Latin America

• Saturday, June 9th 2012 - 02:46 UTC

  Chile’s May inflation on target but government fears external risks

  

  Chile's consumer price index remained unchanged in May, the government statistics agency INE said on Friday, slowing its pace from April as lower food and transport prices offset higher electricity costs. Prices rose 0.1% in April, the INE said last month.

• Friday, June 8th 2012 - 20:30 UTC

  Pinochet remains a strongly divisive figure in Chilean public opinion

  

  Chilean Executive spokesperson Andrés Chadwick asserted the government’s impartiality toward Sunday’s screening of “Pinochet,” a documentary on Chile’s former dictator, amid calls from human rights organizations and local and national politicians for President Sebastian Piñera to intervene.

• Friday, June 8th 2012 - 20:05 UTC

  Chile plans to drill eight wells looking for oil and gas in Magallanes region

  

  Chilean government oil and gas corporation, ENAP, presented this week the environment impact assessment for a project to drill eight wells for the extraction of hydrocarbons in the extreme south region of Magallanes in the so-called “Sub-block Manantiales”.

• Friday, June 8th 2012 - 02:08 UTC

  Alliance of the Pacific emerges as a potent challenge for Mercosur and Brazil

  

  The leading countries of Latin America’s Pacific Rim with the exception of Ecuador and a few Central American countries, agreed to conform the Alliance of the Pacific an ambitious integration project which has good relations with Washington and is targeted to accompany the growing influence of the Asia-Pacific basin.

• Friday, June 8th 2012 - 01:35 UTC

  China interested in a trade agreement with Mercosur reveals Uruguay

  

  China has offered Mercosur to consider the possibility of negotiating a free trade agreement revealed Uruguay, when the South American block is going through one of its worst moments ever so distant from the integration process pledges of 1991.

• Thursday, June 7th 2012 - 06:19 UTC

  Chavez will personally register his presidential candidacy Monday, says campaign chief

  

  Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez will personally go to register his candidacy for the October 7 election on Monday, officials said, brushing aside rumors he might be too unwell from cancer or considering a successor.Chavez, 57, is after re-election despite a year-long battle against an unspecified cancer.

• Thursday, June 7th 2012 - 06:10 UTC

  Venezuelan opposition plays the nationalist card in territory dispute with Guyana

  

  Venezuela's opposition accused the government on Wednesday of turning a blind eye to neighbouring Guyana's oil exploration in a border region claimed by Venezuela, potentially inflaming a territorial dispute that dates back more than a century.

• Thursday, June 7th 2012 - 05:45 UTC

  Chile, Peru, Colombia and Mexico seal the Pacific Alliance for economic integration

  

  Chile, Peru, Colombia and Mexico signed an accord Wednesday creating the Pacific Alliance to more deeply integrate their economies, and develop new trade links with the Asia-Pacific region.

• Wednesday, June 6th 2012 - 06:33 UTC

  Uruguayan economist joins Brookings Institution as director of Latam Initiative

  

  Ernesto Talvi, an expert on Latin America, emerging markets and economic policy, will join the Brookings Institution as director of the Latin American Initiative (LAI), Brookings President Strobe Talbott announced this week.

• Wednesday, June 6th 2012 - 04:41 UTC

  OAS calls on Argentina/UK to find peaceful way to solve Malvinas sovereignty dispute

  

  The Organization of American States general assembly, meeting in Tiquipaya, Bolivia, passed a resolution urging the Argentine and British governments to find a peaceful way to solve the Malvinas Islands sovereignty dispute.