International

• Tuesday, September 29th 2009 - 10:34 UTC

  Bag of claims inflation: Falklands, Cuba plus Diego García and Mayotte

  

  The recent second summit of South America and African leaders added to the traditional statements on the Falklands/Malvinas dispute and the US trade embargo on Cuba, similar demands referred to disputes over islands in the Indian Ocean involving Britain and France.

• Monday, September 28th 2009 - 15:15 UTC

  Germany's Merkel Set To Form New Coalition Govt

  

  German Chancellor Angela Merkel Monday prepares to form a new center-right government, after she won a second term in Sunday's general election.

• Monday, September 28th 2009 - 15:11 UTC

  Hong Kong “equally important” to London, says HSBC CEO

  

  The chief executive of HSBC, Michael Geoghegen, will move to Hong Kong from London as the banking group seeks to focus on Asia.

• Monday, September 28th 2009 - 09:01 UTC

  Bank of England reveals dramatic moments from the October crisis

  

  Two UK banks almost collapsed in October last year, the governor of the Bank of England has revealed. HBOS - now part of Lloyds Banking Group - and RBS were within hours of going under, Mervyn King told BBC Two's The Love of Money program.

• Monday, September 28th 2009 - 07:58 UTC

  Gaddafi proposed the creation of a South Atlantic military alliance

  

  Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi proposed a military alliance mirroring the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, to counteract the influence of the US and Europe during the second Africa-South America summit held over the weekend in Margarita island, Venezuela and which convened almost sixty leaders.

• Monday, September 28th 2009 - 07:31 UTC

  PM Brown won’t “roll over” before the “fight of our lives”

  

  British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has faced down critics who have called on him to stand down ahead of the coming general election by declaring: “I do not roll over”. As Labour began its final annual conference before the election, which must take place within nine months, Mr Brown acknowledged the party faces “the fight of our lives”.

• Saturday, September 26th 2009 - 12:44 UTC

  G20 summit announces “tough new regulations” but short of specific rules

  

  The world's leading nations have agreed “tough new regulations” to prevent another global financial crisis, US President Barack Obama said on Friday. These relate to the amount of money banks have to hold in reserve and to excessive pay for bankers.

• Saturday, September 26th 2009 - 02:27 UTC

  Iceland planning to export 1.500 tons of whale meat to Japan

  

  The company behind Iceland's fin whaling industry is planning a huge export of whale meat to Japan. This summer, Hvalur hf caught 125 fins - a huge expansion on previous years.

• Friday, September 25th 2009 - 14:00 UTC

  Pittsburgh summit recognizes historic shift of power to G20

  

  G20 is to take on an expanded role as part of a historic shift that recognises the rising influence of China, Brazil and India. The leaders of the world's top 20 wealthy and developing nations decided that the G20 will take over the role of pre-eminent council on global economic cooperation, a function that for more than three decades had been performed by a smaller club of leading industrial countries known as the G8.

• Friday, September 25th 2009 - 13:56 UTC

  Water molecules confirmed in the moon’s polar region surface

  

  US space agency NASA said India’s maiden lunar mission had confirmed the presence of water molecules in the polar region of moon’s surface. Indian Space Research Organisation’s. ISRO, chairman G Madhavan Nair called the finding “path breaking”.