Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo called for the free flow and free access of his country’s goods to Mercosur senior members’ markets and insisted on the energy integration of the block.
Mercosur signed a free trade agreement with the Palestinian Authority on Tuesday, the first between the territories and a block of nations outside the Arab world. The ceremony took place during Mercosur presidential summit in Montevideo.
Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa said he was satisfied with having presented an official request for his country to join Mercosur and also called for closer links between Mercosur and the Andean Nations Community, CAN.
Four decades ago a book written by a Peruvian priest sent shockwaves inside the Latinamerican Catholic Church having set the foundations for what was known as the Liberation Theology.
Trade among ALADI, Latin American Integration Association, which includes all the hemisphere countries with the exception of a few from Central America and the Caribbean, is expected to reach a historic record in 2011 close to 160 billion dollars, ahead of the 2008 record with 146 billion dollars.
Spanish lawmakers voted Tuesday to make conservative leader Mariano Rajoy the new prime minister, approving his program of sweeping budget cuts and tough economic reforms.
Chile’s 23-year-old student leader Camila Vallejo, has been chosen as the person of the year in a poll of readers of British newspaper, The Guardian. Vallejo, the international face of 2011’s student protests in Chile, topped the poll with an overwhelming 78% of votes.
Britain’s refusal to contribute to the IMF for a Euro zone bailout fund has left the EU short of its 200 billion Euro target. The UK boycott leaves the Euro zone more reliant than ever on major economies such China and on Russia, which are willing to lend more to the IMF.
A senior director at a Conservative think-tank founded by Jose Maria Aznar, Spain’s former Popular Party prime minister, said Gibraltar was low on the list of priorities for Madrid, particularly at a time of crisis when it needed the UK as an ally.
Gibraltar could play a role in contingency plans drawn up by the Foreign Office to evacuate British expatriates in the event of a banking collapse in Spain and Portugal, according to the Sunday Times.