Buenos Aires - Argentina is set to celebrate the 25th anniversary of its return to democracy on Thursday - a difficult process that has evolved gradually since the end of the military dictatorship in 1983.

Social democrat Raul Alfonsin, of the Radical Civic Union, won the election on October 30, 1983 to become president. It was clear at the time that he had been entrusted with a huge challenge. But even skeptics could not have guessed just how hard it was going to be to govern the South American country.

Buenos Aires - Argentina's central bank intervened in the country's foreign exchange market Wednesday with an injection of 1 billion dollars to contain the depreciation of the peso.

In the early hours of activity, the dollar rose 2.08 per cent against the peso to 3.43 pesos from 3.36. The Central Bank's intervention brought it down to 3.39 pesos, an increase of 0.9 per cent in relation to the previous day's closing.

Buenos Aires - Former Argentine football superstar Diego Maradona has been named coach of the country's national team despite a lack of experience as trainer at a time when Argentina has struggled in World Cup qualifiers.

"Now the real work begins," Maradona said.

His appointment followed a meeting Tuesday that Maradona and former national coach Carlos Bilardo held with Argentine football federation President Julio Grondona.

Sao Paulo/Buenos Aires - Trading at the Sao Paulo stock exchange was again suspended Wednesday, for the sixth time in three weeks, after the fall in its leading index Bovespa went beyond the 10 per cent mark that activates the circuit breaker.

The half-an-hour suspension was launched at 5:17 pm (1917 GMT), less than 45 minutes before the scheduled closing time. The Bovespa was losing 10.03 per cent at the time.

Brazilian markets were again influenced by the market drops in the United States, Europe and Asia.

Buenos Aires - Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner on Tuesday signed a bill to unify the country's pension system into a public regime, following 14 years in which workers could opt for either a private or a public pension scheme.

The bill that will nationalize private pension funds needs to be approved by Congress. It would allow the government to collect the compulsory pension contributions of close to 3.6 million workers - worth some 4.6 billion dollars per year - who are currently in the private system.