Brazil and Argentina came out Friday against a French proposal to be put to the G20 to regulate commodity prices whose recent rises are blamed for a spike in food costs.
Argentina’s official and controversial consumer price index in January increased 0.7%, a number disputed by private institutions that argue inflation in the first month of 2011 reached a floor of 2%.
Argentina’s Cabinet Chief Aníbal Fernández is the latest high-ranking official to address the Wikileaks controversy after Spanish newspaper El País published several cables that denounced various corruption cases within the Cristina Fernández de Kirchner administration.
The head of Argentina’ powerful Business Leaders Association (ADE) urged the government to “stop denying inflation” and rejected the notion that businessmen are responsible for price hikes.
Another two babies died of malnutrition in the Argentine northern province of Salta, totalling seven so far this year. They all belong to indigenous colonies in this case from the Wichi community living under subsistence conditions in non fertile areas of the province.
Argentina’s Federal Planning Minister Julio De Vido referred to the recently published Wikileaks documents by Spanish newspaper El Pais, and advised the US embassy in Buenos Aires “to hire more competent employees” since performing a “cut-and-paste task from the yellow press is something any idiot can do.”
A former secretary of Nestor Kirchner, the late ex-president of Argentina, has claimed she was his long-term mistress weeks after being sacked by his widow and successor, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner.
More than a hundred cables from the US embassy in Buenos Aires warned about the fragility of the judicial system and the impunity of criminals, according to an article recently published by Spanish newspaper El País. The leaked documents also spoke of the lack of a true political will to eradicate corruption.
Argentina in this 2010/11 campaign has been supplying Antarctic bases and stations with support from a Russian polar vessel equipped with an icebreaking bow and its own Navy units.
Argentina recovered the status of free of foot and mouth disease with vaccination in the “high vigilance” area along the so called “border belt” which limits with Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay.