
Brazilian ex president Dilma Rousseff is in Uruguay, her first overseas visit since Congress voted her impeachment and removal from office. The leader is scheduled to participate on Friday in a march in downtown Montevideo with Uruguayan unions protesting salary conditions and will also be received at a special ceremony in the town hall where she will be given the keys of the city by mayor Daniel Martinez.

Chilean airline LAW (Latin American Wings) had submitted a letter of intent on Friday and now it intends to go ahead with the talks. Company representatives are expectd to arrive in Montevideo on Thursday to hold meetings with Alas Uruguay authorities and with the Transport and Public Works Minister Victor Rossi.

An Argentine-Uruguayan commission took 50 samples of effluent from the pulp mill off Fray Bentos and as many in the Gualeguaychú mouth of the river in Entre Rios. Botnia passes test. The reports from the samples collected on the Argetine side recorded more polluting than those found off Fray Bentos. The plant's formal name is Orion but is widely known for its original Finnish name Botnia.

The 2016/17 cruise season officially begins this week in Uruguay with the arrival of MS Zaandam and Insignia. Zandam belonging to Holland America Line with capacity for 1.432 passengers usually calls several times in Montevideo during the season.

Argentina and Uruguay are involved in a joint demersal assessment cruise with the purpose of estimating the hake hubbsi biomass, sizes and age, as well as other resources up to a depth of approximately 300 meters.

By Sam Roberts, The New York Times
Jorge Batlle, the brash scion of a political dynasty who had been groomed to be president of Uruguay since he was a teenager, got elected to the post on his fifth try and then audaciously presided over a pro-American administration that survived a brush with bankruptcy, died on Monday in Montevideo. He was 88.

As could be expected soccer was not absent from the Argentina-Uruguay presidential summit in Buenos Aires on Monday. Mauricio Macri has been president of Boca Juniors, one of the two strongest and most popular Argentine sides and steered the club to reach several regional and continental cups.

Argentine president Mauricio Macri promised his Uruguayan peer Tabare Vazquez to look into the draft of a Uruguay/China free trade deal, and expressed their deep concern about political events in Venezuela suggesting that under the current circumstances the Nicolas Maduro government cannot be considered a member of Mercosur.

Former President Jorge Batlle, an extroverted and irreverent politician who was a force in Uruguayan politics for half a century and led it during one of its worst economic recessions, died on Monday.

Uruguay and Argentina, and their cabinets will be meeting this Monday in Buenos Aires to address a bilateral agenda, which was agreed long before hand, but the real issue will not necessarily be trade, dredging canals, pulp mills, customs or facilitating people's movement, but rather the negotiations for a free trade agreement which supposedly Uruguay is about to begin discussing with China.