Search Results for: United Nations

MARK ROWE
MALAYSIA is calling for a review of plans to cut tariffs across south-east Asia, claiming that lower tariffs will affect its car production, particular the Proton series. The south-east Asian country has been given until 2005 to bring tariffs on imported cars down to between zero and five per cent, two years later than other key members of the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA).…

BY MARK ROWE
DISPUTES over who owns an idea and the right to stop others from stealing it probably date back to the cavemen who invented the wheel. It was most likely resolved by the application of a large club to the head.…

BY MARK ROWE
THE EUROPEAN Commission is to enter into swift negotiations over the so-called ‘open skies’ agreements with the United States and individual Member States, if, as expected, these bilateral air transport deals are soon ruled illegal.

Earlier this year, the European Court of Justice was advised by its advocate general Antonio Tizzano to strike down US deals made with eight European countries, in effect ordering them to be redrawn.…

BY MARK ROWE
THE INTERNATIONAL Monetary Fund is to help set up an Islamic Financial Services Board to regulate and lay down standards for financial transactions throughout the Islamic world. A key aim of the project is to incorporate the special insurance tenets that exist in the Islamic business world into the wider capitalist system.…

BY MARK ROWE
IT may have taken riots in Seattle and Genoa but the World Trade Organisation has finally come out all compassionate. The theory is simple. Most of the world’s poor are in developing nations. Many of those in greatest poverty are farmers.…

BY PHILIP FINE

CONAGRA Foods Inc is to sell its red-meat business in the United States and Australia, according to the US Cattle Buyers Weekly. The multinational, with sales of US$27 billion a year, will sell processing operations, cattle feeding operations and Australia Meat Holdings, says the newsletter.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE SPANISH Presidency of the European Union has been given a mandate to negotiate a wide-ranging judicial cooperation deal with the United States that would lead to the mutual exchange of relevant data and the establishment of joint investigation teams.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED States has launched initial WTO disputes proceedings with Japan, which it claims is unfairly restricting the import of American apples. Meanwhile the US has banned the import of Spanish clementines.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
KNITTED clothing and accessory imports from the United States are to be a key focus of retaliatory tariffs imposed by the European Union, following the erection of controversial ‘safeguard’ duties by Washington to protect the American steel industry.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
THE UNITED States Food and Drug Administration has warned three online pharmacies that sell nicotine impregnated lollipops and lip-balm via the Internet that that it considers their products illegal and that their sale must stop immediately.

In its explanation of the decision, the FDA said it acted because they are dispensed without a doctor’s prescription, contain a form of nicotine called salicylate that is not used in FDA-approved smoking cessation products, and because confectionary-like products present a risk of accidental use by children.…