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Senior officials from the so-called Group-of-Six countries the United States, the European Union, Brazil, India, Australia and Japan yesterday concluded a three-day meeting in Paris on agriculture issues in the Doha Development Agenda trade negotiations with little apparent progress

The United States and the European Union surprised negotiators yesterday by abruptly pulling out of a plurilateral group of countries pushing for further liberalization of logistics services.

Below is a link to the updated methodology for the agriculture and NAMA simulations. It includes the Argentina, Brazil and India (ABI) formula for NAMA.

Global talks to free up trade in services, a key part of the World Trade Organisation's (WTO) Doha round, moved up a gear on Tuesday with leading states putting in demands for liberalisation.

Brussels yesterday flatly rejected calls by the United States, Australia and Brazil to improve its farm market access offer a stand that cast doubts on whether the ministerial meeting of the Group-of-Six countries next week in London will succeed in breaking the ice in the Doha Development Agenda farm negotiations.

The United States joined the European Union, Japan, Canada and other industrialized nations yesterday in presenting requests under a new plurilateral approach in the stalled Doha Development Agenda services negotiations.

The United States today launched a new effort to jump start the WTO Services negotiations. Joining with like-minded developed and developing countries, the U.S. will push for a common set of liberalization objectives in services sectors key to global growth and development. Services are a significant and growing part of the U.S. economy as evidenced by the $56 billion surplus in services trade in 2005. Further, 8 of 10 U.S. jobs are in the services sector.

Today, the EU and other developed and developing country WTO partners have submitted new market access requests in several services sectors as part of the DDA negotiations in services. These joint requests mark the beginning of the 'plurilateral' negotiations in services as agreed by WTO members at last December

An agreement was reached among a number of countries to pursue common objectives in improving access to selected telecommunications markets around the globe. The markets selected reflect the interest of many countries to develop a modern telecommunications sector. There is a broad recognition that the opening up of telecommunications markets will bring significant benefits to customers. Foreign operators will bring with them - especially to developing countries - valuable technological knowledge acquired through their operations in their home markets. Enhanced competition brings down the overall cost of services and consumers enjoy higher quality, advanced services at affordable prices. The development of telecommunications markets promotes the performance of enterprises of all economic sectors as the cost of their operations will be reduced while speed in conducting business will be improved.

While biotech crops fail farmers, and destroy biodiversity the 'global' studies of biotech lobbyists continue to cook up benefits to farmers and the environment. A recent example of such pseudo-science is a report by Graham Brookes and Peter Barfoot of PG Economies Limited, U.K entitled.