Peru, Brazil and China are moving forward on a transcontinental railway that will cut across the continent, climb the Andes and connect port cities in the Pacific and Atlantic coasts.
China will invest 50 billion dollars to help overhaul Brazil's aging infrastructure, the government announced on Thursday, ahead of an official visit by Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang next week. Brazil has repeated that it was determined to overhaul its dilapidated roads, railways, airports and ports.
Among the mountain of statistics produced by China every year, there is one impossible to ignore: according to the Ministry of Land and Resources 61.5% of China's ground water is too dangerous even to touch, which means that along with being unsuitable for agriculture or drinking this water is unfit for any human contact.
Chinese President Xi Jinping met with the chairman of Taiwan's ruling Nationalist Party (KMT) in Beijing on Monday for the highest-level meeting between the two sides since 2009.
Conservation groups and scientists worry that China’s push to boost its harvest of krill -- a shrimp-like creature used for aquaculture feed and human supplements -- may leave Antarctica’s whales, seals and penguins struggling to survive. China’s leaders say they want a seven-fold increase in krill production, according to a recent report in the state-owned China Daily newspaper.
Argentina's central bank bought 630 million of dollars on the local currency market on Tuesday in one of its largest-ever purchases, a move that will bolster the country's precariously low hard currency reserves. Some 500 million of the dollars purchased were proceeds from last week's 1.5 billion auction of bonds by state energy company YPF.
Brazilian state-run oil company Petrobras approved a series of financial agreements with local and international banks that will meet its financing needs in 2015, the company announced. In a filing with local stock regulators, Petrobras said that the deals will provide the company with access to about 6.2 billion dollars, including a 3.5bn financing contract reached with China Development Bank on April 1.
The International Monetary Fund warned in a communiqué that while economic growth in developed countries had strengthened, some emerging nations were being hit by weaker commodity prices and exports.
China's central bank is to cut its bank reserve requirement ratio by one percentage point. The People's Bank of China said that the new reserve requirement would take effect from Monday. The aim is to stimulate more lending into the nation's slowing economy.
Brazil's minister of defense Jacques Wagner questioned Argentina's approach to China regarding military procurement, but discarded any conflict with Buenos Aires, since the country is a 'strategic and important partner' of Brazil. Apparently the issue was brought up by Jacques when he visited his counterpart Agustín Rossi in Buenos Aires last week.