International

• Wednesday, November 2nd 2016 - 10:48 UTC

  Santos state visit to UK highlights Britain's involvement in the Colombian conflict and peace process

  

  Tuesday saw the first ever state visit by a Colombian president to the UK. Nobel Peace Prize laureate, President Juan Manuel Santos is visiting for three days as an official guest of Her Majesty The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh. He will have a working lunch with Prime Minister Theresa May, visit Belfast and attend events at Mansion House, the Natural History Museum and his old university, the LSE.

• Wednesday, November 2nd 2016 - 08:30 UTC

  Gibraltar: Spain manages Ibero-American summit support for its sovereignty claim

  

  For the first time ever, an annual Latin American Summit has endorsed Spain’s position on Gibraltar. Spain’s Secretary of State for International Cooperation in Latin America confirmed that the 32 countries attending have supported Spain’s call to the United Kingdom to start bilateral sovereignty talks over the Rock.

• Wednesday, November 2nd 2016 - 08:03 UTC

  Caribbean BOTs form a group to focus on Brexit at the Joint Ministerial Council

  

  Concerned about how the UK’s departure from the European Union over the next two years will impact their communities, leaders from the British Overseas Territories in the Caribbean have agreed to form a group to focus on the whole question of Brexit, reports the region's media.

• Tuesday, November 1st 2016 - 10:18 UTC

  Spinach effective in helping detect landmines, according to MIT field work

  

  Scientists have transformed the humble spinach plant into a bomb detector. By embedding tiny tubes in the plants' leaves, they can be made to pick up chemicals called nitro-aromatics, which are found in landmines and buried munitions. Real-time information can then be wirelessly relayed to a handheld device.

• Tuesday, November 1st 2016 - 02:05 UTC

  Bank of England governor will step down in June 2019, after Brexit is over

  

  Bank of England governor Mark Carney says he will step down in June 2019. It means he will serve one additional year beyond the five-year term he committed to when he took the post, but will still be two years short of the usual eight years governors serve.

• Saturday, October 29th 2016 - 10:46 UTC

  Post Brexit UK economy surprises and grows above expectations

  

  The UK economy grew by 0.5% in the three months after the Brexit vote, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has said. The figure for July to September was down from the 0.7% growth recorded in the second quarter of 2016 - the months before Britain voted to leave the European Union.

• Saturday, October 29th 2016 - 10:39 UTC

  UK retains three-year seat at the UN Human Rights Council

  

  The UK on Friday was successful in its bid for election to the UN Human Rights Council for the term January 2017 – December 2019. This follows an eleven month campaign, resulting in a high number of votes from countries around the world.

• Saturday, October 29th 2016 - 10:24 UTC

  Falklands/Malvinas: Ibero-American summit supports Argentine claim and calls for dialogue with UK

  

  Argentine foreign minister Susana Malcorra thanked countries attending the XXV IberoAmerian summit in Colombia for their support to Argentina's sovereignty claim over the Falklands/Malvinas Islands and the compliance of UN resolutions calling for dialogue with the UK. A brief release from the Argentine ministry said “we are grateful for the support we have received from the IberoAmerican space on the Malvinas question”.

• Saturday, October 29th 2016 - 10:07 UTC

  South Atlantic deep water seismic survey between YPF and Norway's Statoil

  

  Argentina's oil company YPF and Norway's Statoil have signed a cooperation agreement to further gather information on Argentina's offshore potential. The accord was signed in Oslo between YPF CEO Ricardo Darré and Statoil Exploration vice president Tim Dodson.

• Saturday, October 29th 2016 - 09:54 UTC

  Jorge Batlle, Political Scion Who Led Uruguay, Dies at 88

  

  By Sam Roberts, The New York Times
  
  Jorge Batlle, the brash scion of a political dynasty who had been groomed to be president of Uruguay since he was a teenager, got elected to the post on his fifth try and then audaciously presided over a pro-American administration that survived a brush with bankruptcy, died on Monday in Montevideo. He was 88.