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BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE ADAGE ‘you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink’ applies in many walks of life and it is certainly relevant to the ongoing World Trade Organisation’s negotiations on liberalising market access for services.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Parliament’s transport committee has recommended that a financial carrot is dangled before the Russian government to try and end the practice of paying its national carrier Aeroflot for over-flying rights on trans-Siberian, trans-polar and trans-Asian routes.…

BY PHILIP FINE

THE PROPOSED acquisition of Bayer’s high-performance pigment business by Sun Chemical, the US subsidiary of Japan’s Dainippon Ink and Chemicals, has a hit a snag. The US Federal Trade Commission says that before any sale goes through, Dainippon must sell off its US-based perylene business.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Trade Organisation (WTO) has agreed to admit officials from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and representatives from secretariats for other multilateral environmental agreements as observers to its ongoing Doha Development Round negotiations. The move has been welcomed by the European Commission, which wants these representatives to point out when the free trade talks are in danger of creating an agreement that may undermine or conflict with existing international environmental agreements.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FRANCE’S Suez water company and the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) have launched a joint drinking water improvements programme that will provide around Euro 300,000 in its first three years and will initially concentrate on the Volga-Caspian region.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is preparing to negotiate away any legal or bureaucratic barriers that might prevent non-European Union foreign nationals from establishing travel agencies in any EU Member State. The stance has been taken in its draft offer to the ongoing World Trade Organisation talks on the liberalisation of the world’s trade in services.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INTERNATIONAL trade in gold has “considerable vulnerability to being exploited for money laundering,” according to a report released by the world’s lead organisation in fighting the processing of dirty money, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). This wing of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has highlighted these problems in a recent report on Money Laundering Typologies.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INSURANCE sector may be so vulnerable to money laundering, its exposure should be probed in depth, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has said. Its report on Money Laundering Typologies concludes that brokers often have “little or no training in anti-money laundering issues” and are used to “place cash funds into various financial institutions.”…

BY PHILIP FINE

THE UNITED States is offering to eliminate tariffs on imported mining equipment and unspecified "energy products" as part of their initial offer to create the proposed 34-country Free Trade Area of the Americas. Those sectors join a number of other goods, including steel, and environmental and wood products, for which Washington wants to offer duty free access to its markets under a reciprocal agreement, as well as improving market access for a range of services, including "energy services."…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED States has delayed the establishment of a disputes panel at the World Trade Organisation over Brazil’s complaint about American government subsidies to producers, users and exporters of upland cotton. Washington formally opposed Brazil’s bid to create a panel at a meeting of the WTO disputes settlement body, forcing the Brazilians to make a second application, if they want the case to go ahead.…