
In a surprise move after a two-day meeting the US Federal Reserve said on Wednesday that it would continue buying bonds at a rate of 85 billion dollars monthly and expressed concern that a sharp rise in borrowing costs in recent months could weigh on the economy.

Paraguay’s Industrial Union, UIP, reacted strongly to President Horacio Cartes claims that the private sector was responsible for much that is wrong in government, and suggested an ‘intelligence work’ in the civil service to catch the ‘scoundrels and corrupt’.

A couple of days before Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa is set to arrive in Argentina he sank his right hand into the bushes of the Ecuadorean Amazon and then showed it to the dozens of journalists summoned for the demonstration: it was covered in oil.

Argentine President Cristina Fernández was again on the campaign trail on Tuesday participating in several inaugurations and political rallies at the province of Buenos Aires in support of her candidate running for Congress in October’s mid term ballot, Martin Insurralde.

Tierra del Fuego media recalled that on 17 September 1964 a United Nations sub-committee unanimously recommended that the “Malvinas case” be included among issues referred to Decolonisation and thus admits ‘the existence of sovereignty dispute over the Falklands and other South Atlantic islands’.

Santander, the Euro zone's biggest bank, has hired Rodrigo Rato, under investigation in connection with allegations of fraud at state-rescued lender Bankia when he was chairman, to its international advisory board.

China’s hydrocarbons company Sinopec and Venezuela’s PDVSA (Petroleos de Venezuela SA) agreed investments to develop the Junin 1 oil field in the Orinoco oil strip, which will demand 14 billion dollars for a daily extraction of 200.000 barrels, said PDVSA president Rafael Ramírez currently in Beijing.

By Juan Francisco Alonso - El Universal - Venezuela is not only a full member of the bloc since July 2012, but it also holds the pro-tempore presidency. The entry into force of Venezuela's denunciation of the American Convention on Human Rights, which implies its withdrawal from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR Court), breaches at least three regulations of Mercosur regional trade bloc.

President Horacio Cartes said that during 2014 links between Paraguay and Mercosur will be fully re-established and by then all the skirmishes motivated by the access of Venezuela as full member of the group, “will be overcome”. However Cartes also mentioned that Paraguay, with support from Chile has a strategic access to the Pacific basin.

Uruguay’s president Jose Mujica will be attending the UN 68th General Assembly on the last week of September in New York, where he is scheduled to meet with several of his Latinamerica peers and the Secretary General Ban-Ki-moon.