
The Colombian military on Sunday rescued Gen. Luis Mendieta and Col. Enrique Murillo, two top national police officers held by the FARC guerrillas for nearly 12 years, President Alvaro Uribe announced.

As had been anticipated a dissident group of Malvinas veterans protested at the Argentine airport of Rio Gallegos during the Saturday stop over of the weekly Lan Chile flight to the Falkland Islands.

President Lula da Silva said that this coming October election will be the first since 1985 that his name won’ figure, “but to fill that void I will change my name and I will call myself Dilma Rousseff”.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised this week after meeting with Colombian president Alvaro Uribe that when she returns to Washington she will begin “a very intensive effort to try to obtain the votes to get the free trade agreement with Colombia finally ratified”.

Britain’s Deputy Primer Minister Liberal-Democrat Nick Clegg said in Spain there will be no change in the stance of the Falkland Islands sovereignty and the Islanders wish to remain British.

Hundreds of pilots for Spirit Airlines, which services the Caribbean, walked off their jobs early Saturday morning after negotiations over pay broke down. In what industry analysts say is the first strike at a US passenger airline in nearly five years, pilots at the low-cost carrier took industrial action as negotiations reached a stalemate.

The Cuban government has freed a jailed dissident and moved six others to jails closer to their homes. Senior Catholic clergymen had urged Cuban president Raul Castro to release Ariel Sigler, 47, on humanitarian grounds.

The incorporation of Venezuela to Mercosur faces a tough battle in the Paraguayan congress following statements’ from the Upper House president who said that “it recalls us the time of the (Alfredo Stroessner) dictatorship” adding it was difficult to dissociate the country from the figure of Hugo Chavez.

Argentine ministers went public again on Friday to insist that there are no excuses left for keeping a roadblock on a bridge leading to neighbouring Uruguay, a long standing protest since 2006 against the construction of the Botnia pulp mill.

Uruguay will take ‘all the necessary measures’ to target the US dollar at 21/22 Pesos, its equilibrium point to help boost exports, according to Deputy Minister of Economy Pedro Buonomo.