Hundreds of activists have descended on the British Embassy in the Argentine capital Buenos Aires to call on Britain to relinquish its sovereignty of the Falkland islands….

My most video report as part of AP’s coverage from Buenos Aires of the escalating bilateral tensions related to the tiny south atlantic archipelago. The report went out around the world including this short edit of EURONEWS

My video report from the Argentine town of San Antonio de Areco which every year stages a five-day annual festival celebrating the customs of the nomadic ranchers known as gauchos.

Although gaucho lifestyle started to fade in the 19th Century, local residents preserve a great number of their traditions.

The story went out around the world including this broadcast which lead BBC Travel

About 74 passengers and crew among the more than 3,500 people on board were reported ill with norovirus, 20 of them with symptoms like vomiting and diarrhea.

Briton John Sturgeon and his wife had been looking forward to the visit as one of the highlights of the South American cruise, saying they wanted to see the islands to remember the upcoming 30th anniversary of Argentina’s invasion of the colony. Argentina and Britain continue to be in a diplomatic row over the islands, which Argentina calls the Malvinas.

“I had already booked a tour with someone in the Falklands,” he said as the couple disembarked for a stop in Buenos Aires. Sturgeon said the ship’s captain considered the refusal to allow them to dock “very unreasonable and unprecedented.”

There were also several hundred Argentines among the passengers, who had paid thousands of dollars for the cruise in order to visit the graves of their fathers. A cemetery on the island is filled with the tombs of Argentine draftees killed in the ill-fated 1982 war.

Argentine passenger Liliana Rodriguez said some of the passengers had been planning to pay respects to loved ones buried on the island.

“There was a young guy who brought a shield for the tomb of his father there,” Rodriguez said. “There was all of these people and so many more, because we didn’t get the chance to have contact with everyone because there were at least 300 Argentines.”

The Falklands has defended its decision as being made “in the wider interests of the public and tourism industry,” according to a statement from the island’s chief medical officer. “An outbreak in the Falkland Islands would put enormous pressure on our limited medical resources and jeopardize other scheduled cruise visits,” the statement said.

Norovirus is highly contagious and spreads through the stool or vomit of infected people. The virus can linger on surfaces like door handles, carpets and tabletops. It can also spread when people share the food, drinks or eating utensils of an infected person.

But Norman Noah, an infectious diseases expert at London’s School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, described the Falklands’ decision as “over the top.”

He has previously investigated norovirus outbreaks and said the illness normally passes within a couple of days and is unlikely to overwhelm hospitals.

Princess Cruises has called the decision “totally unwarranted.”

The virus is the most common cause of gastroenteritis in the U.S. About 1 in 5 of norovirus outbreaks reported to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention occurred on cruise ships or in vacation settings. The CDC has documented about a dozen outbreaks a year on cruise ships worldwide.

The U.S. CDC’s Vessel Sanitation Program never advises that ships cannot dock, though they might issue a “no sail order” in the case of repeated or large outbreaks with little controls in place. That doesn’t seem to be the case with the Star Princess, which according to CDC records, hasn’t had a norovirus outbreak since 2003.

Even if the ship had been allowed to dock in the Falklands, experts weren’t sure the infected passengers would have spread the virus very far.

According to guidance from Britain’s Health Protection Agency, any passengers on board a ship who have norovirus should be isolated in their own cabin until at least 24 hours after their symptoms have passed. There are more stringent recommendations for sick crew members.

The agency does not advise that ships with infected patients be prevented from docking, but says certain measures should be in place when the ship arrives into port, like thoroughly cleaning and disinfecting the vessel before it sails on.

“If you’re suffering from vomiting and diarrhea, you probably won’t be sightseeing,” Noah said. “Chances are you’ll be staying in your cabin by yourself.”

___

Associated Press writers Paul Byrne in Buenos Aires, Mike Stobbe in Atlanta and Cheng in London contributed to this report.

Addressing the economic faculty of the University of Buenos Aires alongside current Argentine Minister of Economy (soon to be Vice President) Joseph Stiglitz the renowned Nobel prize winning economist makes several references to the economic plight of Ireland whilst mapping out the global financial crisis

Please get in touch if you want more of the interview and full broadcast quality

As part of the Shell sponsored ‘Powerland’ series for GlobalPost I put together this report exploring how a long scorned population of waste scavengers are now being embraced by the municipal government of Buenos Aires in a citywide waste-management programme.

The traditional gaucho way of life may be dwindling in the Argentine countryside, but the weekly cowboy market at Mataderos, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, always draws a crowd. The travel story I co-authored with The Guardian Journalist Annie Kelly

I was commissioned by a Buenos Aires based US clean tech energy company to prepare a news style commercial presentation on their participation in Argentina’s software development industry. It was self shot, produced, directed and as you can see reporter lead and involved a filming session of 3 hours on location followed by some city b-roll shooting and a 1 day edit

Just four years ago Argentine rugby full back Ignacio Corleto was about to play an instrumental part in his national team’s march toward an unprecedented world cup semi finals spot.

With just days to go before the Pumas face off against England in the 2012 tournament group B opener in New Zealand Ignacio has long retired from professional rugby and is instead the sideline force behind Botines Solidarios.

Calling it the play of his life this team of ragged rugby playing youths from one of Buenos Aires’s biggest slums is Corleto’s idea of bringing the codes of his beloved sport to some of his country’s most marginalized youth…

Alongside a busy highway in Buenos Aires, this amateur team of rugby players show all the professionalism of their sporting heroes.

They are the “Botines Solidarios”, meaning ‘solidarity through boots’.

The players come from one of the worst shanty towns in South America, known as Villa 31, and rugby has brought them a new sense of pride.

In Argentina, home of football greats like Maradona, rugby comes distant second to the nation’s passion for football.

Footballers like Diego Maradona and Carlos Tevez both came from the city’s poorer areas before becoming global household names, giving hope to poor young Argentinians everywhere.

But Argentina also has a national rugby team to be proud of.

The national team, nicknamed “The Pumas”, came third in the last Rugby World Cup held in France in 2007, beating the hosts as South Africa triumphed over England in the finals.

The Botines team and foundation is the brain child of Ignacio Corleto, a former full back for the Argentine national team and long serving player with European top tier club side Stade Francais.

Just four years ago, in the 2007 World Cup, Corleto’s rugby career reached its zenith, as he played an instrumental part in Argentina’s rip-roaring march to the semi finals of the tournament.

Following a famed third place winning try against home team France, the full back decided to hang up his boots on a ten year professional career and return to his native Argentina.

As a growing social divide continues to develop in Argentina, Buenos Aires’s mushrooming shanty towns surface beside railroad tracks, appear under bridges and surround the city dumps.

According to the results of the 2010 official national census 163,000 people live in the shanty towns of Buenos Aires.

For the some forty thousand dwellers of Villa 31, sport has long been seen as a good alternative to a life of poverty or crime.

When Corleto started Botines Solidarios in mid-2010 many of its now key players had not even heard of the sport, long considered to be the game of choice for the privileged classes.

Today the group, made up of almost 30 members between the ages of 13 to 19, are just finishing their first full season training together and preparing for a tour of friendly games.

Twice a week since the project began, the team’s own bus has been relaying the players from their homes and the training ground.

Santiago Gourdy is another of Botines coaches. He says that while people were initially wary of adopting the sport it’s now being embraced with open arms and every day they are drawing in new players.

The Botines Foundation set up by Ignacio Corleto aims to grow the team and potentially take the project to other neighbourhoods.

The former Puma funds the project drawing on his own commercial earnings and by using his sporting fame to entice sponsors.

He’s also a driving force behind the team on the training pitch.

The project not only aims to build better athletes but also more rounded individuals by encouraging them to take into their daily life the codes that the sport is associated with.

Now the players of Botines Solidarios want to reach out to other rugby teams and hoping in 2012 to participate in a citywide league.

They are already breaking down social barriers as they train with squads from all across the capital. They have also hosted visits from youth teams from South Africa, New Zealand and the UK.

As a mark of the team’s success one of the last training sessions the Argentine rugby squad held before flying to the world cup in New Zealand was with the Botines in their grounds.

Team captain Felipe Contepomi and his full squad ran drills with the young team.

As the domestic rugby season in Argentina comes to an end the Botines have also just began a tour of friendly games.

Botines Solidarios could promise a better future for these young men – and also, possibly, for the future of rugby in Argentina.

For the Argentine national team hoping to find glory in New Zealand, a whole new breed of Puma might soon be waiting in the wings fighting for their position in the future team.

Broadcast and Published by AP September 9th, 2011

My video coverage of the aftermath of a devastating crash between a bus and a train in which 11 people very killed and over 200 injured on September 13th. The images went out around the world including this piece by the Huffington Post Text by my colleague Mike Warren