
The US House of Representatives has passed a 1.1tn dollar budget hour before government was due to shut down at midnight on Thursday. The Republican measure passed by 219 votes to 206 after President Barack Obama had urged Democrats to support the measure.

Brazil's commodities bureau, Conab hiked by 5.3 million tons to 95.8 million tons its forecast for the country's soybean crop, reversing the negative trend in harvest forecasts, citing the benefit from rains in some southern areas. The previous estimate for the crop to be harvested early next year was 90.5m tons.

THIS year will be marked as one of the most successful years in the history of the Falkland Islands fishery with several record catches registered and the total catch of all species in Falkland waters this month reaching a record of 451,000 tonnes.

Switzerland has charged a former computer analyst at HSBC's private bank in Geneva with industrial espionage and breaching the country's secrecy laws for passing confidential client data to foreign authorities.

Brazil's government is wrapping up a financing plan for Petrobras aimed at ensuring the scandal-hit state-controlled oil giant can obtain the funding it needs for its massive investment program.

Argentine stocks closed down 6.85% Wednesday, weighted down by falling oil prices for a second day of heavy losses. As oil prices sank to new five-year lows, the Merval stock index in Buenos Aires shed more than 600 points to 8,279.04, after losing 7.22% Tuesday.

FAO's monthly food price index was stable in November, as vegetable oil and grain prices inched up and offset ongoing declines in dairy prices. The Food Price Index averaged 192.6 points, marking the third consecutive month of stability. The Index now stands 13 points, 6.4 percent below its level in November 2013.

YPF SA and Petroliam Nasional Bhd, state-controlled companies from Argentina and Malaysia, signed a 550 million dollars deal to drill fields at the world’s fourth-largest shale oil deposit in Patagonia’s Vaca Muerta, south Argentina.

Lawyers representing the Argentine government and the Central Bank have defended the country's stance on the debt conflict in a hearing with the New York Second Circuit Appeals Court, rejecting the notion that holdout investors could confiscate reserves or assets belonging to the financial entity.

Latin American currencies will lose value against the US dollar in 2015 because of the strong US recovery and lower commodities' prices according to Itau-Unibanco, Brazil's largest private bank which also anticipates a strong fiscal adjustment by President Dilma Rousseff's next administration, in an effort to regain investors' 'confidence'.