Greek police clashed with anti-austerity protesters and Italy announced sweeping reforms in response to a European debt crisis that on Thursday pushed borrowing costs for France and Spain sharply higher.
The French auto consortium Peugeot-Citröen agreed with the Argentine government not to remit earnings during two years (2011/2012), approximately 50 million dollars announced Argentine government sources.
New Italian PM Mario Monti's government of technocrats passed its first test, winning a vote of confidence in the senate late Thursday. As expected, the government won the vote in the upper house of parliament easily, by 281 votes to 25.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos warned the new FARC rebel chief ‘Timochenko’ to reconsider waging war or risk the same fate as his predecessor, who was shot dead by Special Forces this month.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel reiterated Thursday her opposition to a greater role for the European Central Bank in helping to solve the Euro zone debt crisis, saying political action was required.
For the first time, non-white people make up the majority of Brazil's population, according to preliminary results of the 2010 census. Out of around 191m Brazilians, 91 million identified themselves as white, 82m as mixed race and 15m as black.
The Mexican president underlined the strategic importance of Uruguay since it is the only Mercosur member that has a free trade agreement with Mexico, thus making it the ‘strategic partner’ of Mexico in Mercosur.
Uruguay received a huge political boost from Mexico (the same it was denied from its Mercosur partners under influence from Argentina) in its dispute with the recent G20 summit which through spokesperson French president Nicholas Sarkozy described Uruguay as a ‘fiscal haven’.
President Barack Obama said that the Asia-Pacific region will play a key role in defining the world's future. The United States is a Pacific power, and we are here to stay, he stated in a speech to the Australian Parliament, sending a clear message to Beijing.
Uruguayan president Jose Mujica said that Mercosur “is not moving forward or backwards” but is certainly working much better than the European Union where old experienced nations “made a mess of it”. Nevertheless, Uruguay will not stay put “licking its wounds”, it will look for other trade links.