International news briefs

Issue 

Seattle protesters sue

SEATTLE — Lawyers for anti-corporate tyranny activists sued Seattle officials on October 3 for violating the free-speech rights of hundreds of people arrested for entering an emergency "no-protest zone" during the anti-World Trade Organisation protests on November 30 to December 2.

Declaring that 600 people were eligible to join the class action lawsuit, the Washington DC-based Trial Lawyers for Public Justice, along with lawyers from six other firms, said they would seek damage awards in the millions of dollars. After tens of thousands of demonstrators fought through tear gas and rubber pellets to block city streets and halt the first day of the WTO meeting, Seattle mayor Paul Schell banned further protests in downtown and police established the emergency no-protest zone.

The city faced a class-action suit by the American Civil Liberties Union over the no-protest zone, but a court refused to certify the class in that suit.

Poor countries falling behind

Two-thirds of the world's poorest countries slipped further behind the rest of the world in the 1990s, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development's Least Developed Countries 2000 Report, released on October 12

Almost a quarter of the 48 countries it officially designates as least developed are "caught in a downward spiral in which economic regress, social stress and violent conflict mutually reinforce each other", the report states. Fifteen LDCs — seven in Asia — experienced gross domestic product per capita growth in excess of 2% a year during 1990-1998, but 22 of the 48 LDCs showed stagnation or economic regress. Eleven of those had their real GDP per capita decline by more than 3% annually.

The single greatest impediment to development in the LDCs, according to the report, is an "aid-and-debt trap", in which high debt hinders effective aid, and ineffectual aid prevents a solution to the debt problem.

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