More than a year ago, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) officially welcomed its newest and 12th member, Angola. Such a move by the cartel is rare. The last time OPEC admitted a country into its ranks was 1975, the year Angola secured its independence from Portugal. What undoubtedly prompted the invitation was the southern African country’s oil reserves, standing at more than nine billion barrels: it is the fourth-largest total in Africa, trailing only Libya, Nigeria and Algeria. In fact, Angola is now the continent’s second-largest producer after Nigeria. It is also a major supplier to China, providing [...]
France, Germany, and the United Kingdom may have new leaders who bring the promise overall of better trans-Atlantic relations, but when it comes to the politics of global trade, some things never change. This month, the European Union missed yet another deadline for correcting its illegal regulation of gene-spliced, or “genetically modified” (GM), crop varieties, following a World Trade Organization decision in November 2005 that some European countries were breaking international trade rules by prohibiting the import of GM foods and crops. Although the WTO bluntly scolded the EU for imposing a moratorium on gene-spliced crop approvals from 1998 to [...]
PARIS — It was one of the most surprising and revealing images of the New Year in French politics: José Bové, the famously mustachioed “anti-globalization” activist and self-appointed scourge of genetically-modified crops, being greeted by France’s prim and proper Deputy Minister of Ecology Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet . . . with a kiss. The highly publicized encounter took place with cameras rolling on Jan. 3 in front of the French Ministry of Ecology in Paris. Technically, Bové was supposed to be in prison, serving a four-month jail sentence as a consequence of his role in vandalizing a field of genetically-modified (GM) corn [...]
