Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is hosting this weekend in Barquisimeto his closest regional allies at the summit of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), an integration bloc he and Cuban ruler Fidel Castro founded in 2004 to counter the Washington-based free trade model better known as the Free Trade Area of the Americas.
Chile's Michelle Bachelet and Brazil's Lula da Silva called for deeper regional integration and increased investment in education, two priorities that mirrored a consensus among the 400 business, government and civil society leaders from 28 countries participating in the World Economic Forum on Latin America in Santiago.
United States Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Thomas A. Shannon spoke on a wide range of Latin American issues Wednesday during a round-table discussion with journalists at the U.S. Embassy in Santiago.
Unemployment in Chile during the first quarter of 2007 was 6.7%, which is higher than the previous quarter, 6.4%, but considerably less than a year ago, 8.35%, according to the latest release from the Statistics Institute, INE. Punta Arenas in the extreme south of the country has one of the lowest rates with 2.7%.
One way or another the salmon farms currently operating in the Aysén Fjord (Region XI) must be relocated, President Michelle Bachelet told reporters on Tuesday, three days after a 6.2-magnitude earthquake struck the area, killing at least 10 people — several of them salmon farm workers.
Lan's new air rates policy has increased passenger traffic between Punta Arenas and Santiago in the last five months by 30.000, of which almost half had never boarded an airplane according to company officials.
Chile, Brazil, Colombia and Peru figure as the most attractive countries in Latinamerica for private investment in infrastructure according to a report from the World Economic Forum meeting this week in Santiago de Chile. At the other end Venezuela, Bolivia and the Dominican Republic figure as the less attractive.
Argentine Malvinas veterans visiting La Paz on Monday handed Bolivian president Evo Morales a coffer with Falkland Islands soil and requested support to recover the Islands for Argentina and Latinamerica.
Astronomers using a state of the art telescope in Chile have found the most Earth-like planet outside our Solar System to date, a world which could have water running on its surface.
China replaced the United States as the principal destination for Chilean exports in this year's first quarter. Chile's exports from January to March totalled over 15 billion US dollars, of which nearly 15.5% approximately 2.4 billion went to China.