Ministers hailed an emerging trade deal on Friday, as compromise proposals revitalised deadlocked talks at the World Trade Organisation.
WTO head Pascal Lamy raised the possibility of a collapse of trade talks between leading nations in Switzerland on Friday.
Urgent talks to salvage a global trade deal made ”some progress” on Thursday, ministers said, but officials warned the mood was dark.
World Trade Organisation (WTO) chief Pascal Lamy says that only "modest" progress has been made in the past two days of crucial trade talks.
Ministers from 35 key nations began a critical round of talks on Monday in an attempt to nail down a global trade deal.
Ministers from more than 30 countries, deeply divided and clinging to core interests, mount another bid on Monday to nail down a global trade accord.
SA double-amputee athlete Oscar Pistorius saw his hopes of running at next month’s Olympic Games suffer a final blow on Wednesday.
Oscar Pistorius is running against the clock and parts of the track and field establishment in his final attempt to qualify for the Beijing Olympics.
Switzerland braces itself for a troubled campaign of Islamophobia after the far right drums up enough support to force a vote to ban minarets.
Poet-singer Leonard Cohen on Tuesday night won over the Montreux Jazz Festival with his smooth deep voice and dry humour.
An international standard for tomatoes has ended about seven years of intense debates between countries on what qualifies as a proper tomato.
Cross-border air freight traffic grew a meagre 1,3% year-on-year in May, according to airline industry figures released on Wednesday.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport has dismissed cyclist Floyd Landis’s appeal against a doping test that stripped him of his Tour de France title.
Defender Philipp Lahm’s late strike put Germany in Sunday’s Euro 2008 final and sealed a 3-2 win to knock out injury-ravaged Turkey on Wednesday.
Dutchman Guus Hiddink led his young Russian team to a memorable 3-1 win in the Euro 2008 tournament on Saturday over his Dutch compatriots.
Italy came out on top in a tussle for a place in Sunday’s Euro 2008 quarterfinal against Spain as the world champions beat 10-man France 2-0.
Turkey staged one of the greatest comebacks in a major tournament, scoring three times in the last 15 minutes to beat Czech Republic 3-2 on Sunday.
World Cup winners Italy and runners-up France were in danger of tumbling out of Euro 2008 at the group stage after the Italians were held 1-1.
Switzerland saw their Euro 2008 hopes dashed by a last-gasp winner from Turkey’s Arda Turan that secured a 2-1 victory.
Cristiano Ronaldo scored one goal and made another to give Portugal a 3-1 win over the Czech Republic in Group A on Wednesday.
Three finely executed goals, two entertaining matches and two sell-out crowds in Basel and Geneva signalled a positive footballing start to Euro 2008.
The United Nations’s top human rights official on Wednesday issued a strong condemnation of the killing of opposition political activists in Zimbabwe. ”It is hard to get a very precise picture of the full range of the violence, or the exact number of politically motivated extra-judicial killings,” said Louise Arbour, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
A World Trade Organisation (WTO) mediator issued new proposals on Monday for opening up services such as telecoms and banking as part of a global trade deal. But the new text, replacing a previous document issued in February, did not set dates for revised offers or final commitments in the services negotiations.
The World Health Organisation’s 193 member states on Saturday overcame their deep divisions over intellectual property rules and endorsed a strategy to help improve developing-country access to drugs and medical tests.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu on Tuesday appealed to governments to do more to save Africa from disease. ”We cannot lose Africa,” Tutu told the 193-nation World Health Assembly. ”The cradle of humankind” is threatened by ”disease, conflict and destruction”.
Insufficient food, climate change and pandemic flu are global crises that could unravel progress in public health, the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) director general said on Monday. "These three critical events, these clear threats to international security, have the potential to undo much hard-won progress in public health," WHO director general Margaret Chan said.
Double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius won his appeal on Friday and can compete for a place in the Beijing Olympics. The Court of Arbitration (CAS) for Sport ruled that the 21-year-old South African is eligible to race against able-bodied athletes, overturning a ban imposed by the International Association of Athletics Federations.
The United Nations World Food Programme on Friday said two relief flights will be sent to Burma on Saturday, just hours after suspending flights due to ”unacceptable restrictions” by the government. Burma has maintained strict limits on foreign involvement in the relief effort, despite calls for it to allow unfettered access to experts.
The five major nuclear-armed powers said on Friday the Non-Proliferation Treaty was under threat and cited Iran’s uranium enrichment campaign in a rare joint call for action to shore up the NPT. Iran says it wants only electricity from enrichment, which can also produce atom bomb fuel if the process is adjusted.
The Swiss government has agreed to ease restrictions on the importation of potatoes following fears that Euro 2008 soccer fans could face a shortage of French fries next month. A spokesperson for the country’s department of agriculture told national radio on Wednesday that the government would allow an additional 5 000 tonnes of potatoes to be brought in.
The United Nations Human Rights Council will hold a special session on May 23 to examine how the world’s food crisis is undermining the right to food for millions of people, officials said on Friday. The rights to adequate food and freedom from hunger are enshrined in international law as basic, universal human rights.
UBS will cut 5 500 jobs in one the biggest purges seen so far in the financial markets crisis, as the Swiss wealth-management titan slashes at the investment bank that plunged it into turmoil. UBS also said it has a preliminary deal with United States asset manager BlackRock to sell a -billion portfolio of subprime mortgages.