Stories for April 14th 2012
Chavez cancels summit’s plan and flies to Cuba on a 90 day leave for treatment
Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez will not attend this weekend's hemispheric summit in Colombia and will instead fly straight to Cuba to continue radiation treatment for cancer, his foreign minister said on Saturday.
“Revolutionary Junta” to consolidate “Chavism”, forecasts US expert in Latam affairs
Venezuelan military alarmed by the fast physical deterioration of President Hugo Chavez have worked out an emergency plan to be implemented, including the suspension of basic constitutional rights, at the slightest sign of political agitations, said the former US ambassador before the OAS, Roger Noriega.
Cruise sent to collect passengers from stranded M/V Plancius docked in South Georgia
The Panama flagged cruise vessel M/V Ushuaia is expected to arrive early next week in South Georgia to pick up the stranded 114 passengers and crew of a similar small cruise M/V Plancius which after experiencing serious propulsion trouble took shelter at King Edward Point Research Station in Grytviken.
YPF dispute: Argentina runs the risk of becoming an ‘international pariah” warns Spain
Spanish officials warned Argentina on Friday that the country risks becoming “an international pariah” if it follows through on its threats to take control of Spanish-owned energy company Repsol's majority stake in its YPF unit.
UK team to survey wreck of RFA tanker sunk by WWII German U-boat in St Helena
UK Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) team is heading to the South Atlantic island of St Helena to survey the wreck of a tanker sunk by a German U-boat in World War Two.
“Argentina: shame on you”; Editorial from Canada’s Globe and Mail
Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has said it is “absurd” for the British government, which has enjoyed sovereignty over the Falkland Islands for 180 years, to maintain its claim from an ocean away “when these Islands are part of our maritime platform.” Applying the logic of Ms. Kirchner, Canada should be stoking international tensions in an effort to annex Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. And perhaps Greenland.
Falklands veteran Royal Marine and yomper, feels Falklands are well defended
Retired Royal Marine Brigadier Ian Gardiner, who commanded a Marine company in the 1982 Falklands war, thinks a new Argentine attack on the Islands is unlikely.
Ocampo drops out from World Bank bid; gives full support to Nigerian candidate
Former Colombian finance minister Jose Antonio Ocampo ended his bid to become World Bank president on Friday, leaving two candidates in an unprecedented challenge to US control of the global development institution.
