Search Results for: United Nations

BY LUCY JONES, in Dallas; ALAN OSBORN, in London; KARRYN CARTELLE, in Tokyo; BILL CORCORAN, in Johannesburg; PAUL COCHRANE, in Beirut; RACHEL JONES, in Caracas; MARK ROWE; and KEITH NUTHALL

WITH the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) Doha Development Round being slow to proceed since its 2001 launch – and only this year approaching something resembling and end game – free traders wanting to encourage global commerce have looked to bilateral and regional trade deals.…

BY RACHEL JONES, in Caracas

AS one of South America’s largest economies and the world’s leading

exporter of soy and sunflower oil, Argentina experienced a GDP growth rate

of 8.4 percent in 2006 and 7.9 percent a year earlier, according to the US

Energy and Information Administration.…

BY MONICA DOBIE

RESEARCHERS from Seattle’s University of Washington have developed a tiny camera small enough to fit in a pill that can be comfortably swallowed or inserted and capture high resolutions pictures of a patient’s digestive tract and throat.

This fibre endoscope device can, for instance, detect warning signs of oesophageal cancer, the fastest growing cancer in the United States.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE WORLD Trade Organisation’s (WTO) seven-year-old Doha Development Round is planning the final phase of its negotiations, which could eliminate most import duties on a wide range of waste metal scrap, worldwide.

Such a mutual zero duty deal is the goal of a special raw material sectoral negotiation within the round’s market access for non-agricultural products (or NAMA) talks.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

INTERNATIONAL standards are crucial for the trade in goods, because they allow

importers to have confidence that the foreign product they are buying meets the

specifications they are familiar with at home. So, it may come as some surprise that no

such global standard currently exists as regards the technical definition of biofuels.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

WITH the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) seven-year-old Doha Development Round maybe drawing towards a close, the paint industry might start to consider that a final deal may well lead to the elimination of most import duties on paints and coatings, worldwide.…

BY KARRYN CARTELLE, in Auckland; LUCY JONES, in Dallas, Texas; MONICA

DOBIE, in Ottawa; and BILL CORCORAN, in Johannesburg

NEW Zealand has long retained a position of prominence in the global butter products

industry, despite the fact that competitors are always looking to seize export markets in

what is an increasingly competitive market.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

GOVERNMENTS from eastern Europe and central Asia were to be hauled over the coals this week at a United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) ministerial meeting in Geneva (Tues 19 Feb) for causing transport bottlenecks through infrastructure under-investment.…

BY MARK ROWE

RUSSIA has engaged in a series of political and economic spats with its former Soviet satellites and the European Union (EU) in the first years of the 21st century. And while stand-offs over Belarus sugar and Moldovan wine might raise eyebrows in the West, disputes over the vast energy resources in Russia and its Central Asian neighbours carry an altogether darker shade, mainly because Russia supplies 25% of the EU’s oil and 25% of its gas.…

BY BILL CORCORAN, in South Africa

SOUTH Africa is in a race against time to ensure the country’s

burgeoning economy is not crippled by fuel shortages, forcing its oil and gas companies to innovate to ensure security of supply, notably from neighbouring countries.…