Latin America

• 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.

• Tuesday, May 29th 2012 - 22:17 UTC

  Opinion poll shows majority of Chileans want to change the electoral system

  

  A survey released this Thursday placed Chile’s long-controversial binominal electoral system under further scrutiny after revealing that 63.2% of respondents are in favour of electoral reform, while only 24.6% wish to keep the binominal system as is.

• Tuesday, May 29th 2012 - 20:13 UTC

  Fidel Castro an unchallenged master-spy, admits veteran CIA analyst in a book

  

  Almost three decades after Fidel Castro took power, Cuba's budding intelligence service fielded four dozen double agents in a world-class operation under the nose of the CIA, according to a new book by a veteran CIA analyst.

• Tuesday, May 29th 2012 - 20:02 UTC

  Chile debates legal status of ‘forcibly disappeared’ persons during Pinochet dictatorship

  

  Amnesty International Chile made public its 2012 Annual Report on Human Rights last week putting a special emphasis on justice for victims of human rights atrocities committed during the military dictatorship that ruled the country from 1973-1990.

• Tuesday, May 29th 2012 - 06:05 UTC

  “Malvinas for Argentina and sea for Bolivia” battle cry at next OAS assembly

  

  Bolivian president Evo Morales announced on Monday he will request at the coming Organization of American States, OAS General Assembly to be held in Cochabamba that the issues of Malvinas Argentine sovereignty and a sea outlet for Bolivia be discussed.

• Tuesday, May 29th 2012 - 05:59 UTC

  Peruvian government fights anti-Xstrata mine protestors: 2 dead and 50 injured

  

  Two people were killed and 50 were injured in protests against Xstrata's Peruvian copper mine Tintaya on Monday, prompting the government to suspend freedom of assembly in a bid to break roadblocks isolating the mine.