US President Barack Obama warned Republicans in Congress on Monday that he will not negotiate over an extension of the US debt ceiling as part of a budget battle that will soon dominate Washington, with a deadline fast approaching.
A group of Panama National Assembly members has arrived in the Falkland Islands for a week long visit. The party is headed by Foreign Affairs Commission president Dalia Bernal and includes Yaniel Abrego, president of the Education Commission, lawmaker Renaul Dominguez and Jorge Gantes legal advisor of the Foreign Affaris Committee.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) praised Argentina’s Law on Rural Lands (Ley de Tierras Rurales), stating that the measure could serve as an example for the region. FAO has invited Argentine representatives to expound their experience with the law at a workshop to be staged next week in the Colombian capital of Bogotá.
Engineers in Italy have succeeded in setting the cruise ship Costa Concordia upright, 20 months after it ran aground off the island of Giglio. They said that the unprecedented salvage effort ”reached degree zero (vertical), which was our target”.
An estimated 58.000 visitors have been confirmed for this coming 2013/14 cruise season at the extreme south Chile cities of Punta Arenas and Puerto Natales, although the overall number is slightly less than the 62.000 of this last season according to Epaustral, the Austral Port Corporation.
Chile latest fisheries scientific research vessel ‘Cabo de Hornos’ has completed a month long cruise in the southern coast of the country collecting information on three different type of hake spawning, something which hadn’t been done since at least 1996, according to the country’s fisheries officials.
The Marine Research Institute from Vigo, Spain has launched the first world bio-bank which collects, stores and will distribute samples of marine parasites and associated bio-molecules such as the anisakis, in the framework of the EU ‘Parasite’ project to assess their sanitary and commercial impact on the food chain and validation of tools to mitigate effects.
Spanish scientists from the University of Barcelona and the Oceanographic Institute have discovered in Antarctica a new species of worm, a marine invertebrate which feeds on whale bones. The discovery is in the framework of the Actiquim-II project and the new species was baptized Osedax deceptionensis.
Colombia’s government has refused registration as a trademark of the full name “Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria” the country most notorious narcotics criminal. According to local news in Bogotá the application was filed by Maria Isabel Santos Cabalerro, Juana Manuela Marroquín Santos and Juan Sebastian Marroquín Santos, Escobar’s widow and children respectively who changed their names after settling in Argentina in the late 1990.
Following a meeting with President Dilma Rousseff, Banco Santander Chairman Emilio Botin said that the Spanish bank has 10 billion dollars available to finance infrastructure projects in Brazil. He also anticipated that loan book growth at Banco Santander Brasil SA would be up about 10% in 2013.