developed to promote trade by creating uniform, albeit voluntary, standards.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
A NEW international treaty significantly extending the public information required of companies over their output of pollutants has been agreed by 30 member countries of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe and is expected to be formally adopted in Kiev in May.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A WIDE range of industries will have to declare information about their pollution emissions under a new protocol to the Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters.…

BY PHILIP FINE

AMERICA is experiencing a rash of mould-related lawsuits. Recent cases have included a US$14 million judgment in Florida against a contractor for alleged toxic mould-related construction defects at a courthouse and a US$65 million lawsuit against a New York community college by one of its former employees for injuries and damages allegedly caused by mould exposure.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
UNITED Nations member countries have agreed to strengthen the Aarhus convention on releasing environmental information, increasing the duty of oil refineries to declare information about 86 pollutants, (including greenhouse gases, acid rain pollutants, heavy metals and carcinogens), in a public pollutant release and transfer registers.…

BY MARK ROWE and ALAN OSBORN, in London, PHILIP FINE and MONICA DOBIE, in Montreal, and RICHARD HURST, in Johannesburg

RATCHETING up security has been a prime concern of the nuclear industry since the September 11 attacks, with all countries possessing commercial reactors addressing the issue to some extent.…

BY MARK ROWE
RUSSIA has been warned that it faces retaliatory trade measures if it does not remove import barriers on meat from the USA. Robert Zoellick, the United States Trade Representative, told the US Senate Finance Committee that he would not shrink from taking such steps in order to put pressure on Russia to drop the restrictions.…