Argentine President Cristina Fernández enacted the YPF nationalization law, which was approved by the Lower House on Thursday. During a nation-wide televised speech from Government House, the Head of State also introduced the company’s new CEO, oil engineer Miguel Galuccio.
Conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy made an impassioned final appeal to voters on Friday, saying that a Socialist victory could send France spiraling the way of Greece, as polls showed him narrowing his challenger’s lead two days before the vote.
Toning down its initial strong reactions to the nationalization of Spanish controlled YPF Spain’s Foreign minister Jose Manuel Garcia Margallo said that Argentina should pay a fair price for the oil company citing a similar case in Bolivia this week.
A drilling engineer with a long experience in the oil and gas industry Miguel Galuccio, 44, will be taking over as of next Monday as manager of the nationalized YPF corporation, announced on Friday Argentine President Cristina Fernandez.
Uruguayan Foreign Minister Luis Almagro backed Argentina’s controversial decision to nationalize the country's biggest oil company YPF arguing countries’ right to recover a strategic market is “indisputable”.
The Argentine government spent 1.225 billion Pesos (307.8 million dollars) in 2010 on public advertising campaigns, an increase of 25 times since 2003, according to a recent study released by Poder Ciudadano, the Argentine national chapter of Transparency International.
Boris Johnson dodged a humiliating nationwide defeat for Prime Minister David Cameron by winning London in local elections that saw voters angry at Britain's economic woes flock to opposition Labour and a right-wing anti-European fringe party.
Brazil received more than 5.4 million international visitors in 2011, up 5.35 from 2010, the Tourism Ministry announced Friday. The number of visitors from other South American nations rose from 2.384 million in 2010 to 2.628 million in 2011.
FIFA president Sepp Blatter has expressed concern about the slow pace of preparations for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil and said he wanted the delays to be made up as soon as possible.
The International Olympic Committee, IOC, criticized on Friday an Argentine television spot that links the London Games to Argentina's sovereignty dispute with Britain over the Falkland Islands, calling it a blatant attempt to use the games for political purposes.