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BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED Nations is pushing for an increase in the use of electronic invoices, developing guidelines for harmonising the format, legal and technical requirements of these documents. Its Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) is adapting to e-invoices its ‘Recommendation 6 on the Invoice for International Trade’, providing a solution easily implemented by all companies, it said.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE 2005 Yearbook of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has warned environmental change is spreading diseases beyond their traditional range, while causing pathogens to mutate and become more deadly.

It includes a number of case studies, illustrating one message: “Loss of forests, road and dam building, the spread of cities, the clearing of natural habitats for agriculture, mining and the pollution of coastal waters are promoting conditions under which new and old pathogens can thrive”.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A UNITED Nations meeting on small-island developing countries has concluded that they were already threatened with global-warming linked sea levels rises. Governments present also stressed the need to “intensify efforts to facilitate the full and effective participation” in World Trade Organisation decision-making.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A UNITED Nations World Conference on Disaster Reduction, in Japan, has agreed a “Hyogo Framework for Action: 2005 – 2015,” which calls on governments to put disaster risk management at the centre of their national policies and for rich states to help improve disaster preparedness in poor countries.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE UNITED States Trade Representative has notified WTO that it intends to raise tariffs on a number of EU food exports following a hike in European duties on brown rice imports. Yoghurt, processed cheese, mandarins, saffron, truffles and Brussels sprouts, are amongst the EU foods attracting extra American duties from March 1.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
CLEAR lessons on the need to improve accounting procedures at the United Nations have been spelt out by the interim report into alleged fraud and corruption at the now defunct UN Iraq Oil for Food Programme. They were made by an Independent Inquiry Committee led by former US Federal Reserve Board chairman Paul Volcker in a report accusing the programme’s chief Benon Savan of “ethically improper” conduct.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A GROUP of cotton exporting countries are resisting a move by the United States to dilute the mandate of the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) cotton sub-committee, formed to find agreement on this sensitive issue during the WTO Doha Development Round.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
POLAND and Taiwan have remained on a United States government watch list on counterfeiting and fraud, largely because Washington thinks they can do more to fight pharmaceuticals piracy. The US Trade Representative (USTR) office said it would push Taiwan to pass a law preventing unfair commercial use of pharmaceutical test data.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has proposed that a United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) standard on the type approval of “mechanical coupling components of combinations of vehicles” becomes a European Union (EU) regulation. It has asked the EU Council of Ministers to formally accede to the UNECE’s regulation 55 on this subject.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
ALTHOUGH the south Asian Tsunami meant 2004 was a terrible year for deaths caused by natural disasters, personal damage caused by such events was actually less than in 2003, the United Nations has reported. Its Brussels-based Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) said that more than 320,000 people perished last year in 366 natural disasters, with the Tsunami killing at least 300,000.…