Search Results for: United Nations

BY PHILIP FINE

THE UNITED States says it is offering duty reductions for all agricultural imports from Americas trading partners to create a proposed 34-nation New Word trading bloc. While meat products were not mentioned specifically in its initial Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) offer, the US says it would be prepared to admit at least 56 per cent of agricultural imports from all these countries duty-free by 2005.…

BY PHILIP FINE AND KEITH NUTHALL

NOT your typical activist group, European truffle producers have formed an alliance to promote a settlement of the long running dispute between the European Union (EU) and the United States over a ban on American imports of hormone treated beef.…

BY PHILIP FINE

IN a letter to the United States government’s top safety regulator, the auto industry’s main lobbying group has acknowledged that Sport Utility Vehicles pose dangers to smaller vehicles and says the industry will enact voluntary standards to help increase safety.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
TWO international organisations have highlighted opportunities for European water companies, which may be called upon in the next few decades to boost supplies to arid parts of the world, notably the Middle East.

The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s (UNESCO) World Water Development Report says this region is the poorest in terms of water availability, with Kuwait being the most parched (10 m³ is available per person annually), followed by Gaza Strip (52 m³), the United Arab Emirates (58 m³), Bahamas (66 m³), Qatar (94 m³), Maldives (103 m³), Libya (113 m³), Saudi Arabia (118 m³), and Malta (129 m³).…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AS the Iraqi regime faced potential invasion, the United Nations-run oil for food programme has continued to operate healthily, with revenues for the week ending February 21 totalling US$338 million from 11.9 million barrels. The UN’s Office of the Iraq Programme said exports averaged about 1.7 million barrels a day.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
AFTER four years of negotiation a binding international tobacco control treaty has been agreed by the 171 member states of the World Health Organisation. The final, and acrimonious, round of talks on a text for the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) ended on February 28.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPOL has signed an operational agreement with the United States which will improve cooperation between the EU police agency and the various US law enforcement authorities. The deal promotes the exchange of personal data, an agreement that has been approved by the Joint Supervisory Body, the independent authority monitoring and controlling the use of such information by Europol.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
IF accountants want to give really useful advice to their clients that applies almost anywhere in the developed world, they should tell them to get married and have kids.

That would be the most logical conclusion that could be drawn from the latest Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) publication on tax, “Taxing Wages.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED States and Mexico have headed off a poultry trade row. Under NAFTA, standard Mexican tariffs on US poultry exports were scrapped on January 1. However, Mexico feared an export boom and threatened to invoke its right to impose safeguard tariffs on all US chicken.…

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.…