
Argentine president Cristina Fernandez ended on Sunday in Hanoi her visit to Vietnam the last leg of a week-long business and political trip that took her to the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia and finally the land which she emphasized represented an icon for her generation.

Argentina will produce 10.1 million tons of wheat this season, the agricultural ministry said, citing extreme weather as the reason for cutting back its previous estimate of 10.5 million tons. With almost all of the harvest already collected, Argentina is looking at a thin wheat harvest, compared with the 14.1 million tons collected in the 2011/12 crop year.

The US Federal Reserve may have underestimated the looming 2007 global financial crisis released transcripts from its meetings that year have shown. The documents suggested Fed Governor Ben Bernanke wanted to hold off from addressing rising panic in the markets.

Uruguay will open on Monday 21 January its diplomacy archives to that Malvinas war veterans can consult classified information referred to the South Atlantic conflict when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands in April 1982.

The possibility of a re-re-election of Argentine president Cristina Fernandez is back in the political agenda, this time spurred by a member of the Lower House with close contacts with trade unions and father of the General Manager of the now re-nationalized Argentine flag carrier Aerolineas Argentinas

Barack Obama has officially been sworn in for his second term as US president in a small ceremony at the White House. Although the US Constitution requires the oath of office to be taken by noon on 20 January, that falls on a Sunday so the public inauguration will take place on Monday.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos opened the door to a popular vote on any peace accord negotiated and signed with FARC rebels, but rejected a guerrilla demand to change the constitution if a deal is clinched.

The Bank of Canada has barked up the wrong maple tree with its new plastic banknotes, using a foreign Norway maple leaf as the emblem on the notes instead of the sugar maple that the country has on its national flag, an eagle-eyed Canadian botanist says.

The report “Global Food: Waste Not Want Not” by the UK’s Institute of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) has found that 30-50%, or 1.2-2 billion tons, of produced food is wasted by poor storage, bad distribution and exacting quality standards in the developed world.

President Cristina Fernandez thanked Indonesia for the “permanent support” extended to Argentina in the “Malvinas cause” and reiterated that Argentina is only asking for the UK to respect and abide the United Nations resolution, but at the same time attacked multilateral organizations such as the UN and WTO for “favouring the great powers”.