The U.S. on Monday filed a World Trade Organization case against India over a solar-power dispute that has limited U.S. access to the Indian market, a move that could further inflame relations between the two countries. U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman said a major government program in India to expand its solar-generation capacity discriminates against American suppliers. The WTO case follows a complaint the U.S. lodged at the trade body last year against the initial phase of the Indian program. Negotiations to settle that complaint have failed to progress.

The European Union removed a 49.1 percent tariff against China on a chemical used for pharmaceuticals, ending protection for Germany’s AlzChem AG. The EU let lapse the duty on dicyandiamide, which is also used for powder coatings, water treatment, textile coloring and glues in cars, airplanes and windmills. The bloc imposed the levy in 2007 to punish Chinese exporters including Ningxia Yinglite Chemicals Co. for allegedly having sold the raw material in Europe below cost, a practice known as dumping.

HANOI, Feb. 11 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam sold 307,000 tons of rice to overseas markets in the first month of 2014, pocketing 127.5 million U.S. dollars, down 24.11 percent in volume and 30.5 percent in value, said a report by Vietnam Food Association (VFA). E-portal of Vietnamese government quoted VFA on Tuesday as saying the country fulfilled the set plan of exporting rice in January at low level. Under this progress, VFA forecast Vietnam to export 300,000 to 350,000 tons of rice in February, said the report.

The EU and Afghanistan today signed a deal concluding their bilateral negotiations on Afghanistan’s accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Geneva. Accession to the WTO is expected to make a lasting contribution to the process of stabilisation, economic reform and sustainable development in Afghanistan.

Twelve countries aiming to conclude a Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement will hold a ministerial meeting in Singapore on Feb. 22-25 , it has been learned. The focus of the meeting will be whether the countries will be able to effectively conclude the talks by compromising in such contentious areas as tariff elimination, restrictions on preferential treatment for state-run enterprises and protection of intellectual property rights. Japan’s minister for TPP affairs, Akira Amari, is set to take part in the meeting, informed sources said.

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key has given strong backing to the Trans Pacific Partnership free trade agreement during his visit to Australia. Mr Key told business leaders and MPs on Friday he believed the deal would significantly boost New Zealand's economy. 'If you want my view, you see a lot of things in the newspapers, particularly in New Zealand ... you see a reasonable amount of negative comment about the TPP,' Mr Key said.

With a little under a year to go before the planned Southeast Asian economic integration, the government and the private sector will conduct more dialogues to reduce non-tariff barriers to regional trade, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) said in a statement on Friday.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 7 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. government decided Friday to maintain an existing anti-dumping duty on steel wire garment hangers imported from China, despite Beijing's repeated calls for Washington to drop trade protectionism. Six members of U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) concluded unanimously in a ruling that revoking the current anti-dumping duty orders on Chinese hangers would likely lead to "material injury" to U.S. industries in a foreseeable future.

The twelve countries negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement will be extending their talks into 2014, ministers announced on Tuesday, despite having achieved “substantial progress” during an intensive series of talks in Singapore. The 12-country group had previously set the end of 2013 as its target date for concluding the talks, and had held to that objective throughout the year, while giving informal indications that the negotiations could last longer if the substance demanded it.

The central conflict over the recently passed state secrets bill was between the ruling coalition and its political opposition, but the real loser in the contest was the media, and not just because the new law would appear to limit its ability to gather news. The government always seemed to be one step ahead of the press in keeping its version of events prominent.