Search Results for: World Trade Organisation

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN INTERNATIONAL team of experts has successfully controlled a newly discovered species of parasitic wasp that was threatening to destroy the Lebanon’s iconic cedar woodlands, descended from Levantine forests probably walked by Jesus Christ. From Biblical times to the Nineteenth Century, much of the steep Mount Lebanon range that towers over the eastern Mediterranean was cloaked in ancient cedars.…

BY MARK ROWE
INTERPOL has agreed to a request from Russian authorities to help locate the missing vodka magnate Yury Shefler, wanted by Russian prosecutors in connection with allegations of threatening to kill a government official.

A spokesman for the organisation’s Moscow bureau confirmed that Interpol offices across Western Europe were now liaising in the search for SPI Group owner Shefler.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WORLD Trade Organisation member countries last week failed to agree liberalisation targets for the WTO’s three-years-old agricultural talks. Member countries had until March 31 to approve so-called modalities, binding global targets for cutting tariffs, quotas and subsidies, which would be realised in detailed bilateral horsetrading over the next two years.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation has published a series of papers illustrating the gains and benefits of developing genetically modified foodstuffs, including meat. It includes notes on unusual spin-off products, such as silk secretions from sheep udders, plus information on increasing meat yields, genetic markets and potential animal health threats.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
TOUGH restrictions may be imposed on the use of nitrates as a preservative in food, even where such regulations are challenged by the European Commission as breaking EU freedom of trade legislation, the European Court of Justice has ruled.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
LEADERS of international organisations are lining up to speak at the major textile trade conference being staged by the European Commission in Brussels in May 5-6.

Pascal Lamy, European Union trade commissioner, is to speak on the importance of quota elimination for the strengthening of the multilateral system.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
TOUGH restrictions may be imposed on the use of nitrates as a preservative for meat, even where such regulations are challenged by the European Commission as breaking EU freedom of trade legislation. The European Court of Justice has backed the Danish government’s appeal against Brussels’ move to block its national rules on nitrate preservatives, which were imposed because they can cause cancer.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
IF there is one undeniable fact about global warming, then it is that the last significant heating of the Earth’s surface had nothing to do with traffic jams, aerosols and power stations, because…well…they did not exist.

Think back to the time of woolly mammoths, sabre toothed tigers and Neanderthals, and consider why their snowy frigid homelands in northern Europe became the green, pleasant and temperate lands that we know and love.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INTERNATIONAL Office of Zoonoses, the world animal health institution, has reported tests confirming an outbreak of avian influenza subtype H7 in two Connecticut, USA, chicken farms, threatening the health of 2.3 million birds. State authorities are working with the US Department of Agriculture regarding local quarantine restrictions and movement controls.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED States has announced its first offer of reductions to food duties in its bid to create a 34-country Free Trade Area of the Americas pact. It plans to slash duties on 56 per cent of agricultural imports from north and south American countries by 2005 (ignoring those from Canada and Mexico) and expects reciprocal offers.…