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Canada is asking its own federal court to overturn a North American free trade tribunal ruling that Canada breached trade rules when it banned exports of polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) waste in the 1990s.
Rights activists are unhappy with the Labour Ministry's plan to amend labour laws to introduce 80 hours of overtime every month for factory workers, including those in export processing zones (EPZ).
It turns out that the most effective form of crowd control isn't pepper spray, water cannons, tear gas, or any of the other weapons being readied by Quebec police in anticipation of the arrival of 34 heads of state. The most cutting-edge form of crowd control is controlling the crowds before they converge: this is state-of-the-art protest deterrence -- the silencing you do yourself.
Still, about 70 of the 500 protesters outside the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade were arrested during a ''search and rescue mission'' to retrieve a working draft of the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas.
The meeting of Western Hemisphere trade officials to make progress towards the creation of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) took place in the Argentine capital, which was practically under siege by heavily armed police backed by armoured cars and police dogs on blockaded streets.
Prosecutors say provincial Justice Minister Paul Begin has directed them to delay all bail hearings of arrested protesters for the maximum three full days allowed by law, as a way of keeping them off the street for the duration of the summit, April 20-22.
President Bush pledged to Latin America on Tuesday that after he returns from a hemispheric summit he will intensify his effort to get key trade negotiating authority from Congress.
Two of three foreign spokesmen for the alternative People's Summit, which opened in Quebec City yesterday, were detained for questioning by Canadian immigration officials and granted limited visas to enter Canada.
Reaction to the summit's final declaration ranged from a ''deplorable sham'' to ''a good start, but there's still a lot more work to be done.''
The public release of the draft negotiating text for the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA)underscores the wide gulf between the 34 countries involved in the talks while giving impetus to the citizens' movement to stop it.
Uruguay has defeated Philip Morris, the global tobacco giant, in a major international lawsuit over the country's tough anti-smoking regulations. The Swiss-based company sued Uruguay at the World Bank's International Center for Settlement of Investment Dispute under the terms of a 1991 bilateral investment treaty between Uruguay and Switzerland.
Over one million people in the Canadian province of Quebec will receive a total of C$15.6 billion ($12.5 billion) in damages for smoking related diseases from three of the biggest tobacco companies in the country. The settlement is the result of a 17 year long court battle.
Uruguay has presented a 500 page document to defend itself against an international lawsuit challenging the country's tough tobacco packaging regulations. The claim was brought by Philip Morris, the global tobacco giant, at the World Bank's International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) in Washington DC.
A clandestine lobbying effort at the European Union (EU) by Swedish Match company to get legislators to lift a ban on a special kind of smokeless tobacco has forced the resignation of a top European bureaucrat and prompted renewed calls to strengthen rules on undue business influence in Brussels.
Big Tobacco is fighting a multi-pronged battle to defeat a global wave of laws to force them to use graphic warning labels and plain packaging. It has won a major legal battle in the U.S. this month but it has lost in Australia.