International

• Friday, May 18th 2012 - 17:57 UTC

  EC and ECB making contingency plans for possible Greek exit from the Euro

  

  European Commission and European Central Bank are making contingency plans for a possible Greek exit from the euro, an EU commissioner says.

• Friday, May 18th 2012 - 16:41 UTC

  UN independent experts call on EU to adopt a global financial transaction tax

  

  A group of United Nations independent experts called on the European Union (EU) to take the lead in promoting the adoption of a global financial transaction tax that would offset the costs of the current economic crisis and protect basic human rights.

• Friday, May 18th 2012 - 16:36 UTC

  “Let’s face it: the old (economic) model is broken: we need to create a new one”

  

  United Nations senior officials stressed the importance of establishing a new paradigm for growth that ensures social inclusiveness, job opportunities for all, and more accountability from the financial sector to tackle the ongoing global economic crisis.

• Friday, May 18th 2012 - 09:31 UTC

  Moody’s cuts credit ratings of 16 Spanish banks and four regions

  

  Ratings agency Moody's has cut the credit ratings of 16 Spanish banks, a further blow to a country that is struggling to deal with the bad debts of its banking sector. It also cut the debt rating on Santander UK, a subsidiary of the Spanish banking giant.

• Friday, May 18th 2012 - 09:15 UTC

  UN Tourism office forecasts record over a billion international tourist arrivals

  

  More than one billion tourists will take a trip this year crossing an international boundary, a threshold never before reached, UN officials told a meeting tourism ministers gathering in Mexico this week.

• Friday, May 18th 2012 - 09:09 UTC

  Argentine president in Angola to promote trade and exchange food for oil

  

  Argentine President Cristina Fernández is on a three-day visit to Angola to promote trade and investments particularly exchanging food for the African country’s oil. Friday morning she is scheduled to meet her counterpart Jose Eduardo Dos Santos.

• Thursday, May 17th 2012 - 21:24 UTC

  Spain supports EU/Mercosur trade accord on a “region to region” basis respecting WTO rules

  

  Spain’s Foreign Affairs minister Jose Garcia Margallo said that Madrid supports negotiations for a free trade agreement between Mercosur and the European Union on a “region to region” basis, back stepping from his proposal last April to exclude Argentina following the seizure of YPF from Repsol.

• Thursday, May 17th 2012 - 11:48 UTC

  World Bank chief economist warns Latam of the “middle-income trap”

  

  In what would be his last speech as part of the organization, Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of the World Bank Justin Lin held a conference at the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin American and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in Santiago de Chile.

• Thursday, May 17th 2012 - 03:54 UTC

  UK decouples from European bailout agreement to protect the single currency

  

  The UK will be exempt from a new European bailout agreement between Euro-zone countries according to a EU Treaty Amendment Bill introduced to the House of Lords this week by Foreign office minister Lord Howell.

• Wednesday, May 16th 2012 - 22:15 UTC

  Following electoral disaster, Merkel fires federal Environment minister

  

  German Chancellor Angela Merkel fired Norbert Roettgen, the federal Environment minister who led her Christian Democratic Union to its worst-ever result in an election in Germany’s most populous state.