International

• Thursday, October 11th 2012 - 23:41 UTC

  UK reaffirms sovereignty over Gibraltar and its territorial waters

  

  The British Government responded to Spain’s intervention at the UN Fourth Decolonization Committee with a firm statement about its commitment to the people of Gibraltar and their British sovereignty.

• Thursday, October 11th 2012 - 23:28 UTC

  IMF asks for “a bit more time” for Greece and Spain but Germany says it will affect confidence

  

  The IMF on Thursday backed giving debt-burdened Greece and Spain more time to reduce their budget deficits, cautioning that cutting too far, too fast would do more harm than good.

• Thursday, October 11th 2012 - 23:20 UTC

  Ghana court denies release of ARA Libertad detained on a complaint from US hedge fund

  

  A Ghana court judge rejected on Thursday the plea put forward by Argentina to release the ARA Libertad training ship, which has been detained in a port close to Accra with its crew since October 2nd due to a complaint by a US hedge fund.

• Thursday, October 11th 2012 - 05:58 UTC

  The Americas Defence ministers’ conference divided on Falklands/Malvinas issue

  

  Argentina’s sovereignty claim over the Falklands/Malvinas Islands continues to generate discrepancies among countries of the Americas, as was exposed in the Declaration of Punta del Este, at the end of the X Conference of Defence Ministers of the Americas which took place in Uruguay.

• Thursday, October 11th 2012 - 04:09 UTC

  S&P cuts Spain’s credit rating to BBB minus just above junk territory

  

  Standard & Poor's cut Spain's sovereign credit rating to BBB-minus, just above junk territory, citing a deepening economic recession that is limiting the government's policy options to arrest the slide.

• Thursday, October 11th 2012 - 04:04 UTC

  Nobel in chemistry for advancing inner workings of G-protein-coupled receptors

  

  Two US scientists won the 2012 Nobel Prize for chemistry for research into how cells respond to external stimuli that is helping to develop better drugs to fight diseases such as diabetes, cancer and depression.

• Wednesday, October 10th 2012 - 18:50 UTC

  Argentine creditors want 20m dollars to release ARA Libertad retained in Ghana

  

  Argentina is refusing to pay the 20 million dollars in ransom that New York hedge fund dealer Paul Singer is demanding in exchange for releasing the country’s Naval training vessel currently retained in the port of Tempa, Ghana, West Africa, reports the New York Post.

• Wednesday, October 10th 2012 - 09:39 UTC

  One in eight people worldwide suffer from chronic hunger, says FAO

  

  One in eight people worldwide still suffers from chronic hunger, the UN's food agency said on Tuesday, describing the figure as “unacceptable” and warning that the fight against hunger was slowing down.

• Wednesday, October 10th 2012 - 09:29 UTC

  With hunger, the only acceptable number is ”zero”

  

  By Jose Graziano da Silva, Director General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization - Achieving the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving the prevalence of hunger in the world by 2015 is still within reach, but a strong, sustained acceleration of efforts is needed. Progress made in the fight against hunger since the middle of the last decade has lost steam, and it is time to regain momentum.

• Wednesday, October 10th 2012 - 09:25 UTC

  Spanish parliament blocks Catalonia referendum on independence

  

  Spain's parliament voted to block the northern region of Catalonia from holding a referendum on independence, the latest step in a growing political battle between Barcelona and Madrid in the midst of a deepening economic downturn.