
Uruguay’s government raised its 2010 economic growth forecast and said it will focus on health programs, security and infrastructure to maintain expansion of at least 4% annually, Economy Minister Fernando Lorenzo said.

Argentine Economy Minister Amado Boudou held a meeting Tuesday with 40 international investors at the New York Palace Hotel, within the framework of his United States road show to encourage bondholders to join the Government's debt-swap.

European countries saddled with debt should focus on cutting deficits in the wake of policy makers' unprecedented efforts to contain the region's sovereign-debt crisis, said John Lipsky from the International Monetary Fund.

The Bank of England held interest rates at record lows as policy-makers weighed up the impact of a Eurozone bailout and a hung parliament. The Bank's Monetary Policy Committee voted to hold rates at 0.5% and left its £200 billion program to boost the money supply unchanged.

“With no new international order in sight following the crisis, the only certain thing is that the model of development which caused it can not continue”, said Brazilian economist Maria da Conceição Tavares during a magisterial conference before the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, ECLAC, in Santiago de Chile.

Global stock markets soared after the European Union and International Monetary Fund intervened to stop the Greek debt crisis spreading and support the weakened Euro.

European leaders unveiled an unprecedented loan package worth almost one trillion US dollars and a program of bond purchases in an attempt to bolster the Euro that has become highly vulnerable because of the Greek sovereign-debt crisis.

Germany's highest court on Saturday rejected a request by a group of academics to block the immediate release of Berlin's multi-billion-euro loan to debt-stricken Greece.

More immigrants from non-European Union countries are returning to their native lands this year with help from the Spanish government, a situation similar to 2009, when the number of immigrants forced to pack up and go doubled because of the economic crisis.

Brazil’s Bovespa stock index fell for a second day on Friday closing with the biggest weekly decline since February 2009, on concern that Europe’s debt crisis is worsening and rescue packages could have to be extended to Portugal and Spain.