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MercoPress, en Español

Montevideo, May 13th 2026 - 22:31 UTC

Current Edition

  • Tuesday, May 12th 2026 - 23:32 UTC

    Lula seeks his own security recipe to counter Brazilian right wing's tough-on-crime narrative

    The plan also includes investments to regain control of 138 penitentiary facilities through drones, scanners, and metal detectors

    Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Tuesday unveiled in Brasília a public security plan worth around USD 2.25 billion aimed at weakening the finances of organized crime, regaining control of prisons, curbing arms trafficking, and improving homicide investigations, five months ahead of October's presidential election. The package is designed to give the government a distinct identity on one of the issues where public opinion sees the ruling party at its weakest against the right wing's punitive narrative.

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  • Tuesday, May 12th 2026 - 23:20 UTC

    The Trump-Xi summit in Beijing turns on five fronts: Iran, Taiwan, tariffs, rare earths, and AI

    Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian last week described the issue as “the core of China's fundamental interests and the political foundation” of the relationship

    The summit between US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping that begins on Wednesday in Beijing will unfold around an agenda concentrated on five main fronts: the US war against Iran, the Taiwan question, bilateral tariffs, Chinese exports of rare earths, and, according to The Wall Street Journal, an initial approach to managing the risks of artificial intelligence. It will be the first visit by a US president to the Chinese capital in nearly nine years and comes three days after China's Foreign Ministry released a propaganda video that revived the Soviet-era concept of “peaceful coexistence” to describe the bilateral relationship.

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  • Tuesday, May 12th 2026 - 14:14 UTC

    Strait of Hormuz closure, FAO warns of fertilizer scarcity and calendar for new planting season

    FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu said. “This is not only a geopolitical crisis, but also a disruption at the core of the global agri-food system.”

    The Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), QU Dongyu, warned that the global fertilizer scarcity caused by disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz will lead to lower yields and tightening food supplies in the latter half of 2026 and into 2027.

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  • Tuesday, May 12th 2026 - 13:31 UTC

    Brazil's inflation accelerates to 4.39% in April driven by food and pharmaceuticals

    The Central Bank of Brazil, which closely tracks the indicator, cut the Selic benchmark rate by half a percentage point at each of its two latest meetings, bringing it to 14.50% annually

    Year-on-year inflation in Brazil accelerated to 4.39% in April, up from 4.14% in March, pressured mainly by rising prices for food and pharmaceuticals, the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) reported on Tuesday. The national consumer price index advanced 0.67% from the previous month, 0.21 percentage points below March, reflecting a slower monthly pace even as the annual comparison continues to climb.

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  • Tuesday, May 12th 2026 - 13:28 UTC

    UK Defense minister “sick and tired of journalists and armchair generals” talking our military are ‘unprepared’

    UK Defense Readiness & Industry Minister Luke Pollard, during a late 2024 visit to the Falkland Islands (Pic BFSAI))

    In a contradictory remark he would later retract, UK Defense Readiness & Industry Minister Luke Pollard said he was sick and tired of “journalists and armchair generals” talking down the military, as he was pressed in response to a BFBS Forces News audience poll.

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  • Tuesday, May 12th 2026 - 13:21 UTC

    How a British prime minister is replaced: the keys to a possible Starmer succession

    The statutory procedure requires at least one-fifth of the Labour parliamentary group to call for leadership primaries in order to force the prime minister to step aside. Photo: Phil Noble / REUTERS

    British Prime Minister Keir Starmer faces the most serious political crisis since his arrival at Downing Street in July 2024, but a potential change at the head of the government runs up against a web of internal Labour Party rules, the absence of a consensus candidate, and the personal obstacles weighing on the figure best positioned in internal polling. Starmer, who won the 2024 general election with an overwhelming majority, has flatly ruled out resigning despite mounting pressure from his own parliamentary group following Labour's collapse in the local and regional elections of 1 May.

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  • Tuesday, May 12th 2026 - 13:14 UTC

    Argentina sees new university protest as government pledges post-march dialogue

    The National Interuniversity Council estimates that transfers to national universities fell by 45.6% in real terms between 2023 and 2026, while sector salaries rose 158% against accumulated inflation

    Argentina's public universities are staging the fourth Federal University March on Tuesday against the budget adjustment imposed by Javier Milei's government, with the main rally in Plaza de Mayo and simultaneous mobilizations in the country's major cities, while the national administration announced it will meet with rectors after the protest to discuss the allocation of funds for university hospitals. The day combines a strike with suspended classes, a broad opposition turnout, and an official discursive shift aimed at opening a dialogue channel without yielding on the substance of the dispute.

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  • Tuesday, May 12th 2026 - 03:14 UTC

    Peru's runoff to pit Fujimori's daughter against Castillo's political heir

    An Ipsos poll released in late April places both candidates in a technical tie at 38%, with 17% reporting they would cast blank or spoiled ballots

    Peru will hold a presidential runoff on 7 June pitting Keiko Fujimori, daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), against Roberto Sánchez, a congressman and self-proclaimed political heir of Pedro Castillo, the rural schoolteacher who reached the presidency in 2021 and is now serving an eleven-year, five-month sentence for the failed self-coup he attempted on 7 December 2022.

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  • Tuesday, May 12th 2026 - 02:27 UTC

    Labs across three continents confirm passenger-to-passenger spread on hantavirus cruise

    Hantavirus shows a reduced capacity to mutate compared with other pathogens such as influenza or coronaviruses

    A comparative genomic analysis of five people infected aboard the polar cruise ship MV Hondius has confirmed that the hantavirus spread from passenger to passenger during the voyage, according to a study published on the open scientific platform Viriological and produced jointly by laboratories in South Africa, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. The scientific finding supports the hypothesis handled since the outbreak began, which has left ten people infected and three dead, and completes the epidemiological picture after weeks of investigation.

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  • Tuesday, May 12th 2026 - 00:54 UTC

    The Rise of the 'Yen-style' Advantage: Why US Digital Nomads are Flocking to the Southern Cone

    Photo: Unsplash

    Make it make sense. The math of the average American career is getting increasingly difficult to reconcile with the reality of the American housing market. Those traditional milestones of, say, a $3,000-a-month studio in a high-growth tech hub, have started to feel like a structural trap rather than a success story.