
Residents of Dichato, Chile, capped off a week of demonstrations with violent protests to demand the government revamp assistance efforts for victims of the tsunami that devastated the area in February 2010.

Many trucks loaded with perishables and other food products heading for Punta Arenas extreme south of Chile are stranded in border crossings with Argentina blocked by the snow that has accumulated during the last storms.

Japan has imposed a ban on all beef coming from the prefecture of Fukushima, where three nuclear reactors melted down following the March 11 magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami. The Japanese government is also apologizing for its delayed response to radioactive meat reaching the market.

Denmark-based Vestas has secured an order from a consortium created by Brennand Energia and Companhia Hidro Eletrica do Sao Francisco in the north east of Brazil to supply turbines with a total capacity of 90MW for three wind energy projects.

Over a month after the eruption of the Caulle-Puyehue volcano in Chile, a first flight landed in the airport of Argentina’s ski resort Bariloche. The chartered flight arrived from Sao Paulo with 120 Brazilian tourists.

Thirty-one of the 33 Chilean miners rescued last year from the bottom of the San José mine filed a lawsuit late last week against the government agency that was supposed to have monitored the safety of the mine. The 33 miners were miraculously rescues after surviving nearly two months underground.

Animal rights organizations claim Japan has been handing out generous grants to African, Caribbean and Pacific countries to support turning the International Whaling Commission into a “toothless paper tiger” undermining the whaling-moratorium.

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) agreed on Friday on energy efficiency design standards for new ships to cut greenhouse gas emissions, but developing countries will probably delay implementation by using a waiver, delegates said.

International Whaling Commission's (IWC) annual meeting closed after a tense final day when relations between opposing blocs came close to collapse. Latin American nations attempted to force a vote on a proposal to create a whale sanctuary in the South Atlantic.

A new global estimate of the impact of longline fisheries on seabirds reveals that, despite efforts to reduce seabird deaths, upwards of 300,000 birds are still being killed every year. However South Georgia is praised for having imposed strict regulations that have seen seabird deaths as bycatch drop by 99%.