Argentina's Central Bank in 2006 obtained nearly 1.4 billion dollars out of investing its foreign currency reserves at a yearly yield of 5.7 percent †the highest since a crippling five-year recession ended in 2002 †and close to the 1.47 billion dollars the country reportedly spent last year in subsidies to keep inflation under two digits.
President Hugo Chavez announced plans on Monday to nationalize Venezuela's electrical and telecommunications companies, pledging to create a socialist state in the spirit of the Bolivarian revolution.
Chavez's nationalization announcement came in his first speech of the year, a fiery address in which he used a vulgar word roughly meaning idiot to refer to Organization of American States Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulza.
United States president George W Bush and the European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso ratified Monday their commitment to seek fresh ways of overcoming differences and reaching an agreement on the Doha Round trade talks.
Brazil has plans to grant economic and trade aid to Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay in an attempt to give South America's main trade grouping Mercosur, greater cohesion, according to the financial press of Sao Paulo.
The indiscriminate Argentine anchovy (Engraulis anchoita) fishing in the southern zone of Argentina could inflict serious damage to Magallanic penguins, whales, seals and sea lions population numbers, warned a study published in prominent scientific magazine Science.
PERU'S government, seeking to boost tourism in the Andean country, is urging residents and visitors to vote for the ancient Inca site of Machu Picchu as one of the world's new seven wonders.
Moeller-Maersk and 407 other shipping lines increased their capacity to move containers 14 percent in 2006, the fastest pace in six years, as trade expanded, data from Containerisation International showed.