Politics

• Friday, December 10th 2010 - 10:25 UTC

  Falklands invites C-24 president to “balance” recent visit to Argentina

  

  The Falkland Islands government has officially extended an invitation to the chairman of the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization Ambassador (C 24), Donatus Keith St. Aimee to visit the South Atlantic Islands with the purpose of ‘balancing’ a recent similar invitation from Argentina and to defend the Falklands’ people right to exercise self-determination.

• Friday, December 10th 2010 - 06:15 UTC

  Russia’s Putin says Assange arrest shows the West has problems with democracy

  

  Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has said the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange shows the West has its own problems with democracy.

• Friday, December 10th 2010 - 05:54 UTC

  Lula da Silva supports Assange and asks what about freedom of expression?

  

  Brazilian President Lula da Silva defended Julian Assange, founder of the WikiLeaks.org website that published more than 250,000 of U.S. diplomatic cables sent to or from embassies around the world and asked where are those rabid defenders of freedom of expression.

• Friday, December 10th 2010 - 04:31 UTC

  Venezuela’s Mercosur incorporation hostage of Argentine/Paraguay conflict

  

  Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo for the second time in a year withdrew the request from Congress for the approval of Venezuela’s incorporation as a full member of Mercosur. This leaves the issue for next year.

• Friday, December 10th 2010 - 02:15 UTC

  Infrastructure loan to improve living conditions in Rio do Janeiro’s favelas

  

  Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s second biggest city will receive a 150 million US dollars loan from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to improve living conditions in low-income neighborhoods, known as favelas.

• Friday, December 10th 2010 - 01:59 UTC

  Parmalat Calisto Tanzi sentenced to 18 years in prison for 18.6 billion bankruptcy

  

  The founder of Italian dairy food company Parmalat, Calisto Tanzi, has been sentenced to 18 years in prison for his role in the company's collapse seven years ago. Parmalat buckled in December 2003 under a18.6 billion US dollars hole in its accounts.

• Thursday, December 9th 2010 - 21:00 UTC

  One in four admit having paid bribes last year, says Transparency International

  

  Corruption has increased over the last three years, say six out of 10 people around the world, and one in four people report paying bribes in the last year. These are the findings of the 2010 Global Corruption Barometer, a worldwide public opinion survey on corruption, released on International Anti-Corruption Day, 9 December, by Transparency International (TI).

• Thursday, December 9th 2010 - 20:51 UTC

  Unasur members will share and disclose data on military expenditure

  

  For the first time ever South American countries will jointly share and disclose data on their military expenditures, according to the Ecuadorian Ministry of Defence. It is anticipated that next March all member countries from Unasur (Union of South American Nations) will make public the information following on this year’s approval of a common methodology to measure Defence expenditure.

• Thursday, December 9th 2010 - 15:46 UTC

  UK Treasury increases bank levies, ‘fair contribution to the public coffers’

  

  The United Kingdom Treasury has raised the rate it will impose on banks under its new levy in 2011 and 2012. The Treasury said in draft legislation for the Finance Bill 2011 that the levy for 2011 will be 0.05% of total liabilities rather than the 0.04% announced in June. The levy for 2012 will rise to 0.075% instead of the previously proposed plan levy of 0.07%.

• Thursday, December 9th 2010 - 15:34 UTC

  Bank of England decision on further liquidity injection expected for February

  

  The Bank of England’s monetary policy committee (MPC) voted Thursday to hold the base interest rate at its record low of 0.5%. As expected, the Bank did not extend its £200 billion program of quantitative easing and is not expected to make a decision on whether to follow the US Federal reserve with a second bout of economy boosting bond-buying – or QE2 – until February.