
Germany, India, South Africa and Colombia have won two-year seats on the UN Security Council as non veto power members. Portugal got the other available place when Canada withdrew its bid after the second round of voting at the UN General Assembly in New York.

Britain is ramping up efforts to sell about 11 new naval vessels, including frigates, to the Brazilian Navy in a bid to catch up with marketing efforts launched by France and Italy, according to a recent article from DefenseNews.

Argentine Ambassador to the United Nations Jorge Argüello confirmed Monday that a copy of the formal verbal complaint to London was channelled to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon as a way of deepening the protest over the military exercises being deployed by British forces in the Falklands/Malvinas Islands.

An encounter between an Argentine Naval vessel and trawler fishing in Falklands waters was described as ‘unsettling’ today by Director of the Falkland Islands Fisheries Department John Barton.

Peruvian Nobel Literature Prize 2010 Mario Vargas Llosa claims Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner leads a “government corroded by corruption” and said that Argentina is disappearing as a political reference in Latinamerica.

Dutch Caribbean dependency the Netherlands Antilles has ceased to exist with a change of the five islands' constitutional status. Curacao and St Maarten have become autonomous countries within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, joining Aruba, which gained the status in 1986.

Spanish is the third most common language in the web with 136 million users which represents 8% of the total number of internauts in the world, behind English (38%) and Chinese (22%) according to a report from Fundacion Telefonica New York.

The European Union and the Mercosur trade bloc resumed on Monday a new round of talks in Brussels aimed at reaching free trade agreement in the near future after years of no talks. In the immediate the blocs are seeking to outline a work scheme that could be kicked off in December.

A delegation of Saudi agro-business entrepreneurs headed by the Agriculture minister (and member of the royal family) visited Uruguay with the purpose of establishing a fluid trade exchange and on the long term a strategic alliance.

Uruguay celebrated on Thursday the 25 years since being accepted as Consultative member of the Antarctic Treaty. The event coincided this year with the XXXIIIth Antarctic Treaty Consultative meeting which for the first time was hosted by Uruguay last May.