GENEVA (Reuters) – Indonesia is launching a formal dispute at the World Trade Organization (WTO) against the United States over a U.S. ban on clove-flavored cigarettes, an official at Indonesia’s WTO mission said on Monday.

Like many trade disputes, this one involves health standards and whether they are being abused for protectionist purposes. It centers on the clove and tobacco blends known as kretek that dominate the tobacco market in Indonesia but are little smoked outside the southeast Asian country.

GENEVA (Reuters) – Airlines are climbing out of recession with further strong increases for passenger travel and freight in February, industry association IATA said on Tuesday.

One sign of recovery was record capacity usage for passenger travel in February, traditionally the weakest month for air travel, the International Air Transport Association said.

GENEVA (Reuters) – A group of independent experts will review how the H1N1 pandemic has been handled to ensure that the next global health emergency is dealt with better, a top World Health Organization official said on Monday.

The H1N1 influenza outbreak, which began in April last year, was marked by controversies over whether the WHO and public health authorities had exaggerated the risks of H1N1 and created unnecessary alarm by declaring it a ‘pandemic’.

GENEVA, March 26 (Reuters) – WTO members tacitly dropped a
deadline for a new trade deal on Friday, a move welcomed by some
as injecting reality into the long-running Doha talks, but seen
by others as risking a de facto suspension of the negotiations.

The decision to pursue the talks into an uncertain future
came as the World Trade Organization forecast that global trade
volumes would expand by nearly one tenth this year, rebounding
from the crisis and shrugging off halting progress on Doha.

GENEVA/PARIS, March 23 (Reuters) – A World Trade
Organization panel called on Tuesday on the European Union to
end illegal subsidies to Airbus <EAD.PA>, ratcheting up the
stakes in the multi-trillion-dollar large aircraft market.

The call came in a confidential 1,000-page ruling by the
WTO panel in one of two cases in the trade dispute involving
arch-rivals Boeing <BA.N> and EADS subsidiary Airbus.

GENEVA, March 18 (Reuters) – A long-awaited World Trade
Organization decision next Tuesday on state support for Airbus
planes will clarify rules on industrial subsidies but does not
mean the end of the decades-old civil aircraft dispute.

Subsidy rules are at the heart of the transatlantic battle
for dominance in a market that aerospace firms estimate will be
worth $3 trillion over the next 20 years.