A coalition of developing countries has rejected big cuts in industrial goods tariffs in the troubled Doha round of trade talks, a move the US said could spell the end of the round

  Two Europeans have won this year's Nobel physics prize for a nanotechnology discovery that has led to the miniaturisation of hard disks in laptop computers and music players

  European nations will draw up radical proposals to improve transparency in financial markets in an attempt to prevent any recurrence of the financial turmoil arising from the credit squeeze

  Notes of alarm have been sounded over free trade three times in recent years, yet among economists it is alive and well, writes Jagdish Bhagwati

  The Chinese trade body for the steel industry has thrown its weight behind an effort to combat global warming by monitoring worldwide emissions of carbon dioxide by steelmakers

  World financial systems have been weakened by the lack of choice between global rating agencies, Jean-Claude Trichet said of their role in the recent market turmoil

  Economic progress is cutting extreme poverty but the region's least developed countries need external help to reach UN development goals, the Asia Development Bank warns

  Kazakhstan's dispute with an Italian-led consortium over delays and cost overruns in developing the Kashagan oilfield can be resolved without rewriting the contract, President Nursultan Nazarbayev has told Italy's visiting prime minister

  Ecuador is to rejoin the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries after a 15-year absence in another sign of the group's growing prestige

  Venezuela is still allowing "massive diamond smuggling" and should be expelled from the Kimberley Process, the United Nations-backed initiative to curb the illegal trade in gems, according to a report released by two non-governmental organisations

  The effects of the farm bill are felt well beyond the borders of the US, largely in lower prices for subsidised basic commodities such as rice, corn and cotton that might benefit consumers but undercut farmers in other countries, particularly in the developing world

  Hopes to reform the US farm bill, which affects the prices of food and fibre worldwide, are almost certain to be twarted by entrenched interests

  India's stock market boom has catapulted Mukesh Ambani, the country's biggest industrialist, within reach of becoming the richest Indian and one of the world's 10 wealthiest people

  The Nobel season kicked off with the award of the medicine prize to one British and two American scientists, for discovering how to produce embryonic stem cells in mice and using the technique to produce genetically engineered animals