
Some fishing companies are feeling “a bit hard done by” having been caught out by a change in the Falkland Islands Government Fisheries Department refunds policy implemented for 2011, said Director of Fisheries John Barton.

A Centre of Malvinas War Veterans and next of kin presented a petition before a federal court requesting the identification of Argentine combatants buried at the Darwin Cemetery in the Falkland Islands and the circumstances of their death during the South Atlantic conflict in 1982.

Making the democratic process more clear and transparent and parliamentary reform were among the main issues debated at the 57th Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference CPA, held last week in London and where the Falklands were represented by Dick Sawle, Member of the Islands Legislative Assembly.

Brazil reiterated its intention of banning all Falklands’ flagged vessels from calling at the country’s ports and described as “illegal” the current round of oil exploration in the Islands’ waters.

Britain can’t go on shielding behind its membership of the UN Security Council to avoid dialogue on the Falklands/Malvinas question, but Argentina is confident “negotiations will take place” said Foreign Affairs minister Hector Timerman in Paris following a meeting with his French peer Alain Juppé.

Legislative Assembly Member Dick Sawle will represent the Falkland Islands at the 57th Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference next week in London which on this occasion will have a very special significance: the founding centennial of the Commonwealth’s oldest organization.

The Portsmouth-based destroyer HMS Edinburgh faced some mountainous seas on the 4,000-mile passage from Cape Town to Mare Harbour in the Falkland Islands, her base for the next five or so months as she patrols Britain’s South Atlantic territories.

Falklands’ Rockhopper Exploration, the oil and gas explorer, pressed ahead with its hunt for oil in the North Falklands with the drilling of its third appraisal well on the Sea Lion Discovery feature last week.

In a bid to encourage young people to live and work in the Camp, the Falkland Islands Training Centre is now offering an Agriculture Apprenticeship following much research and planning that started in early 2010.

Falkland Islands students were reminded this week of the dangers of the 30 year old minefields, laid by the Argentines, surrounding the capital Stanley, when British forces’ experts visited the Infant and Junior School and the Community School.