International

• Saturday, October 3rd 2009 - 12:05 UTC

  Russian billionaire makes London Evening Standard a free newspaper

  

  Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev is to make the London Evening Standard a free newspaper later this month, after more than 180 years as a paid-for title. Lebedev bought a controlling stake in the loss making newspaper last January for a nominal sum of £1 after almost a year of secret negotiations with Lord Rothermere's Daily Mail & General Trust.

• Saturday, October 3rd 2009 - 12:01 UTC

  IMF confirms normal relationship with Argentina “in the near future”

  

  International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn is confident that the fund will resume a “normal” relationship with Argentina soon, he said on Friday.

• Friday, October 2nd 2009 - 17:17 UTC

  Serious bribe claims against UK defence giant BAE Systems

  

  Britain’s Serious Fraud Office has demanded that defence giant BAE Systems faces prosecution over bribery allegations. The SFO will ask the Attorney General Baroness Scotland to pursue corruption claims that BAE paid out millions of pounds to win contracts overseas.

• Friday, October 2nd 2009 - 17:15 UTC

  US top commander admits insurgency is winning in Afghanistan

  

  Success in the struggle against the Taliban cannot be taken for granted and time is running out, the commander of the international forces in Afghanistan has warned. US General Stanley McChrystal said the situation in the country was “serious” - and in some respects deteriorating - with increasing violence and a growing insurgency.

• Friday, October 2nd 2009 - 09:13 UTC

  EU emergency meeting to deal with dairy farming crisis and export subsidies

  

  Less than two weeks after the start of a European dairy farmers’ strike, Sweden’s agriculture minister said that he would meet with other European agriculture ministers in Luxembourg on 5 October to discuss the ongoing milk crisis.

• Friday, October 2nd 2009 - 05:36 UTC

  EU underlines significance of global partnership with Latinamerica

  

  The European Union wants closer links with Latinamerica and the Caribbean and will attempt in the near future to conclude the several pending agreements with different countries from the region, announced in Brussels Benita Ferrero-Waldner Commissioner responsible for External Relations and European Neighbourhood Policy.

• Friday, October 2nd 2009 - 05:12 UTC

  Next round of EU/Mercosur trade association talks in May in Madrid

  

  The European Union and Mercosur have suspended negotiations for an association agreement, basically on trade issues, admitted Geoffrey Barrett head of the European Commission delegation for Uruguay and Paraguay.

• Thursday, October 1st 2009 - 16:01 UTC

  US government relaxes control over internet

  

  The US government has relaxed its control over how the internet is run. It has signed a four-page “affirmation of commitments” with the net regulator Icann, giving the body autonomy for the first time.

• Thursday, October 1st 2009 - 15:58 UTC

  UK leading banks accept international-agreed curbs on bonuses

  

  Britain's five biggest banks have signed up to new internationally-agreed curbs on bonuses, it has been announced. Chancellor Alistair Darling welcomed the decision by the banks to accept the principles agreed last week at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh.

• Thursday, October 1st 2009 - 15:50 UTC

  Gibraltar waters dispute “caught the UK government asleep at the wheel”

  

  Graham Watson, South West England and Gibraltar’s Liberal Democrat Member of the European Parliament vowed to hold Britain to account over the Gibraltar waters controversy with Spain, reports the Gibraltar Chronicle.