Latin America

• Friday, August 4th 2017 - 06:45 UTC

  Transcripts show Trump admonishing Peña Nieto for saying publicly Mexico will not pay for the border wall

  

  United States president Donald Trump urged the Mexican president to stop publicly saying he would not pay for a proposed border wall, according to transcripts. Mr. Trump admonished Enrique Peña Nieto for publicly denouncing the wall during a 27 January phone call, transcripts obtained by the Washington Post show.

• Friday, July 28th 2017 - 06:04 UTC

  World Hepatitis Day: 325 million affected; annual deaths exceed those linked to HIV

  

  New World Health Organization, WHO, data from 28 countries - representing approximately 70% of the global hepatitis burden - indicate that efforts to eliminate hepatitis are gaining momentum. Published to coincide with World Hepatitis Day, the data reveal that nearly all 28 countries have established high-level national hepatitis elimination committees and more than half have allocated dedicated funding for hepatitis responses.

• Friday, July 28th 2017 - 06:00 UTC

  Exxon puts Guyana on the world oil map with another major discovery

  

  Exxon Mobil said that it has discovered additional oil in the Payara reservoir offshore Guyana, increasing the total discovery to approximately 500 million barrels oil equivalent. The result increases the estimated recoverable resources in Guyana’s Stabroek Block formation to about 2.25 to 2.75 billion barrels. By way of comparison, the much-heralded Thunder Horse find in the Gulf of Mexico has reserves of about one billion barrels.

• Wednesday, July 26th 2017 - 05:02 UTC

  Colombia's FARC will officially become a political party on September first

  

  Colombia's FARC rebels will officially transform into a political party on September 1, a major step in reintegrating the former guerillas into civilian life as part of a historic peace deal.

• Monday, July 24th 2017 - 08:38 UTC

  Morales highlights Bolivian independence from the IMF and World Bank

  

  President Evo Morales has highlighted the total Bolivian independence from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB), which have carried out “devastating economic policies for many years” in this South American nation.

• Monday, July 24th 2017 - 07:07 UTC

  Mercosur and Colombia agree to a limited list of tariff-free products

  

  Mercosur inked a trade deal with Colombia last Friday to allow limited quantities of tariff-free trade in products including automobiles, textiles and agrochemicals, Argentina's and Colombia's governments said.

• Saturday, July 22nd 2017 - 22:17 UTC

  Growing significance of trade with Latin America for India

  

  (*)By R. Viswanathan - For those who think that Latin America is too far and cost of freight is too high and therefore the region should be less important for India’s trade, here is the eye opener from the 2016-17 (April-March) statistics of the Commerce Ministry of India.

• Saturday, July 22nd 2017 - 08:39 UTC

  Venezuelan situation overshadows Mercosur presidential summit

  

  The members of Mercosur trade bloc called for an end to violence in Venezuela in a joint statement on Friday. However again opinions were divided: while Brazil and Argentina sponsored a more explicit warning to President Nicolas Maduro and his regime, Uruguay had it redrafted in a more conciliatory tone and Paraguay finally came out with a compromise option.

• Friday, July 21st 2017 - 09:10 UTC

  OAS summit in Peru will address democratic governance and corruption

  

  The Organization of American States (OAS) and the Government of Peru signed the agreement on preparations for the Eighth Summit of the Americas, which will bring together all heads of state and government of the Hemisphere in April 2018, in Lima.

• Thursday, July 20th 2017 - 21:19 UTC

  Ecuador steps down from OPEC's agreement to cut output: need of fiscal funds

  

  Ecuador will not honor the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ (OPEC) agreement to cut oil output, Ecuador’s Oil Minister Carlos Perez said this week. The country, one of OPEC’s 14 member countries, is rethinking its commitment to drop oil production to 522,000 barrels a day.