Latin America

• Thursday, May 31st 2012 - 06:07 UTC

  Natural resources rich Brazil plans to increase defence spending to 2% of GDP

  

  Defence Minister Celso Amorim said on Wednesday Brazil’s growing need to protect its borders, the Amazon rainforest, and massive offshore oil discoveries would lead it to gradually increase defence spending by a quarter to reach roughly 2% of the country’s GDP.

• Thursday, May 31st 2012 - 01:22 UTC

  Ecuador calls for an end to colonialism in Malvinas, Puerto Rico and Guantanamo

  

  Ecuadorean Minister of Foreign Affairs Ricardo Patiño called on Wednesday for an end to the remains of colonialism and specifically mentioned the Falklands/Malvinas, Puerto Rico and the US Guantanamo base in Cuba.

• Wednesday, May 30th 2012 - 17:32 UTC

  Repsol pulls out from Cuba oil search after drilling a second dry well

  

  Spanish company Repsol has said it is pulling out of Cuba after failing in a recent attempt to find oil off the island. Chairman Antonio Brufau told journalists and investors that Repsol “won't do another” well in Cuba.

• Wednesday, May 30th 2012 - 17:05 UTC

  Hillary Clinton will miss next week’s OAS General Assembly in Bolivia

  

  OAS secretary general Jose Miguel Insulza believes US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will miss the Organization of American States General Assembly because of “agenda problems” and not over discrepancies on the issues to the addressed.

• Wednesday, May 30th 2012 - 05:28 UTC

  Spain/UK join forces to defend their companies in Latam, says Garcia-Margallo

  

  Spain and the UK will join forces against attacks on their companies in Latin America, Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel García-Margallo said, following a meeting on Tuesday in London with his counterpart William Hague.

• Wednesday, May 30th 2012 - 05:19 UTC

  Cosan buys BG stake in Brazil’s largest gas distribution company for 1.7bn dollars

  

  British natural gas firm BG Group Plc said on Tuesday it had signed a definitive binding agreement to sell its entire 60.1% stake in Comgas to Brazilian energy company Cosan S.A. for 3.4 billion Brazilian Reais, which is about $1.7 billion at current exchange rates.

• Wednesday, May 30th 2012 - 05:12 UTC

  Merger in Brazil creates market leader in sugar, rice and canned fish

  

  Brazilian sugar and ethanol producer Cosan and the country's largest rice producer, Camil Alimentos, reached an agreement to merge their food divisions, Cosan said in a statement this week.

• Wednesday, May 30th 2012 - 04:43 UTC

  If lucky at the end of the labyrinth, CFK might bless you with a few bucks

  

  The following is an instructive of the steps to follow in the labyrinth set up by the Argentine bureaucracy to have access to a limited amount of US dollars. The instructive should help clear some of the latest measures implemented by the administration of President Cristina Kirchner and was published on Tuesday by The Buenos Aires Herald and Ambito Financiero.

• Wednesday, May 30th 2012 - 04:22 UTC

  GLOBE convening first World Summit of Legislators at Rio, ahead of Earth summit

  

  How many times have government leaders pledged to reduce carbon emissions or tackle the accelerating loss of biodiversity? If statements and pledges were all that it took to fix the biggest global challenges, the world would not be faced with dangerous concentrations of greenhouse gases, shrinking rainforests and extinctions at up to 1,000 times the natural rate.

• Wednesday, May 30th 2012 - 03:50 UTC

  Mining conflict in Peru escalates and will force Humala to take sides

  

  Hundreds of Peruvians marched in support of the country's biggest-ever mining project, a day after the government implemented emergency powers to control an anti-mining protest in the South that turned deadly.