News Bulletin – 1935GMT
The main headlines on Al Jazeera English, featuring the latest news and reoprts from around the world.
News Bulletin – 1405 GMT update
The main headlines from Al Jazeera English, featuring the latest news and reports from around the world.
Drug firms made ‘false H1N1 claims’
The severity of the H1N1 outbreak was deliberately exaggerated by pharmaceutical companies that stood to make billions of dollars from a worldwide scare, a leading European health expert has claimed.
Wolfgang Wodarg, head of health at the Council of Europe, has accused the makers of vaccines for the virus of influencing the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) decision to declare a pandemic.
Tarek Bazely reports
(Jan 11, 2010)
Chile gains entry into OECD 12 Jan 10
Chile has become the first South American country to be admitted into the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Michelle Bachelet, Chile’s president, says entry into the group is a major stride towards joining the ranks of developed nations.
Chiel has, in the last two decades, gone from benig one of the poorest countries in Latin America to one of the richest.
Based in France, the OECD comprises 30 countries that promote principles of representative democracy and free-market economy.
It traditionally includes rich and industrialised nations such as the US, Japan and South Korea.
In recent years, it has also made efforts to give entry to developing eocnomies such as Mexico and Poland.
Membership – given to countries that meet certain political and economic requirements – allows mmeber states to discuss and co-ordinate global social, environmental, and economic policies.
Al Jazeera’s Lucia Newman, rpeorting from Santiago, explanis that Chile’s free market economy was one factor that helped it gain entry into the OECD.
"An economic powerhouse like Brazil, for example, doesn’t have such an open economy and has many protectionist measures," she said.