Nearly 100 years after Sir Ernest Shackleton’s legendary Antarctic survival journey, a team of British and Australian explorers have completed their expedition to recreate it. Team leader Tim Jarvis and climber Barry Gray arrived at the Stromness whaling station in South Georgia on Sunday, despite extreme weather over the weekend that had put the expedition in jeopardy.
The 43rd British Islands and Mediterranean Region Annual Conference of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association hosted by the Falkland Islands for the second time begins on Tuesday. Over forty delegates have travelled to the Islands for the Conference and Falklands Radio will be broadcasting some of the sessions.
British ambassador in Uruguay Ben Lyster-Binns said the coming referendum in the Falkland Islands involves the people of the Islands, United Kingdom and Argentina and expects the Uruguayan government to respect the referendum even when Foreign Minister Luis Almagro anticipated that the country will not recognize the results of the ballot.
Uruguayan opposition lawmakers, as from the rest of the continent will be travelling to the Falklands as observers of the referendum scheduled for next March 10/11 “to see the legitimacy of the process and results” but also because Uruguay has interests that go beyond the territorial dispute between Argentina and the UK.
Foreign Secretary William Hague has accused Argentina of bullying and intimidatory behaviour towards the Falkland Islands. Mr Hague in a Sunday interview with The Sun promised never to negotiate over the islands' sovereignty unless their people called for it - a referendum will take place next month.
Known as the ‘Fortress of the Sea’, HMS Edinburgh is the largest and the last Type 42 destroyer to serve in the Royal Navy. She finished her six month tour of the South Atlantic Islands this week and is due to be decommissioned in June, but before heading north again Falkland Islands residents were given the opportunity to have a peek on board.
Chief Minister Fabian Picardo this week wrote to the Financial Times after the respected financial daily made a glaring error about Gibraltar in an editorial column centred on Argentina.
The 43rd British Islands and Mediterranean Region Annual Conference of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association which is being hosted by the Falkland Islands for the second time will begin next Tuesday and will convene 37 delegates with Canada and Anguilla as observers.
Falkland Islands lawmaker Dick Sawle invited to toast for “the existence of the Islanders” during a reception at Falkland House in London, on Thursday evening, at the end of a hectic but productive week of contacts, interviews and intense lobbying for the Islands and the coming March referendum.
Falkland Islands governor Nigel Haywood said that the “Islanders will reply in next month’s referendum” whether Argentina could be in control of the Malvinas archipelago ‘within twenty years’, as was announced by Argentine Foreign Minister Hector Timerman earlier this week in London.