Global food prices are on the ascent again with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Food Price Index – a food basket composed of cereals, oilseeds, dairy, meat and sugar – registering four straight monthly rises.
The Brazilian senate postponed on Wednesday until next Tuesday the vote on Venezuela’s incorporation to Mercosur following a heated debate on the floor when the opposition strongly criticized Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.
A recent Gallup poll surveying Latinamerican perceptions of Barack Obama found that the US President’s strongest support comes from Chile, where 72% of those polled have a favourable image of him.
Fearful of the continued depreciation of the US dollar vis-á-vis other global currencies, Mercosur country members admitted one of the possibilities under consideration for the management of international foreign reserves is the creation of a kind of sovereign fund.
Recently nominated United States Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Valenzuela will be making his first trip to the region next week with visits to Mercosur full members, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, reported the US State Department.
The United States government said it has settled a long-running lawsuit against the Department of the Interior for mismanagement of trust fund accounts held by hundreds of thousands of Native Americans.
An interview with William “Eddie” Edmundson, Author of “A History of the British Presence in Chile”
The political coincidences of the two-day Mercosur presidential summit held in Montevideo overshadowed the lack of relevant decisions for the consolidation of the block as a customs union, according to Brazilian sources.
Mercosur is committed to advance trade negotiations with the European Union and expects to have drafted a viable position when leaders from Latinamerica and the Caribbean meet with their European Union counterparts next May for the Madrid summit.
Mercosur presidents expressed their most “energetic condemnation” of the Honduran coup and “total and full rejection” of the November 29th elections which represent a strong blow to “the democratic values of Latinamerica and the Caribbean”.