News and links for this week

The WTO’s Appellate Body released it’s annual report this week. [Link]

France (EUR 750,000), Lithuania (CHF 46,087), and Estonia (CHF 15,000) donated to the Doha Development Fund, which provides training and activities for Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Developing Countries. None of the DR-CAFTA countries are LDCs — indeed Haiti is the only LDC in the Americas — however all members save the United States are ‘developing countries’ and thus can potentially take advantage of this fund.

Via the International Economic Law and Policy blog, the WTO has announced its interim report (which I believe is only available to the parties) in the dispute over internet gambling with Antigua and Barbuda. For more on this, you might try this article. [Link]. Looking at such diverse areas as internet gambling will be one of the areas that we will touch on with this study of FTAs and IT-based businesses.

DR-CAFTA member Nicaragua is stepping closer to joining ALBA — a ‘framework agreement’ was approved by the Venezuelan National Assembly for a trade deal / cooperation agreement between the two countries. [Link to bilaterals.org]. See also this past post.

Doha - is it live or is it dead? Daniel Ikenson discusses some of the bigger picture items surrounding the future of world trade from a US perspective over at Cato. [Link].