
The 16th Defense Staff Talks between United Kingdom and Chile took place on 13-14 September 2018 in Santiago at the Ministry of Defense. The Talks were led by the Undersecretary of Defense, Cristian de la Maza Riquelme, representing Chile and the Minister for the Armed Forces, Mark Lancaster, representing the United Kingdom.

Falkland Islands Members of the Legislative Assembly Mark Pollard and Stacy Bragger are travelling to the UK to attend Labor and Conservative Party Conferences. This is a special year for British politics given the ongoing Brexit debate, and countdown to UK leaving the European Union on 29 March 2019.

The first all-British radar satellite has launched to orbit on an Indian rocket from Satish Dhawan spaceport. Called NovaSAR, it has the ability to take pictures of the surface of the Earth in every kind of weather, day or night. The spacecraft will assume a number of roles but its designers specifically want to see if it can help monitor suspicious shipping activity.

United States President Donald Trump has instructed staff to move forward with the next round of tariffs on Chinese goods, US media have reported. The tariffs are expected to apply to about US$ 200bn worth of imports from China, including electronic parts and consumer goods such as handbags.

Two men named as suspects in the poisoning of a Russian ex-spy in the UK have said they were merely tourists. The men, named as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, told the state-run RT channel they had travelled to Salisbury on the recommendation of friends. The UK believes the men are Russian military intelligence officers who tried to kill Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury last March.

South Korea and Chile agreed on Wednesday to bolster substantive bilateral partnerships in various sectors on the basis of their free trade agreement (FTA). Korean foreign minister Kang Kyung-wha and his Chilean counterpart Roberto Ampuero held talks on the sidelines of a regional meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Hanoi, according to Kang's ministry.

A judge in Andorra has charged 29 Venezuelans with corruption - among them two former deputy ministers. Prosecutors allege that they were part of a network of corrupt officials who received US$ 2.3bn in bribes from companies in return for lucrative contracts with Venezuela's state-run oil company, PDVSA.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said that the U.S. likely surpassed Saudi Arabia and Russia earlier this year to become the world’s top crude oil producer. The EIA based its disclosure on preliminary estimates in its Short Term Energy Outlook which is released every month.

Turkey ruled on Thursday that property sales, rental contracts and leasing transactions must be made in lira from now on, halting the use of foreign currencies for such deals in a fresh step to support the ailing local currency. All business deals inside the country should be conducted in lira, President Tayyip Erdogan said, adding that nobody apart from exporters and importers should cross paths with foreign currency.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is travelling to China to discuss economic agreements, as the crisis-struck OPEC nation seeks to convince its key Asian financier to disburse fresh loans.