Free Republic

Argentina`s first couple, a power pair often compared to Bill and Hillary Clinton, won`t say whether it will be a his or hers candidacy in this year`s presidential election. President Nestor Kirchner boasts soaring approval ratings amid an economic recovery. His wife, Sen. Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is also popular — and unlike Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, she established her own political career long before her husband became president. With both Kirchners doing well in the polls, they`ve been floating the idea that she should run to succeed him while he`s still in office. Cristina Kirchner flew off without her...

First Daughter Barbara Bush had her purse and cell phone stolen as she had dinner in a restaurant in Buenos Aires, Argentina, even though she was being guarded by a detail of Secret Service agents, according to law enforcement reports made available to ABC News. It was not the only mishap on the two-week trip to Argentina by Barbara (right) and her twin sister Jenna (left). A Secret Service agent on the advance detail got into an "altercation" with someone after a night out and was badly beaten, according to the law enforcement reports. The Secret Service said today the...

NEW YORK, May 18 (Reuters) - Occidental Petroleum Corp. (OXY.N: Quote, Profile, Research) is seeking damages totaling more than $1 billion as part of an arbitration claim against the Ecuadorean government for seizing its assets, a company spokesman said on Thursday. The U.S. oil producer has also terminated all local employees in Ecuador and is relocating its expatriate staff, the spokesman said.

Latin America: Ecuador's government deserves all the trouble it's got coming now that it's decided expropriation is the way to get rich. But the trouble won't come from the U.S. It's headed their way from Ecuadoreans....The loss of Ecuador's hard-won free-trade pact with the U.S., something it was on the razor's edge of signing, is virtually guaranteed. Ecuador also will probably lose all practical access to U.S. markets when its 2006 Andean trade preferences expire.Two free-trade-pact neighbors, Peru and Colombia, will gladly help themselves to Ecuador's market share in exports of flowers, shrimp and other regional specialties. About 60% of...

Castro and Chavez in business suits in Havana. Is it one of Chavez' Brioni or a Lanvin? Hard to tell he has over one hundred of them. The opening of the office of PDVSA Cuba makes perfect sense. It is clearly one of those management decisions that has been studied and analyzed and the financial models have spoken: We need to open an office in Cuba, it makes perfect sense! Let's look at the facts: -Cuba has no oil, it produces no oil, all of the exploration wells that have been drilled in the Guld of Mexico have turned out...

Buried deep in the appalling announcement of Cuba's new place on the UN's Human Rights Commission was the name of the country that nominated that outpost of tyranny for the honor: Argentina. It's not the first time the southernmost country in the New World has done the bidding of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. Last December, a Cuban dissident who sought de-facto asylum in Havana's Argentine embassy was unexpectedly denied an exit visa and forced back into the hands of Castro's waiting agents. Such events underline Argentina's political direction. A few years ago, Argentina was one of the U.S.'s major non-NATO...

Jesus Bermudez, called “Fat (Gordo) Bermudez”, former Vice-Minister of Finance with Tobias Nóbrega, has been detained in Miami and is going to be subject to a trial for a number of violations of the law, among them, attempting to introduce as contraband forty thousand dollars in cash into the US. But things are not as simple as Jose Vicente (the VP) attempted to make it look, when he denied that the plane in which the “Gordo” traveled belonged to CVG. Let’s see. In order to be free on bail, one hundred thousand dollars were paid in a flash. Who paid?...