
British Conservative MP Elainor Laing is the new chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Gibraltar Group, a House of Commons spokesman announced Wednesday night. Mrs Laing is no stranger to the Rock as she attended the main National Day rally when it was organised in Casemates Square.

Hollywood Academy Award winning actress Meryl Streep is planning a reunion with her Mamma Mia! director, Phyllida Lloyd: Streep is in talks to play controversial former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Spain's ambitious six-month presidency of the EU was eclipsed by the European debt crisis which thrust the country's fragile economy into the global spotlight and weakened the Spanish government, analysts said.

Argentina’s Foreign Affairs minister Héctor Timerman cautioned that the dispute with Uruguay over the Botnia/UPM pulp mill and its environmental impact can’t be seen as “a football match where one side wins and the other looses”, but rather as a situation where “the peoples of both countries benefit”.

Congressman Indio da Costa of the opposition Democrats party was named Brazilian presidential candidate Jose Serra’a running mate. The move is geared to retake the initiative in the campaign to October 3 presidential polls which now have incumbent Dilma Rousseff ahead.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on his first-ever tour of Latin America proposed a free trade agreement with Mercosur after meeting Wednesday in Brasilia with his Brazilian counterpart Lula da Silva and giving a conference at the Foreign Ministry seat in Itamaraty Palace.
Damascus will continue to maintain ties with the countries south of the US, regardless of Washington's objections

Cuban president Raul Castro sacked Light Industry minister Jose Hermandez, the latest of an on-going cabinet reshuffle with the purpose of implanting a policy of import-substitution to address the growing economic crisis.

Brazilian presidential candidate Dilma Rousseff promised, if elected, that President Lula da Silva (and mentor) will be her advisor to help with all the reforms the country still needs to address.

The association agreement between the European Union and Mercosur has to go “beyond tariffs and subsidies”, said Brazilian president addressing businessmen from Brazil and a visiting Italian delegation headed by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.