Search Results for: United Nations

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE USA petroleum and petrochemical industries may face comprehensive controls on the chemicals they buy and use, maybe mirroring Europe’s REACH system. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is preparing draft reforms to American toxic chemicals regulations, branding them an "inadequate tool for providing the protection against chemical risks that the public rightfully expects".…

BY DEIRDRE MASON GAVIN BLAIR ANCA GURZU and KEITH NUTHALL

AS the Copenhagen conference charged with forging a new international climate change treaty gets under way this month, the auto industry worldwide will be looking closely at how the deliberations will affect its business.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A NEW United Nations monitoring system will check whether the 142 countries who have signed the UN Convention Against Corruption are fulfilling their promises to fight graft. This mechanism will use self-assessments and peer reviews by experts every five years and will be compiled in country reports, with the executive summaries made public.…

BY RUSSELL BERMAN

WHILE the year-old Obama administration has brought a wave of new and proposed regulations for the US financial sector, it has used its anti-money laundering (AML) arm to target an area in which financial crimes have spiked during the economic crisis: mortgage and loan modification fraud.…

BY PACIFICA GODDARD

THE CIGARETTE market in Argentina remained strong in 2008: the retail volume increased 3.12% from 2007 to 42.47 billion sticks, valued at Euro 1.72 billion, a 17.6% increase from 2007, according to the Argentine ministry of the economy.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

WITH the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Doha Development Round in the doldrums this year, the European Union (EU) has been focusing on bilateral trade deals and European confectionery producers will benefit.

The most important of recently struck agreements has been an EU-South Korea trade deal, which will create a virtual free trade zone between the signatories.…

BY RAGHAVENDRA VERMA and KEITH NUTHALL

JUST two weeks after Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper visited India, he and Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh have announced that they have struck a civilian nuclear cooperation agreement. Strangely this revelation came outside both countries, in Trinidad & Tobago, where both men were participating in the 2009 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.…

BY ANCA GURZU

The USA tobacco manufacturing (and leaf) industry has been facing tough times, with its habitual trade surplus dwindling to almost nothing. The USA’s Tobacco Merchants Association (TMA) reported a US$603.7 million trading surplus at the end of 2008, which was 32.5% less than the 2007 surplus of US$894.3 million.…

By Leah Germain, International News Services

Globalisation has created new opportunities for the transfer of people and products across borders, and broadened the scope of many businesses around the world. But it’s not all good news of course: one of the seamier sides of growing international commerce is the abduction and trafficking of human beings. 

The problem is getting worse. Just over a year since the collapse of the global market, countries around the world have reported a significant increase in cases of the exploitation of people for monetary gain. While cases of kidnapping and ransom continue to be common in African and Latin American countries, such as Nigeria and Venezuela, the majority of organized human trafficking cases are actually in Europe.…

By Paul Cochrane, in Beirut

Sanctions are one of those political issues that can make amiable dinner conversation turn unpleasant, as the battle lines are drawn down the table between those for and against. They have certainly had mixed success, starting with the first recorded case of a trade embargo some 2,400 years ago between Athens and neighboring Megara. That embargo failed and sparked a war.

Some argue they have had a spotty record since, while others prefer to pick-and-mix examples from embargoes through the ages to argue their case. The more pragmatic approach would be not whether sanctions “work,” but when and under what circumstances.

On one hand, those that are meant to oust a dictator but result in the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians – in Iraq for instance – can be considered counter-productive.…