By Gwynne Dyer - With due apologies to God, Voltaire and the Ukrainians, I must point out that if Ukraine did not exist, it would not be necessary to invent it.It is not a great power, it has no resources the world cannot do without, and it is not a “vital strategic interest” to anybody except the Ukrainians. Not even to the Russians, although they are acting at the moment as though it were.
Spending by foreign tourists in Britain is set to rise 34% to over 27 billion pounds (46 billion dollars) a year by 2017, according to research published on Friday, boosting the country's retail and leisure industries.
The head of the Caribbean Public Health Authority (CARPHA), Dr James Hospedales, has declared the Chikungunya virus has reached epidemic proportions in the Caribbean. The mosquito-borne illness was first detected in the Caribbean in December 2013, in St Martin, and last week Antigua and St Vincent and the Grenadines became the latest countries to declare an outbreak.
IMF Director for the Western Hemisphere Department Alejandro Werner has once again called on Latin America to embark upon economic reforms, claiming that the “least difficult” phase of economic growth is now over.
Argentina has been improving its mortality rates over the past decades, as it was revealed on Friday by the prestigious medical journal The Lancet. Although Argentina's rates are better than other countries in the region, including Brazil, Cuba, Uruguay and Chile among others still have the better numbers.
A new report by WHO–its first to look at antimicrobial resistance, including antibiotic resistance, globally–reveals that this serious threat is no longer a prediction for the future, it is happening right now in every region of the world and has the potential to affect anyone, of any age, in any country.
Uruguayan authorities have revealed how marijuana will be produced and sold legally in the country following the approval of the bill last December. Licensed pharmacies will sell the drug for approximately one US dollar a gram with consumers allowed 40g a month.
A Falkland Islander, resident in Argentina is running for mayor of the city of Puerto Santa Cruz, in Patagonia's Santa Cruz province, which is the Kirchner's couple political turf. James Lewis is backing Eduardo Costa from the opposition Radical party, the current mayor of the small town of 3.500 people, who next year is confident can become the province's next governor.
Uruguay has expressed an interest in actively participating in negotiations to liberalize trade in services in the framework of TISA, Trade in Services Agreement which recently held its seventh round of talks in Geneva.
Repsol, the Spanish oil company, announced this week that its longstanding executive chairman, Antonio Brufau, would hand over the job of chief executive to Josu Jon Imaz San Miguel, who has been running the company’s upstream operations.