World Trade Organization

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an intergovernmental organization which regulates international trade. The WTO officially commenced on 1 January 1995 under the Marrakesh Agreement, signed by 123 nations on 15 April 1994, replacing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which commenced in 1948. The WTO deals with regulation of trade between participating countries by providing a framework for negotiating trade agreements and a dispute resolution process aimed at enforcing participants' adherence to WTO agreements, which are signed by representatives of member governments and ratified by their parliaments. Most of the issues that the WTO focuses on derive from previous trade negotiations, especially from the Uruguay Round (1986–1994).

The WTO is attempting to complete negotiations on the Doha Development Round, which was launched in 2001 with an explicit focus on developing countries. As of June 2012, the future of the Doha Round remained uncertain: the work programme lists 21 subjects in which the original deadline of 1 January 2005 was missed, and the round is still incomplete. The conflict between free trade on industrial goods and services but retention of protectionism on farm subsidies to domestic agricultural sector (requested by developed countries) and the substantiation of fair trade on agricultural products (requested by developing countries) remain the major obstacles. This impasse has made it impossible to launch new WTO negotiations beyond the Doha Development Round. As a result, there have been an increasing number of bilateral free trade agreements between governments. As of July 2012, there were various negotiation groups in the WTO system for the current agricultural trade negotiation which is in the condition of stalemate.

World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference of 1999

The WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999 was a meeting of the World Trade Organization, convened at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in Seattle, Washington, USA, over the course of three days, beginning November 30, 1999. A week before the meeting, delegates admitted failure to agree on the agenda and the presence of deep disagreements with developing countries. Intended as the launch of a new round of multilateral trade negotiations that would have been called "The Millennium Round", the negotiations were marred by poor organization and controversial management of large street protests. Developing country representatives became resentful and uncooperative on being excluded from talks as the United States and the European Union attempted to cement a mutual deal on agriculture. The negotiations collapsed and were reconvened at Doha, Qatar, in November 2001. The Doha venue enabled on-site public protest to be excluded. Necessary agenda concessions were made to include the interests of developing countries, which had by then further established their own negotiation blocs, such as the Non-Aligned Movement and the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation. Thus, the current round is called the Doha Development Round, which has since 2008 remained stalled as a result of diverging perspectives regarding tariffs, agriculture, and non-tariff barriers such as agricultural subsidies.

Toledo 5

Toledo 5, The CW (formerly ToledoVision 5 and Toledo's WB 5) was a cable channel serving Northwest Ohio, primarily serving the city of Toledo and Northwest Ohio. The channel was operated by Buckeye Cablesystem, and was originally exclusive to its subscribers, but expanded to other northwestern Ohio cable providers such as Time Warner Cable and Comcast. It was carried on channel 5 on Buckeye CableSystem and various other channel positions on Time Warner Cable and Comcast.

It existed in several forms from the launch of Buckeye as "The CableSystem" in 1971, first as a traditional public access station, and then in 1989 becoming a traditional independent station which aired programming traditionally aired in syndication by broadcast stations.

In 1995, the channel became an affiliate of The WB under the name Toledo's WB 5, using a logo with the fictitious call letters WT05. Following its merger with UPN, the channel joined The CW. Despite being a cable-only affiliate of The CW, the station never was part of The CW Plus and had been independently programmed by Block Communications and Buckeye with syndicated programming and films outside of network hours.

Pennywise

Pennywise or Penny Wise may refer to:

Pennywise (album)

Pennywise is the self-titled debut album by the punk band Pennywise, released on Epitaph Records on October 22, 1991.

Writing and production

Writing for the first Pennywise album began around 1989/1990. The band recorded it in 1991 at Westbeach Recorders in Hollywood, California.

Reception

Pennywise was released on October 22, 1991, and was the band's first album distributed via Epitaph Records. This self-titled debut made some impact upon its 1991 release, helping to re-establish the Southern Californian punk rock scene.

Track listing

All tracks by Pennywise

Personnel

Pennywise (band)

Pennywise is an American punk rock band from Hermosa Beach, California, United States, formed in 1988. The name is derived from the monster, It, from the Stephen King novel of the same title.

Between their 1991 self-titled debut and 2005's The Fuse, Pennywise had released an album every two years on Epitaph Records, a label owned by Bad Religion guitarist Brett Gurewitz. To date, the band has released eleven full-length studio albums (the last being 2014's Yesterdays), one live album, two EPs and one DVD. Although their first two studio albums were critically acclaimed, Pennywise would not experience worldwide commercial success until the 1995 release of their third studio album, About Time, which peaked at number ninety-six on the Billboard 200, and number fifty-five on Australia's ARIA Charts. The band's mainstream success was signified by a growing interest in punk rock during the 1990s, along with fellow California bands NOFX, Rancid, Blink-182, Bad Religion, Green Day, The Offspring and Sublime. By 2007, the band had independently sold over 3 million records worldwide, making them one of the most successful independent punk acts of all time.