Although the U.S. plans to stop using non-self-destructing land mines, the Bush adminstration will not sign an anti-land mine treaty, an administration official said yesterday.

One hundred fifty countries have already signed the Mine Ban Treaty, which outlaws the stockpile of mines and requires each country to destroy its remaining mines within four years. Land mines buried in civilian areas maim and kill people in Cambodia, Afghanistan, and other countries.

The United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, Canada, and Afghanistan are among treaty signatories.

As of October 2003, the United States, North Korea, South Korea, China, Iran, Russia and Pakistan were among the 44 nations that had not signed the treaty (Barry Schweid, Associated Press/Yahoo! News, Feb. 27).

The Bush administration will anounce today that after 2010 it will only use land mines that become inert after combat operations. Until then, the president must authorize any use of "persistent" mines. Within a year, the United States plans to stop using mines undetectable by conventional metal detectors. The United States also says it will give a 50 percent increase to the State Department's humanitarian mine action budget, bringing the budget to $70 million (Thomas Catan, Financial Times, Feb. 27).

Human Rights Watch official Stephen Goose said that the United States was taking progressive steps but was missing a great opportunity to make the world safer by outlawing land mines.

"This is a goal that has been embraced by the entire world," Goose said. "But it's a goal that the United States has now given up on."

A vocal anti-land mine advocate, U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy, said U.S. policy on the issue is "a deeply disappointing step backward."

Even worse, Leahy said, was the United States' break with past policy in saying it would "continue to use land mines indefinitely" (Schweid, AP/Yahoo! News).

Source : http://www.unwire.org/News/328_426_13544.asp

what a bad news i got from Aljazeera.net

leading scientist has warned that a cloud of pollutants floating over much of Asia may soon engulf the Middle East.


Veerabhadran Ramanathan, who led the 1999 research into what was dubbed the "Asian Brown Cloud," said there was evidence the Gulf region was being sucked into a global pollution circuit moving several kilometres above ground.

"The Middle East has to be part of our programme because here the problem is that the dust and pollution can interact," Ramanathan said at a conference on atmospheric pollution in Dubai.

"I presumed this region was clean, but the dust haze in the desert is a lot less than here in the city. Then I saw this picture," he said, pointing to aerial shots of a cloud hanging over Dubai.

Worrisome haze

"This haze is about 300 metres above the ground, I would say. It could be coming locally or from several hundred kilometres away," he said, adding no research has been done into the effect of oil refineries along the Gulf coastline.
Ramanathan's team, backed by the United Nations Environment Programme, first identified a blanket of chemicals and dust from cars, aerosols and agricultural and industrial waste across much of South Asia in 1999.

Ramanathan, an atmospheric scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, said the major contributors to a worldwide circle of pollution were Los Angeles, Delhi, Mumbai, Beijing and Cairo.

The Indian scientist suspects the effect of the shroud of pollution across the globe could be a drier planet.

"We are interested to see if the planet will be warmer and wetter or warmer and drier. My research suggests a large drying effect, especially in the Tropics," he said.

"The haze is reducing sunlight to the oceans and one of the things sunlight does is evaporate water from the ocean which gives us rain in the water cycle," Ramanathan said.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/5D7958F7-475B-4E5F-8C1C-92824183D006.htm

More than 200 leaders representing Egyptian business, government, civil society and academia gathered in Cairo on 9 February to formally launch the Global Compact in Egypt. The event, which was hosted by the Egyptian Federation of Industries, marks the first launch of the Compact in an Arab nation. (See http://www.unglobalcompact.org)

http://www.csrwire.com/article.cgi/2508.html

i got this from the UN Wire :
The current globalization model benefits few and creates imbalances that are ethically unacceptable and politically unsustainable, says a new study released yesterday by the International Labor Organization, which is calling on countries to build a more inclusive model.

According to A Fair Globalization: Creating Opportunities for All, globalization has "immense" potential, but so far it has not been able to improve the lives of the poor.

For instance, the report says, globalization has increased unemployment, which recently has reached a historical record of 185 million worldwide. It has also swelled the ranks of the informal sector (BBC Brasil, Feb. 24, U.N. Wire translation). According to recent estimates, 70 to 90 percent of the population in developing countries is involved with businesses and work that exist outside of a legal framework (Patricia Kowsmann, U.N. Wire, Feb. 18).


this is the full story : http://www.unwire.org/News/328_426_13436.asp

9 February 2004 – Egypt's business community can serve as a model for the rest of the Arab world by embracing the Global Compact, an initiative aimed at making globalization work for the world's people, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today in a message to mark its launch in Cairo.




The Secretary-General said Egyptian businesses could boost their customer base, improve the morale of their staff and give themselves a competitive advantage in the workplace by aligning their operations to the values of the Compact.




In a message delivered on his behalf by Iqbal Riza, the UN Chef de Cabinet, Mr. Annan said joining the Compact brings practical business benefits as well as a sense of ethical responsibility.




The Global Compact, launched at the 1999 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, requires corporations to adhere to nine core principles in such areas as human rights, labour and the environment. More than 1,200 companies, including many of the world's largest, from 70 nations participate in the Compact.




Today's launch in Cairo, before an audience of some 200 representatives of business, government, civil society and labour, is the first of its kind in the Arab world.




“The recognized excellence in leadership, the quality of Egyptian products, and the skill and professionalism of the country's workforce are widely admired,” Mr. Annan said in his message.




The Secretary-General added he was “confident that the Global Compact will take root and blossom” throughout the Arab region.
check the link at :
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=9710&Cr=Global