WTO chief: Negotiators in Geneva fail to reach global trade deal
to sign next week
GENEVA — Negotiators came close but failed Tuesday to clinch a free-trade deal that could have helped boost the world economy by $1 trillion a year and cleared the way for a broader global agreement.
Diplomats from the World Trade Organization’s 159 members had been trying to forge an agreement before a trade ministers’ meeting next week in Bali, Indonesia. Achieving a deal in Bali is seen as a final effort to revive a broader 12-year effort to ease global trade rules.
The mini-deal discussed in Geneva had been intended, in part, to reduce delays and inefficiencies at national borders. Making it easier to move goods across borders could boost the global economy by nearly $1 trillion a year and support 21 million jobs, according to a report co-written by Jeffrey Schott, a senior fellow in international trade at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
The lack of a global deal hasn’t prevented individual countries from seeking agreements among themselves. But experts say the failure to reach a global deal leaves poorer countries worse off.
“This should be a no-brainer for developed and developing countries,” Schott said.
US bombers fly across new Chinese air defense zone in defiance of claims
WASHINGTON — Days after China asserted greater military control over a swath of the East China Sea to bolster claims to a cluster of disputed islands, the U.S. defied the move Tuesday as it flew two B-52 bombers through the area.
The U.S. said what it described as a training mission was not flown to respond to China’s latest military maneuver, yet the dramatic flights made clear that the U.S. will not recognize the new territorial claims that Beijing laid out over the weekend.
The two unarmed U.S. B-52 bombers took off from their home base in Guam and flew through China’s newly designated air defense zone, then returned to base, U.S. officials said. The bombers were in the zone for less than an hour, thundering across the Pacific skies during midday there, the officials said, adding that the aircraft encountered no problems.
While the U.S. insisted the training mission was long-planned, it came just days after China issued a map and a new set of rules governing the zone, which includes a cluster of islands that are controlled by Japan but claimed by Beijing.
U.S. officials would not publicly acknowledge the flights on Tuesday, but State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said China’s move appeared to be an attempt to change the status quo in the East China Sea.
Comet giving astronomers ‘wild ride’; one day about to die, next day looks better
WASHINGTON — Comet ISON is teasing the solar system as it dances with the sun and it’s giving astronomers mixed signals.
Will it meet a fiery death — or survive — when it whips around the sun on Thursday?
The icy comet will be only about 1 million miles away from the sun’s super-hot surface during its close encounter on Thanksgiving. On Monday, it looked like it was about to die even before it got there. On Tuesday, it appeared healthy again.
“We have never seen a comet like this,” Naval Research Laboratory astrophysicist Karl Battams said during a NASA news conference Tuesday. “It has been behaving strangely.”
Because it is so close to the sun, ISON will likely not be visible from Earth on Thursday — except via a fleet of NASA telescopes and spacecraft aimed at the comet as it gets closest to the sun at 1:37 p.m. EST, he said. And it will be a few hours before scientists know whether the comet survives.
By wire sources
