Search Results for: World Trade Organisation

BY DERIDRE MASON
MANY health and safety leaflets are going over their targets’ heads because the reading age needed to understand them is too high, delegates at the recent Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents health at work conference at the National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham, heard.…

BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKE
A REVIEW of additional protective duties erected against spirits imported into India is not to be held by the government in New Delhi, the Press Trust of India has reported.

Instead, the central government has defended the imposition of extra customs duty on imported liquor, saying it was necessary to protect the domestic production industry and has added that it was considering imposing a 24 per cent flat rate on imported spirits kept in warehouses for more than 30 days.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
WORKERS in companies with 50 employees or more will have sweeping rights to be informed and consulted about management decisions affecting their future following agreement by EU employment ministers on a new work directive.

Britain had held out against the legislation but gave in when it became clear that other Member States would out-vote it on the matter.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
The International Maritime Bureau of the International Chamber of Commerce has called for increased port controls by Gulf states in a bid to stop unseaworthy vessels smuggling oil out of Iraq and leading to collisions and oil spills.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EU’S development and humanitarian aid Commissioner Poul Nielson (SPELLING CORRECT) and trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy have met European pharmaceutical industry leaders to discuss how to implement the new Brussels action programme on treating major communicable diseases, namely HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, which was approved by the Council of Ministers this May.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A GROUP of developing countries has said that progress towards creating differential pricing arrangements for pharmaceuticals should not undermine the right of their governments to authorise the emergency production of drugs, as well as parallel imports of low cost lines.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A TOP level EU delegation will fly to Tokyo next week, (July 9), in a desperate bid to salvage the Kyoto Protocol from being wrecked by the intransigence of the Bush administration in Washington. Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstrom, and ministers from Belgium and Sweden, (representing the current and next EU presidencies), planned their mission after reports emerged from a summit meeting between Bush and Japan’s PM Junichiro Koizumi, that Tokyo would abandon the global warming treaty, if the US refused to sign.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INDIAN government has sought formal talks at the World Trade Organisation with Argentina over what it claims is discriminatory treatment of its pharmaceutical exports. The south Americans insist that for medicines to enter Argentina, they must have been made in a country included on one of two official Buenos Aires lists, linked to specific inspection regimes.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE GOVERNMENT of Canada has formally made an application to host the ITER international fusion test reactor, at a site near Clarington, Ontario. Ottawa’s move was made in Moscow by its ambassador to Russia, Rod Irwin, in the presence of representatives of other countries involved in the project; it is the first such bid.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is distributing 1.2 million leaflets this summer, which aims to educate holiday-makers on how to use the single European currency, the Euro, whose notes and coins will be launched in January.

Called “Don’t forget to Pack the Euro,” the leaflet encourages tourists to get used to the concept of the Euro whilst vacationing abroad this summer.…