Search Results for: El Salvador

BY KEITH NUTHALL

EUROPEAN Parliament officials have ordered an investigation into the discovery that two buildings the European Union (EU) assembly bought last year in Strasbourg are riddled with asbestos. However, administrators say that the asbestos is located in "a limited number of technical facility rooms" in its Winston Churchill bloc and the Salvador de Madariaga unit, and so "poses no public health risk".…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE MULTILATERAL Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), of the World Bank, is guaranteeing US$2 million in risk for a project to convert El Salvador landfill methane to carbon dioxide, a less powerful greenhouse gas. The project will generate carbon credits for sale on world markets, in MIGA’s first Kyoto Protocol-linked guarantee, which will be made to investor Biothermica Energy Inc, of Canada.…

BY WESLEY GIBBINGS, in Port of Spain, Trinidad

WITH its multiple small jurisdictions, offshore tax havens and proximity to both drug producing countries in Latin America and the United States, the Caribbean has always been a focus of global anti-money laundering efforts.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED States’ Distilled Spirits Council has congratulated the US Congress for approving the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) for opening central American markets to USA spirit exports. Central American countries (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua) and the Dominican Republic will immediately abolish tariffs on US-produced whiskey and gin.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
THE UNITED States’ Distilled Spirits Council has congratulated the US Congress for approving the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) for opening central American markets to USA spirit exports. Central American countries (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua) and the Dominican Republic will immediately abolish tariffs on US-produced whiskey and gin.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has concluded that beef cattle from Costa Rica, El Salvador and Nicaragua have an increasing risk of being infected with BSE, although it is currently “unlikely”. EFSA noted potentially contaminated beef livestock had been imported in the 1990s from north America and Europe, and that local controls were “unstable”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
HONDURAS has won a disputes case at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) with the Dominican Republic being ruled in breach of WTO rules by unfairly restricting the import of Honduran cigarettes. A disputes panel found fault with a special foreign exchange fee, an “economic stabilisation surcharge” and an insistence that importers physically fix within the Dominican Republic tax stamps to packs.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE DOMINICAN Republic heads the list of countries granted low rate tariff quotas by the USA for sugar and sugar-containing product imports made in 2004-5. It has been allocated a 185,335 tonne quota, followed by Brazil with 152,691 tonnes and Philippines, 142,160.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
IN 1995, when I visited the Laos capital Vientiane, it was a sleepy place; a quiet low rise French colonial town on the banks of the Mekong, a listless, aimless, but charming mix of Soviet-style socialist monuments, Buddhist temples and Provencal town houses.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
TOURISM once was regarded as a key to the developing world’s ills, allowing poor countries to make money out of their natural landscape and cultural attractions, but as with most success stories, there is a downside. In some countries, tourism has boomed so suddenly and aggressively, the development it has sparked has threatened to go out of control, spoiling the delights that lured tourists in the first place and creating a host of new environmental problems for governments to deal with.…