from the page: "..At the end of the summit's first day, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced that member countries had agreed to contribute 1% of their international reserves toward the bloc's main bank in order to create a reserve fund. The Bank of the Alba was established in 2008 with the intention of providing economic support to people-centred regional projects and to contribute to sustainable social and economic development across the region. The Bank is also cited as acting as a continental alternative to the International Monetary Fund... The heads of state also discussed the possibility of increasing the commercial use of the sucre, the bloc's virtual currency. The sucre is currently used for direct trading between the ALBA countries, allowing them to circumvent the U.S dollar and minimise the foreign-exchange risk.

from the page: "...'Committee of 24' Also Forwards Three Traditional Texts in Support Of Decolonization Declaration to General Assembly; Hears Petitioners from Guam... Today, the militarization of Guam was tied to the building of new military bases and the transfer of more than 8,000 United States Marines from Okinawa to Guam. With that movement, the Chamorro people would face many of the same problems that the Okinawan people had faced, including field fires and bomb accidents caused by live ammunition, plane and helicopter crashes, as well as noise pollution, traffic accidents, the destruction of environmental and historical sites and the loss of indigenous cultural heritage. The Okinawan people were against the movement of United States Marines to Guam, as well as the construction of new military bases, as they feared that the island’s colonial situation would become “deeply fixed”. They insisted that Guam be demilitarized in accordance with United Nations decolonization..."

from the page: " What is at stake are, according to British Geological Survey estimates, as many as 60 billion barrels of oil under the waters off the Falklands/Las Malvinas... Ilya Kramnik wrote that "along with the neighboring islands controlled by the U.K., the Falklands are the de facto gateway to the Antarctic, which explains London's tenacity in maintaining sovereignty over them and the South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, as well as territorial claims regarding the South Shetland and South Orkney Islands under the Antarctic Treaty." ...Under the ice, under the continental shelf, there are enormous mineral resources and the surrounding seas are full of bio-resources. In addition, the glaciers of Antarctica contain 90% of the world's fresh water... If the United Kingdom succeeds in provoking a new war, it in turn will appeal to its NATO allies for logistical, surveillance and other forms of assistance, including direct military intervention if required. "