
Conservative businessman Horacio Cartes was sworn in as president of Paraguay on Thursday, amid slowly improving relations with South American neighbors, and Mercosur members, damaged by the 2012 removal of populist President Fernando Lugo, who was impeached on incompetence.

Spain’s Foreign affairs ministry Director General Ignacio Ibañez confirmed that Spain’s Foreign Minister José Manuel García-Margallo, would raise Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands with his Argentine counterpart, Hector Timerman, during a visit to Buenos Aires in early September.

Most presidents and top authorities that will attend the inauguration of Paraguayan president-elect Horacio Cartes on Thursday morning arrived in Asunción on Wednesday and most of them have already held private meetings with the future leader of the country.

In an extremely aggressive speech in the aftermath of primaries defeat, Argentine president Cristina Fernandez blasted the media for misinterpreting electoral results, charged against the Mayor of Tigre Sergio Massa who was the big winner on Sunday, pressed for full commitment from her allies and promised more of the same in support of the ‘socially inclusive model’.

Argentine Economy minister Hernán Lorenzino on Wednesday ratified current policies and strongly rejected an increase of budget austerity measures, while defending the debt reduction policy, but admitted the country “still suffers” from consequences of the international financial crisis.

Argentina’s inflation according to the ‘congressional index’ reached 2.55% in July and 24.9% in the last twelve months was announced on Wednesday by members from the opposition in the Lower House.

Argentina’s Sunday primary was the worst election result for Kirchnerism since they first arrived to office in 2003, almost thirty percentage points below the 54% of Cristina Fernandez re-election in 2011 writes Rosendo Fraga, Argentine historian and political analyst.

Foreign Minister Hector Timerman strongly criticised an alleged anti-Argentina campaign carried out in US Congress by members of hedge funds in litigation with Buenos Aires. Timerman made his case while meeting in his office with visiting members of the US congress.

The military government that ruled Argentina in 1967 provided its Bolivian peers with napalm bombs and other arms to help combat guerrillas headed by Ernesto Che Guevara who three months after delivery was killed, according to released documents in Brazil and published by O Estado de Sao Paulo.

Spanish Foreign minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo will be visiting Argentina next September to meet with his peer Hector Timerman to discuss the Gibraltar and Falklands/Malvinas sovereignty disputes and consider the possibility of a joint front.