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Montevideo, November 28th 2024 - 17:44 UTC

Stories for 2015

  • Monday, August 3rd 2015 - 08:16 UTC

    Canada will hold elections next October; conservatives could lose office

    PM Harper says only he can be trusted to run an economy struggling to cope with after-effects of a global economic slowdown and a plunge in the price of oil

    Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has called a parliamentary election for Oct. 19, kicking off a marathon 11-week campaign likely to focus on a stubbornly sluggish economy and his decade in power. Polls indicate Harper's right-of-center Conservative Party, which has been in office since 2006, could well lose its majority in the House of Commons.

  • Monday, August 3rd 2015 - 08:08 UTC

    Unemployment in Magallanes drops slightly to 3.8% in April/June quarter

    ”Normally unemployment at this time of the year (winter) is higher than in summer months, but it actually dropped slightly” said Carlos Abarzúa

    Unemployment in Magallanes region, extreme south of Chile, was 3.8% in the second quarter of the year, which represents a 1.5 percentage point increase over the last twelve months despite a slight fall of 0.2 percentage point compared to the previous quarter (March/May) of 2015, according to the latest release from the INE stats office.

  • Monday, August 3rd 2015 - 05:07 UTC

    Switzerland central bank announces 51bn dollars loss in six months

    The central bank warned it might not be able to share any profits with the government this year if results did not improve in the second half of 2015.

    Switzerland's central bank announced Friday it had suffered a loss of 50.1 billion francs ($51 billion, 47 billion Euros) in the first half of the year, down on the 16.1 billion francs in profit logged for the same period a year earlier.

  • Sunday, August 2nd 2015 - 22:18 UTC

    Former Exxon president on mission to clean up oil sands

    Imagine extracting high-quality oil out of the estimated 32 billion barrels buried in Utah's oil sands, without creating toxic wastelands

    Canada has given oil sands a dirty reputation, but a breakthrough, commercially viable technology has caught the eye of a former Exxon Mobil president who is putting it to use to clean up Utah's billions of barrels of oil sands.

  • Saturday, August 1st 2015 - 12:57 UTC

    UN agreement to combat illegal fishing (IUU) close to ratification

    “Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing is estimated to strip between $10 billion and $23 billion from the global economy”, said the FAO release

    Thirteen additional countries need to ratify an agreement brokered by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to combat illegal fishing by blocking ports to ships known or believed to be carrying illicit catches that account for more than 15% of global output, the agency said today.

  • Saturday, August 1st 2015 - 10:23 UTC

    China delivers 'green' state of the art 18.000 TEU 'Vasco de Gama'

    Calling 11 different countries, UK-flagged CMA CGM Vasco da Gama is positioned on the CMA CGM Group's French Asia Line joining Europe to Asia.

    Shipping group CMA CGM has taken delivery of the new build box ship CMA CGM Vasco de Gama on July 27. Built by China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC), the 18,000 TEUs vessel, with its 399 meters length and 54 meters width, is the largest ship in the CMA CGM fleet and the largest containership ever built in a Chinese shipyard.

  • Saturday, August 1st 2015 - 10:00 UTC

    FIFA corruption: Argentine indicted businessman pleads not guilty in US court

    Burzaco is one of nine soccer officials and five marketing executives accused by the US Justice of exploiting the sport through bribes of more than $150 million

    The former chairman of an Argentina-based sports marketing business, one of 14 people indicted in a corruption case that has rattled the soccer world's governing body FIFA, pleaded not guilty in US federal court on Friday.

  • Saturday, August 1st 2015 - 09:55 UTC

    Brazil reports its worst half year primary deficit since 1997

    Last week the government lowered its fiscal targets and this prompted ratings agency S&P to threaten to downgrade Brazil’s investment-grade rating.

    The Brazilian government registered a primary deficit of $470 million (1.6 billion Real) in the first half of 2015, according to figures from the National Treasury release on Thursday, O Globo newspaper reported. The deficit is the worst result since 1997. In the same period last year, the government recorded a surplus of $5 billion (17 billion real).

  • Saturday, August 1st 2015 - 09:42 UTC

    Food riots in Venezuela leave one person killed and tens of arrests

    State governor Francisco Rangel from the ruling chavista Socialist Party said the looting was politically motivated.

    One person was killed and dozens were detained on Friday following looting of supermarkets in Venezuela's southeastern city of Ciudad Guayana, the state governor has said, amid the ongoing food shortages in the Mercosur-Unasur nation.

  • Saturday, August 1st 2015 - 07:51 UTC

    US Navy submarine successfully launches and recovers underwater drone

    The underwater drone launched from the USS North Dakota is a REMUS 600 Autonomous Underwater Vehicle

    The Virginia-class nuclear-powered fast attack submarine USS North Dakota (SSN-784) has launched and recovered an underwater drone for the first time. This week, the USS North Dakota returned to the United States after a nearly two-month deployment to the Mediterranean Sea. The submarine was specifically tasked with testing the launch and recovery of an unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) while submerged.