Articles by Katharina Bart and Tom Miles

UBS Admits Fraud in Libor Rigging Scheme; To Pay $1.5 Billion Fine

Swiss bank UBS swallowed a $1.5 billion fine and admitted to fraud on Wednesday after a global probe revealed its staff orchestrated the manipulation of benchmark interest rates over three continents. UBS traders colluded with brokers to rig the Libor …

Services Trade Talks Begin as WTO Seeks Way out of Stalemate

Countries representing 70 percent of the global economy are set to negotiate lower barriers to trade in services after agreeing the structure of a deal, Australian Trade Minister Craig Emerson said in an interview. The push for a deal on …

WTO Risks its Future by Keeping Doha Talks Alive

The 153 members of the World Trade Organization agree on two things: We’re in a hole. And we must keep digging. The hole is the Doha Development Round, a decade-old negotiation that was billed as the next stage of trade …

WTO approves Russia’s Membership after Marathon Meeting

Russia was admitted into the World Trade Organization on Friday after 18 years of negotiation, finally binding it into the global economy two decades after the Soviet Union collapsed. Russia’s $1.9 trillion economy was the largest outside the WTO, and …

Record High Greenhouse Gases to Linger for Decades

Concentrations of the three main greenhouse gases blamed for global warming reached record levels in 2010 and will linger in the atmosphere for decades, even if the world stops emissions output today, the U.N.’s weather agency said on Monday. Carbon …

WTO’s Lamy Sees Paralysis in Global Trade Talks

The head of the World Trade Organization castigated its 153 members on Tuesday for failing to agree a watered-down global trade deal by December and called for “an adult conversation” over what to do next. “What we are seeing today …