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Although the dust hasn’t even settled from last month’s Euro financial crisis in the PIGS countries, another sovereign wealth shock may be just around the corner.

Mar. 3rd (Merco Press) - Defense spending on protecting the Falkland Islands has plunged by 50% cent in just six years, it was claimed by a report in London’s Daily Mail.

On February 22 two major developments occurred in the Americas south of the Rio Grande. The two-day Rio Group summit opened in Mexico and Great Britain started drilling for oil 60 miles north of the Falklands Islands, known as Las Malvinas to Argentina.

Feb. 11 (Bloomberg) - The U.K. Environment Agency said it will boost spending on measures to reduce flooding and coastal erosion in England and Wales by 7 percent to 745 million pounds ($1.2 billion) for the year through March 2011.

Feb. 10 (BBC News) - The foreign secretary has lost an Appeal Court bid to stop the disclosure of secret information relating to the alleged torture of a UK resident.

The defense chiefs of all 28 NATO nations and an undisclosed number of counterparts from non-Alliance partners gathered in Istanbul, Turkey on February 4 to begin two days of meetings focused on the war in Afghanistan, the withdrawal of military forces from Kosovo in the course of transferring control of security operations to the breakaway province’s embryonic army (the Kosovo Security Force) and “the transformation efforts required to best conduct the full range of NATO’s agreed missions.”

Feb. 3 (Al Jazeera) - A roadside bomb has killed at least eight people, including three US military personnel and four school girls, near a girls' school in northwest Pakistan.

Feb. 3 (BBC News) - Gordon Brown has denied troops were sent to Iraq and Afghanistan without the equipment they needed after being accused of "guillotining" the budget.

Feb. 2 (BBC News) - Tony Blair's cabinet was "misled" into thinking the war with Iraq was legal, ex-International Development Secretary Clare Short has told the UK's inquiry.

Jan. 26 (BBC News) - Jack Straw rejected advice in the run up to war that invading Iraq without UN backing would break international law, the Iraq inquiry heard.