Latin America

• Tuesday, October 1st 2013 - 04:12 UTC

  Has Brazil blown it, asks The Economist; Who bets against Brazil, always loses, replies Dilma

  

  Last week Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff reopened her official twitter, closed since January 2011 when she was inaugurated, but now a year ahead of elections has reappeared with the character “Dilma Bolada”, full of music, colour and satire. “Sou Linda, sou diva, sou Presidenta, Sou Dilma” is the slogan of her Facebook with over half a million fans in just a few days

• Tuesday, October 1st 2013 - 04:08 UTC

  Argentine vote intention polls confirm challenger Massa chances for this month’s mid-term election

  

  With less than a month for Argentina’s mid term elections the opposition to President Cristina Fernandez in the province of Buenos Aires, the largest and crucial electoral circuit clearly leads in public opinion polls and continues to advance over the primary results of August.

• Monday, September 30th 2013 - 22:06 UTC

  Barrick Gold Pascua-Lama project again running after court ruling

  

  Chile's Supreme Court confirmed a freeze on Barrick Gold Corp's suspended Pascua-Lama gold mine but the Toronto-based miner escaped having the project's environmental permit revoked. The ruling dispels a significant uncertainty surrounding the controversial project, which now essentially has to complete a water management system issued by the environmental regulator to likely be re-activated.

• Monday, September 30th 2013 - 19:31 UTC

  Chile expects to harvest over 50.000 tons of walnuts, most for export in 2013/14

  

  The walnut production in Chile has experienced a growth in the fiscal year 2013/2014, reports the German Agrarmarkt Informations-Gesellschaft (AMI) on its website. Not only the favourable weather conditions, but also the extension of the cultivation area in recent years has contributed to this.

• Monday, September 30th 2013 - 19:11 UTC

  Chilean military officers will be transferred to less luxurious jail despite suicide of an inmate

  

  Former president and opposition candidate Michelle Bachelet, as well as Evelyn Matthei, candidate of the conservative ruling coalition for the coming 17 November elections coincided in describing the death of retired general Odlanier Mena Salinas who killed himself as ‘tragic’.

• Monday, September 30th 2013 - 19:06 UTC

  Outgoing Piñera announces a 2014 tight budget for the next government

  

  The Chilean government plans to raise spending 3.9% next year, the second-smallest increase since 2003 and below the central bank’s forecast for economic growth in 2014. The budget will focus on employment, education, crime, poverty, children, pensioners and infrastructure, President Sebastian Piñera said in a televised address without giving details.

• Monday, September 30th 2013 - 16:32 UTC

  Paraguay’s Cartes in Brazil to discuss trade, security, cooperation and Mercosur

  

  Paraguay president Horacio Cartes arrived Monday morning to Brazil for a round of talks with President Dilma Rousseff which includes political, economic, energy, trade and security issues, plus the full return of Paraguay to Mercosur, an intricate matter dating back to events of June 2012.

• Saturday, September 28th 2013 - 05:08 UTC

  Petrobras makes ‘beautiful’ discovery and generates a new promising oil province

  

  Brazil's Petrobras and its Indian partners have made a “beautiful” oil discovery off Brazil's northeast coast, Sergipe-Alagoas basin, and it will produce a minimum 100,000 barrels of petroleum a day starting in 2018, the company's CEO said on Friday.

• Saturday, September 28th 2013 - 04:48 UTC

  Rousseff is running for re-election: turns on her twitter after three years of silence

  

  Breaking almost three years of silence from her official Twitter account, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff on Friday sent a series of tweets joking with a famous parody account and defending Brazil’s economy.

• Friday, September 27th 2013 - 22:01 UTC

  Mujica inclined to support UPM pulp production expansion but conditioned to environment improvements

  

  Uruguay’s president Jose Mujica anticipated that his intention is to authorize the UPM pulp mill to expand production, as the Finnish company had requested, but conditioned to certain additional environmental measures, which will not be made public until talks with Argentine president Cristina Fernandez on Monday.