New Delhi, Oct 19 (IANS) India is taking proactive measures and ready to make concessions to ensure a successful conclusion of the Doha round of multilateral trade talks, an official said here Tuesday.Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma is scheduled to meet World Trade Organisation (WTO) Director-General Pascal Lamy, chairs of the sub-groups on agriculture, industrial products and services and ambassadors of various informal groupings at the WTO headquarters in Geneva Wednesday to push for an early conclusion of the talks.

Brazil doubled a tax it charges foreigners on investment in fixed-income securities in a bid to stem gains in the real, which reached its strongest in more than two years last week.The government of Latin America’s biggest economy will raise its so-called IOF tax on fixed-income investments by foreigners to 4 percent from 2 percent beginning tomorrow, Finance Minister Guido Mantega told reporters in Brasilia today. Brazil first slapped a 2 percent tax on foreign investments in October 2009.

CHICAGO - Just after the US House of Representatives passed legislation which allows to impose trade sanctions on China to compensate for the "artificially weakened" yuan, a US economic expert warned against the Obama administration doing so.David Besanko, a US economist and professor at the Northwestern University, told Xinhua in an exclusive interview that "it is untraditional for trade sanctions to be imposed on a country by the US government due to currency policy."

MOSCOW, Sept. 30 (Xinhua) -- Russia is ready to restrict itself to the limitations of the World Trade Organization (WTO), only after Moscow's admission to the organization, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Thursday."Restrictions related to the accession (to the WTO) must not be applied before the accession is complete," Putin was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying.

GENEVA (Reuters) - The World Trade Organization called on Wednesday on the United States -- criticized by many trade partners for a lack of interest in trade policy -- to show leadership in global commerce.In a two-yearly review of U.S. trade policy, part of a regular survey of all 153 members, the global trade referee urged the United States to show leadership in the fight against protectionism by opening up further to trade and investment.