
Uruguay said Wednesday a contingent of its soldiers serving as peacekeepers in the Sinai have been trapped in their base by Bedouins demanding the release of four colleagues imprisoned in Egypt.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) will close its Buenos Aires office in protest to Domestic Trade Secretary Guillermo Moreno’s decision to accuse the organization in court, urging it to explain how it calculates Argentina’s inflation rate, sources said.

The governments of the Patagonian provinces of Chubut and Santa Cruz announced the termination of the contract of exploitation of four different oil wells that YPF handles in the Gulf San Jorge and that both provinces share. Spain’s Repsol, the oil giant that controls YPF has announced it will file a lawsuit against the measure.

Foreign Office minister Jeremy Browne and Chilean Foreign Affairs Minister Alfredo Moreno agreed to respect their legitimate differences regarding the Argentine/UK dispute over the Falklands’ sovereignty but also emphasized the Chilean (and other Mercosur members) position contrary to an economic blockade of the Islands or isolating its population.

A former CNN in Spanish journalist Alberto Padilla was a privileged witness of censorship in Argentina, minutes before he was to be interviewed by a television channel in Buenos Aires: “the order to stop the program came directly from (Federal planning) minister De Vido”.

United Kingdom’s unemployment rate held at a 13-year high of 8.4% in the three months to January, and the youth unemployment rate rose to a record high, official data showed Wednesday.

All but four of 19 major United States banks got a green light yesterday to boost dividends and buy back shares after the Federal Reserve declared them strong enough to survive another serious recession.

Argentine president Cristina Fernandez used the words “Nazi, Mengele and a scent of anti-Semitism” to describe a couple of articles in Buenos Aires leading newspapers which revealed the ups and downs in ‘palace intrigues” and a second critical of the expanding power of her son Maximo Kirchner with the youth organization La Campora.

Argentina and Brazil Foreign Affairs ministers said in Sao Paulo both countries are committed that the next Summit of the Americas to be held in April in Colombia is the last without the participation of Cuba.

Argentine inflation reached 0.7% in February against the previous month, and accumulated a 1.7% increase in 2012 so far, according to the Indec national statistics bureau. This is less than half the index from the private agencies and released as the •Congress index”, which in February marked 1.65% and