A prostitution scandal involving US security personnel in Colombia and an unprecedented regional push to end the isolation of Cuba threatened to eclipse President Barack Obama's charm offensive to Latin America.
In the last 48 hours “things seem to be getting back on course” said on Saturday Spain’s Minister of Industry Jose Manuel Soria in reference to the ongoing conflict with the Argentine government over the possible take over of YPF, the Argentine affiliate of Spain’s Repsol.
Spanish officials warned Argentina on Friday that the country risks becoming an international pariah if it follows through on its threats to take control of Spanish-owned energy company Repsol's majority stake in its YPF unit.
UK Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) team is heading to the South Atlantic island of St Helena to survey the wreck of a tanker sunk by a German U-boat in World War Two.
Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has said it is “absurd” for the British government, which has enjoyed sovereignty over the Falkland Islands for 180 years, to maintain its claim from an ocean away “when these Islands are part of our maritime platform.” Applying the logic of Ms. Kirchner, Canada should be stoking international tensions in an effort to annex Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. And perhaps Greenland.
Former Colombian finance minister Jose Antonio Ocampo ended his bid to become World Bank president on Friday, leaving two candidates in an unprecedented challenge to US control of the global development institution.
US President Barack Obama arrives Friday night in Colombia for the sixth Summit of the Americas where he is expected to hang tough on Washington's anti-narcotics and Cuba policies, positions ever-more unpopular in a region drifting away from US dominance.
The FAO Food Price Index (FFPI) averaged 216 points in March 2012, virtually unchanged from 215 points in February. Among the various commodity groups, only oils prices showed strength, compensating for falling dairy quotations, while the indices of cereals, sugar and meat prices were largely unchanged from February’s level
By Gwynne Dyer - International human rights campaigner and occasional actor Sean Penn, whose well-deserved Nobel Peace Prize continues to be delayed for mysterious reasons, was the first famous foreigner to lend his support to the cause. “The world today is not going to tolerate any ludicrous and archaic commitment to colonialist ideology,” he told Cristina Kirchner, the president of Argentina. He was speaking, of course, of the Falkland Islands.
World trade growth will slow for a second year to 3.7% in 2012 but “severe” downside risks could drive it further below the 20-year average of 5.4%, the World Trade Organization forecast on Thursday.