Two notorious former Argentine navy officers Alfredo Astiz and “Tigre” Acosta were sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday night after being found guilty of kidnapping, torture and the forced disappearances of many detainees in the former Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA) during the last dictatorship (1976/1983).
Argentina’s extreme south city and Antarctica cruise hub, Ushuaia is feeling the pinch from the latest Chilean measures to attract more vessels and is requesting a costs adjustment to improve competition conditions.
The Argentine Central Bank (BCRA) issued a special decree so that all export revenues generated by both mining and energy sectors remain in Argentina to be negotiated at the local foreign exchange market.
US President Barack Obama has requested to meet with recently re-elected President Cristina Fernández during the next G20 summit to be held on the 3rd and 4th of November in Cannes, France.
Over 80% of the Argentine electorate ratified on Sunday the current economic course, ‘which we must all support’ said the president of the powerful Argentine Industrial Union, Jose Ignacio de Mendiguren, who nevertheless called for a greater effort in “systemic competitiveness”.
Forest fires that began on Sunday in the province of Tierra del Fuego, Argentina’s extreme south have spread across from 50 hectares of trees to 1.500 hectares of grazing land, provincial officials confirmed.
A ‘time bomb ticking’ is how economist Carlos Melconian described the current economic situation in Argentina in spite of all the production and consumption ‘records’. Melconian argues that Argentina is travelling through an ‘anaesthetic path’ which overshadows reality.
Leaving names aside, Sunday’s election consolidates in Argentina the hegemonic Peronist movement as the prevailing political force to the extent that it not only amply occupies officialdom but also part of the opposition, argues Rosendo Fraga a renowned Argentine political analyst and historian.
The extraordinary showing of President Cristina Fernandez established a new set of records in Argentine electoral history. The difference over her runner up Hermes Binner was just below that of Juan Domingo Peron (Argentina’s icon political leader of the XXth century) when he returned triumphantly after 17 years in exile in Spain to the presidency.
The Sunday landslide victory of President Cristina Fernandez means the coalition she leads has regained control of both houses of Congress (lost in the 2009 debacle) and with a sufficient majority to work with its own quorum.