Politics

• Wednesday, December 27th 2023 - 07:53 UTC

  UK will keep the EU kilos and liters measuring systems, but pints are to prevail when it comes to wines

  

  Despite Brexit, the United Kingdom is not planning to change metric laws inherited from the European Union, meaning traders can use Britain's traditional imperial weighing system only alongside the metric one. This follows a public consultation with nearly 99% of respondents saying they were happy with kilos and liters.

• Wednesday, December 27th 2023 - 07:38 UTC

  Fears of 'deforestation rush' in tropical rain forest if Brazilian congress passes bill to pave Amazon highway

  

  The lower house of Brazil's Congress passed a bill that allows the paving of highway BR319, which crosses the heart of the Amazon basin and which scientists and environmentalists claim threatens the future of the world's largest tropical rainforest. The bill still has to be approved by the Senate.

• Tuesday, December 26th 2023 - 10:55 UTC

  Impending job losses to deepen Argentina's crisis in the short run

  

  The administration of President Javier Milei is planning not to renew the contracts of some 7,000 state workers, which would add to the hardships many Argentine families are going through amid deep reforms to recover from the country's current crisis, it was reported in Buenos Aires.

• Tuesday, December 26th 2023 - 10:22 UTC

  Milei says Argentine opposition leaders are corrupt sadists

  

  Argentine President Javier Milei on Monday called the opposition “corrupt” and “sadistic” as he defended his emergency decree (DNU) deregulating most aspects of the South American country's economy to recover from the ongoing crisis through fiscal adjustments and cuts in public spending.

• Tuesday, December 26th 2023 - 10:12 UTC

  Brazil not giving up rescuing people from war-torn Gaza

  

  President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said Brazil was still willing to welcome anyone who wanted to return from the Gaza Strip, Agencia Brasil reported. The head of state made those remarks on Christmas Day over lunch with a group of people who had arrived from the war-torn area on Dec. 23.

• Tuesday, December 26th 2023 - 08:47 UTC

  US expands its EEZ by 385,000sq km off Alaska despite not been party of UNCLOS

  

  With the stroke of a pen the US administration of president Joe Biden added nearly 250 million acres to its maritime claims, the largest administrative expansion since the establishment of the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone in 1983.

• Tuesday, December 26th 2023 - 07:40 UTC

  Charles III message: ”We must protect the Earth and our natural world as the one home which we all share”

  

  King Charles III's Christmas broadcast, recorded in Buckingham Palace, brought together some of his most personal causes, building bridges between faiths, protecting the environment, and compassion for the most vulnerable.

• Tuesday, December 26th 2023 - 07:32 UTC

  Falklands Legislative Assembly members Christmas message

  

  Members of the Falkland Islands Legislative Assembly shared a Christmas best wishes message in the last session of 2023. Be it not for defense, which remains a UK responsibility, the eight elected members of the Assembly are in fact the internal government of the Falklands.

• Tuesday, December 26th 2023 - 07:09 UTC

  UK sends HMS Trent in support of Guyana

  

  The Royal Navy Offshore Patrol Vessel HMS Trent has been dispatched to Guyana in a show of British support for the Commonwealth nation. Guyana is suffering threats of invasion and land grabbing by neighboring Venezuela which claims some two-thirds of the former British colony's territory.

• Tuesday, December 26th 2023 - 06:56 UTC

  Chilean navy adds submarine to keep track of foreign fishing fleets

  

  The Chilean Navy has bolstered patrol operations against illegal fishing in the South Pacific region and keeping track of fishing vessels crossing into the South Atlantic. Normally operations are the task of naval surface vessels and air surveillance, but last week it took the unusual step of deploying a Scorpene-class attack submarine on a fisheries-enforcement patrol in the Juan Fernandez Archipelago and further south.