News Currents
ECONOMY AND BUSINESS
New international rules to control subsidies, cartels, and mergers should be drawn up under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, European Community Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan said. He told the World Economic Forum, an annual meeting of business leaders and politicians, in Davos, Switzerland, that GATT should deal with competition policy and its enforcement.... Maintaining Japan's high economic growth rate is exacting a heavy toll on the country's mental and physical health, according to a gover nment survey. Also, shrinking corporate profits may force Japanese workers - among the highest paid in the world - to settle for smaller than usual pay increases when nationwide wage negotiations end in late March or early April, economists say. And Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa told the Japanese parliament yesterday that Americans may lack the work ethic.... Finland's national airline, Finnair, and Aeroflot St. Petersburg, part of the former Soviet Union's national carrier, have agreed to set up a joint a irline based in St. Petersburg.... Singapore's economy is suffering the effects of recession in the developed world and this year will be less successful than 1991.
EUROPE
About 20 third-world foreign ministers opened a meeting yesterday in Cyprus to debate the future and purpose of the Non-Aligned Movement. The movement was founded in the 1950s, at the height of the cold war between Washington and Moscow, as a grouping of mainly third-world countries that aimed to avoid alignment with a superpower. Many ministers said their movement was still vital to the interests of its members... A new avalanche killed four people in southeast Turkey yesterday and rescuers found 35 mor e bodies, bringing to 178 the overall death toll from a series of snowslides.... A center-right candidate won a parliamentary special election in northern France Sunday, inflicting a defeat on the governing Socialist Party.... The 26-nation Council of Europe decided yesterday to grant the former Yugoslav republic of Slovenia special guest status.... Azeri troops bombarded Stepanakert, the capital of the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, yesterday, killing one person and injuring several, Armenia said yes terday.... Libya has told the International Atomic Energy Agency that its nuclear facilities are open to inspection to prove it has no secret bomb production project.
ENVIRONMENT AND SCIENCE
Nike Inc., a United States maker of athletic shoes, said Sunday that it plans to manufacture a new line of shoes whose soles are partly made from recycled shoes that have been returned as defective. Nike will make the technique available free of charge to other companies in the sports shoe business.... In Italy, Bologna banned private and commercial traffic yesterday and other Italian cities asked people to limit the use of private cars because of dangerously high pollution levels.