Mercosur

• Saturday, February 11th 2006 - 20:00 UTC

  Blair reaffirms Falklands' position, ignores “war of words”

  The British government stated it has nothing to say about remarks from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Thursday calling on the United Kingdom to return the Falkland/Malvinas Islands to Argentina.

• Saturday, February 11th 2006 - 20:00 UTC

  Montevideo: Graf Spee's eagle rises from deep

  Salvage experts recovered a massive bronze eagle emblem on Friday from the wreckage of a Nazi battleship scuttled off the coast of Uruguay at the outset of World War II.

• Saturday, February 11th 2006 - 20:00 UTC

  Thousands of giant squid wash up on Chilean beach

  Authorities began removing hundreds of tons of squid that washed up on a beach in southern Chile and were in a process of decomposing, police said Friday.

• Friday, February 10th 2006 - 20:00 UTC

  Latin America's best economic cycle in three decades

  Latinamerica is going through its best economic upturn in the last thirty years said Luis Alberto Moreno, president of the Inter American Development Bank, IDB, in an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde.

• Friday, February 10th 2006 - 20:00 UTC

  Costa Rica: free trade treaty debate on hold

  Costa Rica's Congress will wait until it becomes clear who won last Sunday's presidential election to continue with deliberations on the Central America Free Trade Agreement, CAFTA, with United States.

• Friday, February 10th 2006 - 20:00 UTC

  Brazil in no rush to withdraw from Haiti

  Brazil has no timetable to withdraw its troops under United Nations flag from Haiti said president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva currently underlining he did not want a repeat of the Rwanda killings and chaos.

• Friday, February 10th 2006 - 20:00 UTC

  Russia hosts G8 Finance ministers' summit

  Russia which has become a world oil powerhouse hosts its first meeting of finance ministers from G8 nations this weekend with debt and energy on the agenda, but traditional topics like exchange rates and the US current account deficit are conspicuously absent.

• Friday, February 10th 2006 - 20:00 UTC

  UK interest rates on hold at 4.5%

  The Bank of England decided Thursday to leave interest rates on hold at 4.5% in spite of some expectations of a possible cut.
  The last time UK rates were cut was in August 2005 when they fell a quarter of a point.

• Friday, February 10th 2006 - 20:00 UTC

  Chilean record exports

  Chilean exports totalled 3.649 billion US dollars in January, up 22% from the same month in 2005, according to the monthly bulletin from Chile's Central Bank.

• Friday, February 10th 2006 - 20:00 UTC

  FAM “sanitary emergency” in Argentina

  A “sanitary emergency” was declared Friday in Argentina following a foot and mouth disease outbreak in the northeastern province of Corrientes earlier in the week.