Argentina

• Monday, December 9th 2019 - 09:55 UTC

  Macri and Fernandez embrace, for a few seconds, at the Lujan Basilica

  

  Outgoing Argentine President Mauricio Macri and his successor Alberto Fernandez embraced for a few seconds on Sunday at the Lujan Basilica, the country's main sanctuary to the Virgin Mary. The gesture was minimum and a few seconds but it was done on request from the Catholic Church.

• Saturday, December 7th 2019 - 09:58 UTC

  Fernandez unveils his cabinet and heterodox economic team with a growth led recovery plan

  

  Argentine President-elect Alberto Fernandez unveiled his cabinet and new central bank chief on Friday evening, laying out his core team days before the center-left leader takes office facing a stalled economy, rising debt fears and painful inflation.

• Saturday, December 7th 2019 - 09:50 UTC

  Future Argentine economy minister is US trained and an academic expert in sovereign debt

  

  Argentina’s Martin Guzman, a whiz-kid economist with close ties to influential U.S. economist Joseph Stiglitz, will bring a sharp academic intellect but little policy-making experience to the daunting task of reviving Latin America’s third-largest economy and averting a damaging default.

• Saturday, December 7th 2019 - 09:49 UTC

  Next Argentine agriculture minister sets warning alarms among farmers

  

  The next agriculture, livestock and fisheries minister of Argentina, as anticipated by MercoPress, will be Luis Basterra, president-elect Alberto Fernandez confirmed on Friday, an appointment met with some scepticism by farmers worried about a possible revival of interventionist policies.

• Saturday, December 7th 2019 - 09:42 UTC

  Argentina formally requests to exhume a collective grave at the military cemetery in the Falklands

  

  The Argentine government has formally requested the International Committee of the Red Cross, ICRC, for an expansion of the humanitarian project which has helped so far to identify the remains of 115 Argentine combatants buried at the Argentine Military Cemetery at Darwin in the Falkland Islands.

• Friday, December 6th 2019 - 09:50 UTC

  Bolsonaro calls on Mercosur for a quick implementation of the trade agreement with the EU

  

  Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro said on Thursday that Mercosur trade block needs to hurry up and implement agreements the group has negotiated.

• Friday, December 6th 2019 - 09:50 UTC

  Macri addresses the Mercosur summit for the last time

  

  In what was his last international activity, outgoing president Mauricio Macri attended the 55th Mercosur leaders summit in Bento Goncalves, southern Brazil, which he described as a special diplomatic occasion for his administration's strive to put Argentina back in the wide world map.

• Friday, December 6th 2019 - 09:49 UTC

  Paraguay takes the chair of a quarrelsome strained Mercosur

  

  Brazil on Thursday handed over the six-month rotating presidency of the Mercosur trade bloc (Southern Common Market) to Paraguay. During a ceremony at the bloc's 55th summit in Bento Goncalves, Brazil's president Jair Bolsonaro expressed confidence in his Paraguayan counterpart Mario Abdo Benitez and his leadership skills.

• Friday, December 6th 2019 - 09:47 UTC

  Fernandez sends friendly message to Bolsonaro; confirms Solá as foreign minister

  

  Argentine president elect Alberto Fernandez confirmed Felipe Solá as his foreign minister and Daniel Scioli as ambassador in Brazil, following a meeting with a delegation of Brazilian lawmakers at his Buenos Aires headquarters. The Brazilian delegation was headed by the Lower House president, Rodrigo Maia.

• Friday, December 6th 2019 - 09:10 UTC

  Argentina: Surveys indicate 40.8% of the population lives below the poverty line

  

  A third of Argentine homes and 40.8% of people were below the poverty line at the end of the third quarter according to the Social Debt Observatory from the Argentine Catholic University, UCA, which regularly releases the data.