The American multimillionaire who founded the North Face and Esprit clothing lines says he is trying to save the planet by buying bits of it. First Douglas Tompkins purchased a huge swath of southern Chile, and now he's hoping to save the northeast wetlands of neighboring Argentina.
Twenty five years after the end of the Falkland Islands war, Argentine ratified this weekend its unflinching determination over the Islands sovereignty and described as incomprehensible the British attitude for having consistently denied resuming direct negotiations as has been established by United Nations since 1982.
Enersis, a subsidiary of the Chile's energy giant Endesa, will provide GasAtacama with 20 million US dollars needed to save the electricity supplier from imminent bankruptcy.
Lacking a steady supply of natural gas from Argentina, GasAtacama has had to burn expensive diesel to generate electricity. It is thus incurring losses each day it continues to operate.
The Argentine government announced Friday the appropriation of 500 million pesos (approximately 167 million US dollars) to cancel pending social security debts (1996/2002) with the Malvinas war veterans.
The current Illex squid season for Argentina has been one of the best in the last five years but exports have not been as dynamic: in the first quarter of this year overseas sales were a modest 37.300 tons, (36 million US dollars) according to Chubut province press reports.
Argentine Economy minister Felisa Miceli estimated inflation this year will range between 9.5 and 10%, following the release of the May index, 0.4%. She also announced that the issuing of a bond in local currency to soak liquidity from the money market was very successful
As has been the rule the 37th Organization of American States Foreign Secretaries summit unanimously approved a declaration in support of Argentina's claim to the Malvinas/Falklands islands while Argentina pounded Britain for its unilateral actions ignoring cooperation understandings.
Spanish-Argentine oil company Repsol YPF SA admitted Monday that it's looking to divest a stake of around 45% of its Argentine unit YPF which it purchased in 1999 for the sum of 15 billion US dollars when Argentina was ruled by President Carlos Menem.
Less than 24 hours after the Buenos Aires City elections results were made official, Argentine president Nestor Kirchner jumped into the run off dispute scheduled for next June 24 between the Conservative winner of the first round Maruicio Macri (46%), and his protégé and Education Minister Daniel Filmus (24%).
Today Argentina's capital will be voting for a new mayor (governor) and given the political significance of Buenos Aires City June 3 will be signaling the beginning of five long months of electoral battling culminating October 28 with the election, most probably, of another Kirchner (Mr. or Mrs.)