The University of Sao Paulo (USP) has become the Vi's 20th affiliate member and the fourth from Brazil, along with core member, the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), and current affiliates, the Federal University of Viçosa, and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. USP will participate in the network through its Faculty of Law, a good complement to the work of the other Brazilian members, which focus largely in the area of economics.

USP is a renowned university, which repeatedly obtains high scores in international rankings. With more than 86,000 students, 230 post-graduate programmes, and 296 PhD courses, the university is the largest institution of higher learning and research in Brazil. Among its graduates are a large number of the country’s academics and strategic leaders of the public and private sectors.

The World Trade Institute (WTI) and the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) are pleased to inform you that registration is now open for the e-Learning course on “Preparing and Conducting Services Negotiations”, which will be offered through the Internet from 2 November to 4 December 2009 (five weeks).

This advanced course aims to help services negotiators, officials in ministries and regulatory agencies, and the broad stakeholder communities (including those in multilateral institutions and in aid agencies) to gain a better sense of the key “moments” in the life cycle of services negotiations.

Long-time Vi supporter, the Governement of Finland, has again this year allocated funds to help provide capacity-building services to members from Least Developed Countries.

Even as the financial crisis has shrunk many countries' development funding budgets, Finland has generously increased their annual contribution to the Vi, and has expanded the coverage of activities to include middle-income countries in Sub-Sharan Africa. This is great news for our current members in Kenya and Mauritius.

We would like to express our deepest appreciation to the Government of Finland

The Vi and Spain's Fundación Centro de Educación a Distancia para el Desarrollo Económico y Tecnológico (CEDDET) have agreed to collaborate on a pilot activity to develop and deliver an English version of the course "Instrumentos Jurídicos de las Relaciones Económicas Internacionales" (Legal Instruments of International Economic Relations) directed by Vi Spanish member coordinator, Ramón Torrent.

The Vi project "Economic capacity building in African Least Developed Countries (LDCs): How academia can support policymaking in the oil/gas and minerals sectors," funded by a donation of more than USD 200,000 from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway has taken major steps into its implementation during this quarter.

In cooperation with UNCTAD's Commodities Unit, the Vi has identified qualified experts to develop two new modules on oil/gas and minerals, which can be used by teachers and researchers at their institutions and in executive training with government officials. The module "Minerals and Development" will be finalized by November, with the "Oil/gas and Development" module to follow in February, 2010.