International

• Tuesday, March 27th 2012 - 11:37 UTC

  Contract to upgrade nuclear submarine HMS Vengeance secures 2.000 jobs

  

  The future of 2.000 British jobs will be secured by the signing of a multi-million pound deal to upgrade one of the Royal Navy's nuclear deterrent submarines. The £350m contract to refit and refuel HMS Vengeance was confirmed by Defence Secretary Philip Hammond during a visit to Devonport Dockyard on Monday.

• Tuesday, March 27th 2012 - 11:22 UTC

  The Pope next to Castro calls for a future of “freedom and reconciliation” in Cuba

  

  Pope Benedict urged Cubans to build a better, “renewed and open society” on Monday and pressed the Castro brothers regime to give the Catholic Church more liberties to help the country as it faced an uncertain future.

• Tuesday, March 27th 2012 - 03:50 UTC

  RAF Vulcan bombers trained to bomb mainland Argentina during Falklands war

  

  British newspaper The Telegraph caused a media stir in Buenos Aires on Monday after running a story disclosing the details of a military operation to attack Argentina mainland during the Falkland Islands conflict in 1982.

• Monday, March 26th 2012 - 09:40 UTC

  US supports competition but confident its nominee will lead the World Bank

  

  Jim Yong Kim, the US nominee to lead the World Bank, will win broad international support despite an unprecedented challenge by candidates from emerging economies, US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in an interview.

• Monday, March 26th 2012 - 09:36 UTC

  Peruvian president joins the controversy on the turning back of HMS Montrose

  

  Peruvian president Ollanta Humala supported Foreign Affairs minister Rafael Roncagliolo following the impasse with the British embassy in Lima that strongly criticized the last minute cancelling of the protocol visit of HMS Montrose to El Callao.

• Monday, March 26th 2012 - 09:23 UTC

  Relief for Dublin? Ireland on the verge of becoming significant producer of oil

  

  The euphoria around a small-to-medium oil discovery off the southwest coast of Ireland may be overblown but the country could yet become a significant producer if it can replicate the drilling success in much deeper waters to the west

• Monday, March 26th 2012 - 09:18 UTC

  BP given permission to drill controversial deep-water well west of Shetland

  

  Oil giant BP has been given consent to drill a controversial deep-water well west of Shetland. The North Uist well is about 125km to the north west of the islands, at a depth of nearly 1,300m. The UK government's Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) said it had thoroughly examined BP's environmental impact and emergency response plans.

• Monday, March 26th 2012 - 09:13 UTC

  Cameron and his “Deepsea Challenger” reach the deepest place in the ocean: 11km

  

  Hollywood director James Cameron has plunged nearly 11km down to the deepest place in the ocean, the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific. He made the descent alone in a prototype submarine called “Deepsea Challenger”, taking around two hours to reach the bottom.

• Monday, March 26th 2012 - 09:04 UTC

  PM Cameron caught in Conservative party fund raising scandal

  

  Prime Minister David Cameron pledged to investigate why a senior Conservative party fundraiser offered exclusive access to him in return for donations of 396,700 dollars a year.

• Sunday, March 25th 2012 - 22:34 UTC

  African swine fever out of control in areas of Russia, admit officials

  

  The outbreak of African swine fever (ASF) has recently been reported at a hunting farm in Zamurovskoe, Volgograd region in the south of Russia, according to the representatives of the Regional Office of Rosselkhoznadzor.