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.

New York - The UN General Assembly voted 185-3 on Wednesday to renew its annual demand that the United States end its trade embargo against Cuba.

The United States, Israel and Palau voted against the resolution adopted by the 192-nation assembly. Resolutions passed in previous years have not swayed Washington, which considers those decisions non-binding despite the overwhelming support by UN members.

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.

Washington - The US Federal Reserve cut interest rates Wednesday by 0.5 percentage points to 1 per cent, the lowest level since June 2004, in an effort to keep the US economy out of a prolonged recession.

The US central bank acknowledged that economic activity had "slowed markedly" but made no mention of a recession that many economists expect is inevitable.

Munich - A Catholic archbishop in Germany published a book Wednesday attacking capitalistic excesses.

Not only is the book called Das Kapital, but the author's name is Marx.

Archbishop Reinhard Marx of Munich is not related to 19th-century communist founding father Karl Marx, but the most reverend clergyman's surname draws wonderment and wisecracks wherever he goes.

The archbishop is also the most outspoken of Germany's 27 diocesan leaders in his criticism of big business.