MathOverflow will be down for maintenance for approximately 3 hours, starting Monday evening (06/24/2013) at approximately 9:00 PM Eastern time (UTC-4).

2 added 241 characters in body

(To supplement Alberto's example)

If $V$ is projective, then the gap between being locally c.i and c.i is quite big. In particular, any smooth $V$ would be locally c.i., but they are not c.i. typically. For exampleinstance, take $V$ to be a few points in $\mathbb P^2$ would give simple examples. In higher dimensions, by Grothendick-Lefschetz, if $V$ is smooth, $\dim V\geq 3$, and $V$ is c.i. then $\text{Pic}(V)=\mathbb Z$, so it is a serious restriction.

The affine case is more subtle. Again one can look at smooth varieties. If $V$ is a smooth affine curve and c.i., then the canonical bundle of $V$ is trivial. So it gives the following strategy: start with a projective curve $X$ of genus at least $2$, removing some general points to obtain an (still smooth) affine curve with non-trivial canonical bundle.

For more details on the second paragraph, see this question, especially Bjorn Poonen's comments. This paper contains relevant references, and also an example with trivial canonical bundle.

1

If $V$ is projective, then the gap between being locally c.i and c.i is quite big. In particular, any smooth $V$ would be locally c.i., but they are not c.i. typically. For example, take $V$ to be a few points in $\mathbb P^2$ would give simple examples. In higher dimensions, by Grothendick-Lefschetz, if $V$ is smooth, $\dim V\geq 3$, and $V$ is c.i. then $\text{Pic}(V)=\mathbb Z$, so it is a serious restriction.

The affine case is more subtle. Again one can look at smooth varieties. If $V$ is a smooth affine curve and c.i., then the canonical bundle of $V$ is trivial. So it gives the following strategy: start with a projective curve $X$ of genus at least $2$, removing some general points to obtain an (still smooth) affine curve with non-trivial canonical bundle.

For more details on the second paragraph, see this question, especially Bjorn Poonen's comments.