Search Results for: united nations

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED States, with Argentina, Canada and Egypt have decided to challenge at the WTO the EU’s five-year de facto moratorium on imports of biotech foods and crops. EU trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy said Brussels would fight the case, maintaining that “the EU’s regulatory system for GMO’s authorisation is in line with WTO rules.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union is to sign a controversial extradition agreement with the US, with the deal being approved by the EU justice and home affairs council, despite concerns raised by the European Parliament. Its text should be initialled at the EU-US summit on June 25 in Washington.…

BY PHILIP FINE

THE US government has signed a bilateral textile pact with Vietnam that gives the south-east Asian country the most generous access to the American market ever granted in an initial two-country agreement, according to a critical American Textile Manufacturers’ Institute (ATMI).…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations Development Programme is implementing a plan to build 15 digester units to generate biogas from animal manure for home heating and cooking in and around Kazakhstan’s second city Karaganda, population 600,000. The UNDP says that the pilot project exploits an ancient technology that originated in China more than 2,000 years ago.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has announced that it will spend Euro 69 million this year on a major overhaul of Serbia’s Nikola Tesla A5 and B1 thermal power plants, as well as funding training programmes and making management improvements in its energy sector.…

BY MARK ROWE
THE RUSSIAN agriculture minister Alexei Gordeyev is flying to the United States later this month (May) to secure a formal end the poultry dispute between the two countries. Russia banned US chicken imports last year over health concerns.…

BY MARK ROWE
RUSSIA and vodka are inseparable bedfellows but is there room for a ménage-a-trois? Its domestic market for beer is booming, while abroad both Russian immigrant communities and western European and north American drinkers are enjoying the novelty factor of a quality brew from the traditional home of vodka.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
SOME four years after they began, negotiations for a deal over a geographical indication register for traditionally made wines and spirits are entering a decisive phase at the World Trade Organisation. The talks have taken so long because there is a fundamental difference in approach between new world producers led by the US who want such a register to amount to no more than a kind of voluntary data-base and the Europeans who see it as a means of ensuring world-wide legal protection for traditional appellations.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AS AMERICAN and British military forces secure control of Iraq from the regime of dictator Saddam Hussein using the latest military technology, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has released a cautionary report confirming for the first time that depleted uranium shells can and have contaminated drinking water.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE CHIEF of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) has announced the spending of Euro 17.3 million on repairs to the province’s coal fired power plants and associated mines, which have suffered from lack of maintenance and have also been damaged by lightning and a landslide, (at the Mirash coal mine).…