International

• Tuesday, January 19th 2016 - 07:41 UTC

  UK floods reach Barbados where UK Environment Agency was basking in the sun

  

  The head of Britain’s Environment Agency (EA) has resigned after being heavily criticized for not cutting his Christmas holiday in Barbados short to return home to lead the response to floods last month. Required to work a three-day week for £100,000 (US$142,992) a year, Sir Philip Dilley said he quit because of the “inappropriate” expectation for him, as a part-time chairman of the EA, “to be available at short notice throughout the year”.

• Tuesday, January 19th 2016 - 07:04 UTC

  Ice Patrol HMS Protector concludes historic five week patrol to East Antarctica and Ross Sea

  

  The Royal Navy’s Ice Patrol ship has just completed a historic five week patrol to the East Antarctic and Ross Sea. HMS Protector is the first Royal Navy, or UK Government, vessel to have visited the region in 80 years or to have travelled so far south having dipped below 77 degrees latitude.

• Tuesday, January 19th 2016 - 04:38 UTC

  Macri and Cameron are scheduled to meet thirty minutes at the Davos conference

  

  Argentine President Mauricio Macri will fly this Tuesday to Davos, Switzerland, to attend the annual World Economic Forum, during which he has a full agenda of interviews and meetings with business moguls and political leaders, including Prime Minister David Cameron, US Vice president Joe Biden, Frech PM Manuel Valls and Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto. among others.

• Monday, January 18th 2016 - 10:32 UTC

  Oxfam claims the richest 1% has as much wealth as the rest of the world combined

  

  The richest 1% now has as much wealth as the rest of the world combined, according to Oxfam. It uses data from Credit Suisse from October for the report, which urges leaders meeting in Davos this week to take action on inequality. Oxfam also calculated that the richest 62 people in the world had as much wealth as the poorest half of the global population.

• Monday, January 18th 2016 - 09:07 UTC

  Labor leader calls for “accommodation” on the Falklands issue with Argentina

  

  British Labor leader and head of the opposition Jeremy Corbyn has called for “accommodation” with Argentina in the Falkland Islands, and anticipated that any discussions over the future of the Islands should give inhabitants an “enormous say”, but stopped short of giving them a veto.

• Monday, January 18th 2016 - 05:52 UTC

  All negotiations with holdout funds will be made public, announced Argentina

  

  Argentina announced that all the details of the negotiation with the speculative funds, taking place in New York, will be made public in order to guarantee the transparency of the process. The news from the Finance Ministry dismissed reports that the holdouts were demanding the Argentine government sign a confidentiality agreement before talks can begin.

• Monday, January 18th 2016 - 05:34 UTC

  War between Saudi Arabia and Iran could send oil prices to $250

  

  By James Stafford of Oilprice.com - The rift between Saudi Arabia and Iran has quickly ballooned into the worst conflict in decades between the two countries. The back-and-forth escalation quickly turned the simmering tension into an overt struggle for power in the Middle East

• Saturday, January 16th 2016 - 10:05 UTC

  St Helena and its new airport get ready for tourism take-off

  

  The Guardian Weekly has published a piece on prospects for St Helena with the opening of its international airport, most probably next May, and which is expected to turn the mid Atlantic's island economy, particularly with tourism, since none less that Napoleon Bonaparte spent his last years until his death, almost two centuries ago.

• Saturday, January 16th 2016 - 07:37 UTC

  Migration to foreign countries surged 41% in the last 15 years, says UN report

  

  The number of people who migrated to foreign countries surged by 41% in the last 15 years to reach 244 million in 2015, according to a United Nations study released this week. Of those people, 20 million are refugees.

• Saturday, January 16th 2016 - 07:32 UTC

  UK confident of positive side for Gibraltar of Spanish royal family visit to UK

  

  The visit by the Spanish Royal family to the United Kingdom, scheduled for March, will celebrate and strengthen the ties between both countries. This according to the British Ambassador in Madrid, Simon Manley, who highlighted the existing co-operation between the law enforcement agencies in Spain and Gibraltar.