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.
Chile's fisheries exports totaled 2.945 billion US dollars during the first ten months of 2006, up 19.6% over the same period a year ago, according to the Fisheries Under Secretariat, SUBPESCA. But figures also show that the total volume was 1.157 million tons compared to 1.36 million tons in 2005, which means 18% less.
Evolution of trade among Mercosur members in the last few years shows unexpected surpluses for Brazil and a lesser dependency on the group's intra trade than in the nineties, according to recent data from ALADI, Latinamerican Integration Association.
An outbreak of bovine brucellosis has been confirmed in the Chilean province of Osorno, according to the Minister of Agriculture Alvaro Rojas.
The Uruguay Argentina pulp mills controversy took another turn this week when the Argentine province of Entre Rios said it would ban all wood sales to Uruguayan pulp mills and picketers announced a complete land blockade of Uruguay sometime in mid January.