
Brazilian president Lula da Silva said he is willing and available to begin talks with the Palestine Hamas organization, as well as Lebanon’s Hezbollah and even Iran, to reach peace in the Middle East.

The United States will support Chile’s Jose Miguel Insulza in his bid for another five years as head of the Organization of American States, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Monday in a letter to the OAS secretary-general.

Argentina presented before the Organization of American States, OAS, documents on recent British decisions and actions referred to the disputed Falkland Islands and requested they be made public to all members of the OAS General Assembly.

Google Inc. is “totally wrong” in stopping censorship of its Chinese-language search results and blaming China for “alleged hacker attacks,” Xinhua News Agency reported on Monday, citing an unidentified government official.

The president of the European Commission challenged German Chancellor Angela Merkel to rise above domestic politics and agree on a financial safety net for debt-stricken Greece to help preserve European monetary union.

Argentina has US regulatory approval to restructure 20 billion USD in defaulted debt and expects to launch the deal within three weeks, announced the government on Monday.

The Organization of American States (OAS), through its Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD), and the United Nations (UN), through its Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), presented in Vienna the latest joint study on drug consumption among student populations in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Peru and Uruguay.

Four executives of mining giant Rio Tinto have admitted to a court in the Chinese city of Shanghai that they took bribes, officials have said. Lawyers for the men - Australian Stern Hu and three Chinese colleagues - said they admitted accepting some money but are disputing the amounts.

With a few hours left before the election of a new Secretary General for the Organization of American States, OAS, which has as only candidate Chilean Jose Miguel Insulza running for re-election, Chilean Foreign Affairs minister Alfredo Moreno said that support from United States is “welcome”.

The UK economy is in for a bumpy ride in 2010, according to a report from the UK's largest employers' group. Growth will remain fragile and the economy will be slow and sluggish as Government stimulus measures - like the VAT cut and the car scrappage scheme - are phased out, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) said.