An international arbitration panel has awarded US oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp 908 million dollars in compensation for Venezuela's 2007 nationalization of assets, less than 10% of what it sought in a dispute that pitted a top global oil company against one of the world's largest oil exporters.
The 33 edition of the Dakar Rally got off to a symbolic start on Saturday ahead of a 15-day race that will take 466 registered competitors from Argentina through Chile to a finish in Lima, Peru.
Chile declared on Friday “catastrophe zone” the extreme south province of Ultima Esperanza where a forest fire, so far out of control, has ravaged over 9.000 hectares of pristine flora from the Torres del Paine national park.
President Hugo Chavez Venezuela is on track to set a new record for murders and to remain South America's most violent country, according to data released by a crime watchdog. The Venezuela Violence Monitor (OVV) said this week that 19 336 people had been murdered in 2011, an average of 53 per day in a country of 29 million.
Over three million tourists arrived this year to Chile, an 11% increase over 2010. The number also represents a trebling of foreign tourists in the last two decades, according to Tourism Under Secretary Jacqueline Plass.
Twenty tourists had to be evacuated from the Torres del Paine national park in Chilean Patagonia following the outbreak of a forest fire that has extended to over twenty hectares because of strong winds and difficult access for fire-fighters, reports the local press.
Hasan Tuluy, a Turkish national and a strong supporter of inclusive growth, will become the new World Bank Vice President for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) as of January 1st, 2012. Mr. Tuluy will oversee the Bank’s lending, knowledge, and poverty-fighting operations in the region, which totalled 9.6 billion dollars in fiscal year 2011.
The Cuban regime and the ruling Communist Party are preparing a grand-national conference to try and change the “mentality” of Cubans so that the capitalist-oriented economic reforms and timid political changes sponsored by President Raul Castro are better understood and accepted, according to party sources.
Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff will be celebrating on Sunday her first of four years in office with a record public opinion support of 72%, based on a sober and firm style in running what has become the world’s sixth largest economy.
The Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinejad will be travelling to Latinamerica in the second week of January 2012 to visit Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Ecuador, announced the Teheran presidential office, according to a report from the official news agency FNA.