International

• Monday, December 5th 2011 - 06:51 UTC

  Top Republican claims Obama is losing the Brazil battle to China

  

  The US top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said President Barack Obama is missing opportunities to strike closer ties with Brazil, allowing China to steal market share from US companies in Latin America’s biggest economy.

• Monday, December 5th 2011 - 06:44 UTC

  Crucial week for Euro stability takes off in Paris with Sarkozy-Merkel meeting

  

  French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel meet on Monday in Paris the kick off for a round of talks involving European leaders, the European Central Bank (ECB) and US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, culminating in Brussels on Friday with an EU summit.

• Monday, December 5th 2011 - 06:42 UTC

  Havelange, 95, again beats his detractors: he resigns from IOC and end ethics inquiry

  

  Former FIFA president Joao Havelange resigned from the International Olympic Committee on Sunday, just days before he was to face an ethics inquiry it was reported by the Sao Paulo press.

• Monday, December 5th 2011 - 05:22 UTC

  Brazil and BRIC beat forecast of the man who coined the term

  

  Ten years ago this week, Jim O’Neill, chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, coined the term BRIC, elevating the profile of four countries, Brazil, Russia, India and China, that he thought were poised to become “growth economies.”

• Monday, December 5th 2011 - 04:11 UTC

  Rajoy will outline his austerity plan before EU Conservative summit

  

  Incoming Conservative Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy called on all Spaniards to work together to overcome the debt crisis and promised a new economic policy to deal with unemployment that is more than double the European Union average.

• Monday, December 5th 2011 - 04:06 UTC

  Gibraltar’s Caruana confident of new Spanish government commitment to “trilateral dialogue”

  

  The leader of the ruling GSD in Gibraltar, Peter Caruana said he was confident Spain’s Partido Popular would remain committed to trilateral dialogue, even if not necessarily to the Trilateral Forum (Gib, UK and Spain) itself in its present form.

• Friday, December 2nd 2011 - 22:42 UTC

  Sarkozy prepares the stage for next week’s announcement of a new EU treaty

  

  Prime Minister David Cameron held emergency talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Friday, as France and Germany tried to drum up support for a new EU treaty to enforce budget discipline.

• Friday, December 2nd 2011 - 22:12 UTC

  Merkel warns Europeans face long, hard ‘marathon’ to restore lost credibility

  

  German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for rapid EU treaty change to remedy the root causes of the Euro zone's debt crisis but warned that Europeans faced a long, hard “marathon” to restore lost credibility.

• Friday, December 2nd 2011 - 19:41 UTC

  Brazil ready to support IMF but demands greater power for BRICS countries

  

  Brazil conditioned the disbursement of more funds for the IMF to help countries in crisis to a greater say in the multilateral organization and the advance of European initiatives to solve the current Euro and debt crisis.

• Friday, December 2nd 2011 - 15:38 UTC

  Spanish regions pledge to control spending; unemployment reaches 21.52%

  

  Leaders of Spain’s indebted autonomous regions pledged on Thursday to control spending after meeting incoming Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to discuss their troubled accounts, which are at the heart of the country’s economic crisis.