
Argentina slapped a 30 million Peso (6 million dollars) fine on a local subsidiary of global banking giant HSBC for failing to report suspicious transactions, authorities here said Sunday.

Chinese authorities quarantined two containers holding corn from Argentina, after detecting genetically modified strains that had not been approved beforehand, alleged the Chinese buyer.

The head of an economics think-tank said that the Uruguayan government reactions to his criticisms of the management of the country’s economy are a kind of “authoritarian tick” which pretends to censor all those who do not share the “official truths”.

Argentina made payments of over 3.5 billion dollars on Friday in GDP-linked bonds which refer to the 2005 and 2010 rescheduling agreed with creditors who originally held 2001/02 defaulted sovereign bonds. At the same bank the Central bank revealed that international reserves have fallen to its lowest since 2007.

GeoPark Holdings Limited announced the successful drilling, testing and putting into production of a new oil well in the Tua oil field on the Llanos 34 Block in Colombia. GeoPark that also has drilled for oil in southern Chile and Argentina operates and has a 45% working interest in the Llanos 34 Block.

Brazil's state-run oil company Petrobras is putting its Argentine assets up for sale and will start accepting bids from interested buyers as early as this week, Buenos Aires newspaper La Nacion reported Friday.

Argentina's official inflation was 0.9% in November, rising slightly from October's 0.8% rate, the government stats office Indec said on Friday.

Mexico said it would drop a complaint over import curbs against Argentina before the World Trade Organization after the two countries signed a more limited automobile trade pact.

There are over 16.000 homeless living in the streets of Buenos Aires with great difficulties to access public health services according to the ‘Health in the streets’ report from ‘Doctors of the world’ and which was released Friday in the Argentine capital.

European leaders agreed on Friday to press on with further steps to tackle their debt crisis but German Chancellor Angela Merkel threw out a proposal to boost risk-sharing with a fund to help Euro zone states in trouble.