
The head of Argentina’s tax office, AFIP Ricardo Echegaray announced in a press conference the agency had blocked the identification of 146 taxpayers connected to the football business. “We have to ensure football’s coherency and transparency” he remarked.

The Foreign Ministers of the Organization of American States (OAS) approved last Friday a resolution supporting the inviolability of diplomatic premises, in accordance with the provisions of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, in the context of the situation created between Ecuador and the United Kingdom.

Argentina is planning the incorporation of Chinese jiggers to catch Illex squid next season, a decision rejected by the local fishing chambers but which according to the Buenos Aires financial media is linked to the sovereignty dispute over the Falkland Islands and surrounding waters.

Argentine President Cristina Fernández popularity sank to 30% in August, less than half of what it was a year earlier, according to a poll published on Sunday that portrayed a country worried about crime and high inflation.

Britain said it remained committed to reaching a diplomatic solution to the presence of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in Ecuador's London embassy, after both countries took steps to defuse a row over his action in taking refuge there.

The European Commission has again urged Britain and Spain to cooperate on nature protection issues in Gibraltar waters, according to press reports in Spain. The reports cited anonymous Brussels officials saying the Commission had asked both countries to work to that end.

The Paraguayan Senate, at the heart of serious regional diplomatic dispute, voted by a solid majority against the incorporation of Venezuela as full member of Mercosur. Thirty one Senators rejected the Venezuelan Protocol of Adhesion, three supported it and eleven left the floor before the vote was taken.

Argentina’s nationalized oil and gas corporation YPF announced it has plans to drill 250 wells in the next five years to further advance the country’s “hydrocarbons frontier”. During a presentation at a posh hotel in Buenos Aires under the heading of “Argentine Exploration Plan”, YPF CEO Miguel Galuccio called on investors to trust him and support the plan.

Members from the Argentine government defended the “Kirchner inclusive development model” and blasted the credit-risk rating agencies while warning of the existence of a financial “anarchy-capitalism” which is suffocating the economies of the world.

Ecuador's President Rafael Correa said that Britain's failure to extradite former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet more than a decade ago means it has no right to lecture others over the fate of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.