Search Results for: Australia

Keith Nuthall
DIPLOMATS will try this month to resolve a dispute over the authority of a planned global register of geographical indications for wine and spirits, such as Champagne or Scotch. Meeting at the Council for Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights at the World Trade Organisation on September 19-21, they will debate whether entries on register should merely be informative or whether they should entail legal protection.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
DEVELOPING countries have banded together at the World Trade Organisation to call for its Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (TRIPs) to be interpreted as allowing their governments to take any steps “to protect public health,” including the authorisation of generic production of medicines under patent.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
RUSSIA has ratified the Council of Europe’s Convention on Laundering, Search, Seizure and Confiscation of the Proceeds from Crime, a move that could herald a tightening in Russian government policy towards the fighting of money laundering.

Signatories have to ensure that their national legislation provides for the confiscation of the proceeds of crime.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL AND ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Parliament today, (Wednesday), approved the creation of a new European Aviation Safety Agency, (EASA), but extended the proposed legislation to include the setting up of a new independent authority similar to the US National Transportation Safety Board to investigate aircraft accidents and make recommendations.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FINLAND is the world’s most technologically advanced country, according to a United Nations Development Programme, (UNDP), report, which puts the UK at number seven in its league table, also behind the USA, Sweden, Japan, South Korea and the Netherlands.…

Alan Osborne
THE EUROPEAN Agency for Safety and Health at Work has published a series of good practice case studies from around the continent, in a bid to advise companies how to improve their record in protecting employees from harm.

Called Quality of Work: New Approaches and Strategies in Occupational Safety and Health, the report is available for free and focuses on initiatives in Britain, Spain, Ireland, France, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Finland.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE KYOTO protocol on climate change was adopted by 186 nations in Bonn, but without the participation of the US, which is responsible for 25 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

President Bush is now likely to come under intense international pressure to produce an American plan to tackle climate change.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BROAD political agreement on the operation of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change has been achieved in Bonn, Germany by 186 participating nations, but without the participation of the US.

Original targets were scaled down to ensure the participation of Japan, Canada and Australia in the deal, who secured concessions on so-called carbon sinks; they can now gain credits to emit more gases through re-vegetation and effective management of forests and farmland.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE SHIPPING industry is looking forward to the anticipated accession of China to the World Trade Organisation, which after 15 years of often tortuous negotiations, is likely to be rubber stamped this autumn and become reality next Spring.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE USA has accepted its loss of an appeal at the World Trade Organisation against a disputes panel ruling that Washington had broken WTO rules when erecting safeguard duties against lamb imports from New Zealand and Australia. American diplomats said their government needed “a reasonable period of time” for implementation.…