Crowds gathered on the Wirral and in the heart of Liverpool to bid a fond and final farewell to Type 42 destroyer HMS Liverpool. She sailed into the Mersey last week for a six-day visit, berthing alongside at the Cruise Liner Terminal.
The region with the largest increase in military expenditure in 2010 was South America, with a 5.8% increase in real terms, reaching a total of 63.3 billion US dollars according to the latest report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI.
For the first time ever South American countries will jointly share and disclose data on their military expenditures, according to the Ecuadorian Ministry of Defence. It is anticipated that next March all member countries from Unasur (Union of South American Nations) will make public the information following on this year’s approval of a common methodology to measure Defence expenditure.
After years of political division, Europe's two biggest military powers have come together to sign a historic defence-sharing agreement.
Brazil is holding military exercises along its Atlantic coast with the deployment of 10.000 troops from the three services to ensure the country can protect its nuclear plants and massive offshore oil industry.
Peruvian Defence Minister Rafael Rey said this week that representatives from Chile and Peru would meet next Monday for the first time in an effort to establish common criteria for approving military expenditures. Rey also said he would meet with his Chilean counterpart, Jaime Ravinet, in Lima in August.