Latin America

• Saturday, May 25th 2013 - 05:34 UTC

  Falkland Islands elected lawmaker will attend C24 regional seminar in Ecuador

  

  Falkland Islands elected lawmaker Mike Summers will attend next week the Caribbean Regional Seminar of the Special Committee on Decolonization which is to be held in Quito, Ecuador in anticipation of the main C24 annual meeting in New York.

• Saturday, May 25th 2013 - 05:16 UTC

  Former Guatemalan president extradited to face money laundering charges in US

  

  Former Guatemalan President Alfonso Portillo was extradited on Friday to the United States to face money laundering charges, the US embassy in Guatemala said. A US grand jury decided in 2009 that Portillo, who was in office from 2000 to 2004, should face charges that he laundered 70 million dollars through US banks.

• Saturday, May 25th 2013 - 05:11 UTC

  Brazil’s employment rate remains stable but job creation slowed in recent months

  

  Brazil's jobless rate rose slightly in April for the fourth straight month but remained near record lows, suggesting that tight labour conditions bolstered a gradual recovery and fed into inflation, statistics agency IBGE said this week.

• Saturday, May 25th 2013 - 04:29 UTC

  Paraguay becomes observer of the Alliance of the Pacific, despite Brazil and Mercosur

  

  The Alliance of the Pacific announced this week that Paraguay had been accepted as an observer of the regional group. Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos chair and host of the alliance summit in Cali made it official during the reading of the final declaration.

• Friday, May 24th 2013 - 07:50 UTC

  Pacific Alliance agrees to eliminate tariffs for 90% of goods beginning July

  

  The Alliance of the Pacific bloc that includes Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Chile on Thursday agreed to eliminate tariffs on most goods to promote free trade between the countries and increase exports to Asia.

• Friday, May 24th 2013 - 07:36 UTC

  South America re-election rash: Ecuador’s Correa takes office for the third consecutive time

  

  Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa will be inaugurated on Friday for his third consecutive mandate, something which Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez just managed before his death, and something which Bolivia’s Evo Morales aspires.

• Thursday, May 23rd 2013 - 07:01 UTC

  Cristina Fernandez administration limits overseas dollar extractions to a minimum

  

  Continuing with the so called ‘dollar clamp’ Argentine institutions issuing credit cards will further limit the extraction of dollars from automatic cashiers: travellers to neighbouring countries will only be allowed 100 dollars every three months and those visiting non neighbouring countries, 800 dollars per month.

• Thursday, May 23rd 2013 - 00:45 UTC

  Penn calls for Dakar rally to cancel Bolivia unless a US citizen is released

  

  Actor and humanitarian Sean Penn called for the Dakar Rally to cancel its debut run in Bolivia unless an ailing American businessman being held under house arrest there is released. Penn, a friend of President Evo Morales has angered Bolivian authorities with his request.

• Wednesday, May 22nd 2013 - 23:08 UTC

  Argentina's Judicial Reform: A Farewell to the Rule of Law and the Separation of Powers.

  

  By Rodolfo Arrate (*) - The Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges famously declared: “Democracy is an abuse of statistics”. Observing the evolution of the political regime in Argentina nowadays, the poet’s sentence may well have turned into a prophecy.

• Wednesday, May 22nd 2013 - 18:00 UTC

  China/Latam trade expanded 8% in 2012 and region’s deficit jumped to 6.6bn

  

  Latin America's trade deficit with China jumped to 6.6 billion dollars last year from only 150 million in 2011, according to an analysis by online publication Latinvex based on new data from the IMF. Total trade between China and Latin America grew 8% last year to 255.5bn which means the region’s trade with China is growing faster than with the United States, 6.2%.