I'll see your Online Gambling and Raise you Postage

[mojo]

Simply amazing. The politics involved are more of a gamble than gambling itself.

Antigua won a key victory in 2005, when the WTO ruled that a U.S. law allowing only domestic companies to provide online horse-race gambling services discriminated against foreign companies.

The former British colony had hoped to use that ruling to pry open the broader U.S. Internet gambling market, which Congress took steps to further restrict last year.

Washington, instead of bringing its laws in line with WTO rules, announced in May this year it would withdraw gambling from the services it opened up under a 1994 world trade deal.

Under WTO rules, it then had to offer comparable access in other sectors to interested countries.

Earlier this week, the European Union announced it had reached agreement with Washington over access to the U.S. postal and courier, research and development and storage and warehouse sectors in compensation.

- Reuters

xhttp://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20080101/business/business2.html