Politics

• Tuesday, January 2nd 2018 - 06:33 UTC

  UK's foreign aid will go to projects that promote government aims and interests

  

  The UK's aid budget will be shifted to projects that promote its interests, the foreign secretary Boris Johnson said underlining the money will be “more sensibly distributed” to support foreign policy aims such as denying safe havens to Islamist militants.

• Tuesday, January 2nd 2018 - 06:20 UTC

  Latin American poverty and extreme poverty rose in 2015/16 following a decade of decline

  

  Poverty and extreme poverty levels rose in Latin America as a regional average in 2015 and 2016, after more than a decade of declines in the majority of countries, while in 2017 they are expected to hold steady, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) said.

• Sunday, December 31st 2017 - 20:47 UTC

  Corruption in Uruguayan government “very much extended”, says opinion poll

  

  Although Uruguay is well positioned internationally when it comes to corruption perception, it is considered among the least corrupt together with Chile in Latin America by Transparency International and LatinoBarometer, a public opinion poll published the last week of 2017 in Montevideo seems to show quite a different perception, particularly among young people.

• Sunday, December 31st 2017 - 10:32 UTC

  Temer paves the way for the privatization of jumbo power company Electrobras

  

  Brazilian President Michel Temer signed a measure that paves the way for the privatization of Eletrobras, Latin America’s largest power company, according to a government official.

• Sunday, December 31st 2017 - 10:27 UTC

  Brazil denies any hypothesis of credit rating downgrade

  

  “The government does not work on the hypothesis of a rating downgrade by the main credit rating agencies”, said Brazil's Treasury Secretary Ana Paula Vescovi during an interview to release the primary results of the Central Government.

• Sunday, December 31st 2017 - 10:18 UTC

  Margaret Thatcher's panda-phobia: “the history of pandas...is unlucky”

  

  Ex prime minister Margaret Thatcher spurned the photo opportunity of sharing a transatlantic, Concorde flight to Washington with a giant panda, newly released files from the National Archives have revealed, according to an article from The Guardian..

• Sunday, December 31st 2017 - 06:26 UTC

  Lula's presidential ambition: on January 24 a Porto Alegre court will rule on his appeal

  

  Brazil's former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will learn in January whether a prison sentence against him is upheld, officials said, potentially knocking him out of next year's presidential election. Lula was sentenced in July to 9.5 years behind bars after being convicted of corruption in Brazil's huge “Car Wash” graft scandal.

• Sunday, December 31st 2017 - 06:09 UTC

  PM May New Year message: more Brexit, and promises of focus on schools, police and the NHS

  

  Britons will feel “renewed confidence and pride” in 2018, Prime Minister Theresa May has said in her New Year message. The prime minister said that while Brexit will be “crucial” in the coming year, it is “not the limit” of the government's ambitions, and it will focus on schools, the police and NHS to change people's daily lives.

• Sunday, December 31st 2017 - 06:00 UTC

  Corbyn said the “new Britain was closer than ever”, and Labour “is a government in waiting”

  

  Labour is “staking out the centre ground in British politics”, British opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn has said in a New Year message. Mr. Corbyn said the prospect of a “new Britain” was “closer than ever” and he was leading a “government in waiting”.

• Saturday, December 30th 2017 - 11:49 UTC

  Fire in the Venezuela’s biggest refinery

  

  A fire was registered late Friday at the Refining Complex of Amuay, northwest of Venezuela. The accident baddly affected a distiller. El secretary of the Petroleum’s workers federation, Iván Freites, denounced irregularities due to the lack of maintenance and investment in the oil industry by the State’s PDVSA