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Developing members find strength in blocs at WTO meeting
Developing members have formed three major blocs at the 5th ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in a bid to raise their voices in negotiations with the developed members of the multilateral body.
The so-call G-21, consisting of 21 major developing countries including Brazil, India and China, has grown to 22 with the entry of Turkey, though it is still called G-21.
The G-21 has held separate meetings with the United States and the European Union in the past several days to clarify its views on agricultural trade reform.
A new alliance came into being on Friday, drawing more than 100 nations from African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP), African Union, and the Least Developed Countries (LDC). In a statement, it said the current negotiations ignored the fact that some of its members were the poorest nations of the earth.
It demanded that the WTO take necessary measures to help them integrate into the world trading system, and improve transparency in decision-making and implementation.
In the meantime, the group pushing for the inclusion of a Strategic Products and a Special Safeguard Mechanism in the agricultural talks has grown to 33 countries from 22.
The enlarged group said that simply applying special and differential treatment for developing countries in the agricultural context would not be specific enough to address important poverty alleviation and development goals.
Also on Friday, the trade ministers of India and Malaysia, on behalf of more than 70 countries, sent a letter to the facilitator seeking talks on four new issues, called the "Singapore issues."
Argentina leads in drugs related AIDS cases in Latin America
Argentina has the biggest percentage of AIDS cases related to the consumption of intravenous drugs in Latin America, according to official figures released Saturday by the daily,
Clarin.
About 40 percent of the 25,400 AIDS cases reported in Argentina involved individuals who made use of intravenous drugs.
Other cases were indirectly related to drug use, such as women who became infected through sexual intercourse with drug-users, and the women's children.
Intravenous drug users infected by AIDS were much younger than individuals infected with HIV through other means. Eight out of every 10 users of intravenous drugs, that was more than 64,500, were below 35 years of age.
Most AIDS cases associated with intravenous drugs were found in Buenos Aires and the city of Rosario. Of the 6,253 cases found in Buenos Aires, 37 percent were intravenous drug users, while in Rosario the figure was 34 percent.
According to non-governmental organizations, in Argentina, there could be about 130,000 individuals infected with HIV without knowing it.
Drug tunnel found under Mexico-US border
A tunnel used by traffickers to move drugs from Mexico to the United States was discovered Saturday under the common border.
The 300-meter-long tunnel, with a diameter of 2.0 meters, is equipped with rails and carts to transport marijuana and cocaine, the Mexican Attorney General's office (PGR) said on Saturday.
The structure linked a house in downtown Mexican border city Nogales in the northern state of Sonora with the US territory.
Six people were arrested in relation to the tunnel, including apolice chief, a former police agent and the leader of a drug-trafficking ring, said Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, an officialat PGR's Under-director's Office for the Specialized Investigationof Organized Crime.
The police chief was accused of protecting the activities of the ring, which appears to have ties with the outlawed drug lord, Joaquin Guzman, alias "El Chapo," Vasconcelos said.
The tunnel was discovered as part of the PGR investigation dubbed "Mole II" that included a raid on three houses in Nogales, he added.
US extradites three suspect traffickers from Colombia
Three Colombians accused of drug trafficking and money laundering have been extradited by Colombian authorities to the United States, local media reported Saturday.
According to the reports, the three suspected traffickers were handed over on Friday by the Judicial Police Central Direction in the El Dorado International Airport in
Bogota.
The triplet were arrested in 2002 by the Colombian police, and since then extradition requests had been presented by courts of Washington, Louisiana and Florida, in the United States.
The reports said two of the suspects will appear before courts of Louisiana and Washington, while the third will face charges of money laundering in a Florida court.
Colombia is the world's top cocaine producer. About 850 tons ofcocaine are smuggled out of the Latin American country every year.
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