
In a harsh letter, released on Friday, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez urged US President Barack Obama to explain whether ”Nancy Soderberg, the person you have appointed as Chair of the Public Interest Declassification Board (PIDB), which reports directly to the Government of the United States of America, is also the Co-Chair of the American Task Force Argentina (ATFA), an entity specifically created to attack and slander the Argentine Republic and its President.”

The Pacific Alliance and Mercosur will be holding a two-day ministerial informative meeting in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, beginning this Friday, a first approach to a possible convergence of the two groupings, according to official releases.

The World Bank's Doing Business global rating is not very enthusiastic about Latin American and the Caribbean which only first surfaces in position 34 out of the 189 countries considered.

The reelected President of Brazil Dilma Rousseff called President Cristina Fernandez on Monday to thank her Argentine counterpart for her message of congratulations following victory at the polls, as well as organizing a bilateral meeting in Australia during the G20 summit.

Pacific Alliance and Mercosur country members will be holding a meeting in Colombia “to plan the productive future of Latin America with a shared vision” announced Mexico's minister of economy Ildefonso Guajardo.

Brazilian presidential opposition candidate Aecio Neves insisted that if elected he will review Mercosur rules and make them more flexible so that the country can reach bilateral agreements with third parties and not limited by the consensus clause of the trade block. He also mentioned the Pacific Alliance as a pragmatic integration reference.

Chile is confident that in coming months there will be 'significant' advances in a convergence of the Pacific Alliance and Mercosur, said Andres Rebolledo, Chile's Deputy Trade minister during a visit to Brazil.

Deep reforms and opening Mercosur to the world will be proposed by opposition candidate Aecio Neves to the other full members, if finally he is elected to lead Brazil in the 26 October runoff against president Dilma Rousseff, said Rubens Barbosa a trade expert, former ambassador in the US and currently coordinator of the opposition government program.

Argentina has developed a molecular biological method to detect the presence of the Ebola virus in a patient in less than 24 hours, the Argentine health ministry has announced.

A United States court-appointed mediator said on Friday he would hold a meeting next week between lawyers for Argentina and 'holdout' creditors suing the country in a longstanding dispute over defaulted debt.