
A senior Brazilian government official called Argentine President Javier Milei an imbecile after he announced he will travel to Brazil on July 25 to take part in the launch of the presidential candidacy of Flávio Bolsonaro, the main opposition figure to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
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A new contingent of Argentine rescue workers left for Venezuela on Sunday to relieve the search-and-rescue teams deployed after the June 24 twin earthquake, which according to the official toll has left 2,954 dead and more than 16,500 injured. The dispatch coincides with the start of the withdrawal of most international missions, at the point when operations are shifting away from rescuing survivors toward the recovery phase.

Within the span of a week, the two opposing positions in the Falklands dispute were laid out clearly in two separate arenas: South American governments' backing for Argentina's sovereignty claim, and the defense of self-determination that two representatives of the Islanders took to the United Nations. Neither pronouncement was a reply to the other, but together they illustrate the distance between two hard-to-reconcile logics.

The fight against transnational organized crime emerged as one of the central themes of Mercosur's 68th summit of heads of state, held on Tuesday in the Paraguayan city of Luque, where several leaders called for building a regional security architecture with concrete goals and deadlines. The issue ran through the addresses of the bloc's presidents and those of its associated states, at a summit where Paraguay handed over the pro tempore presidency to Uruguay.

Uruguay's President Yamandú Orsi on Tuesday assumed the pro tempore presidency of Mercosur and set as a priority of his term to keep modernizing the bloc and consolidate its trade opening, following the provisional entry into force of the agreement with the European Union. We want a more modern, more dynamic Mercosur, more open to the world, but above all a Mercosur that produces concrete results for its citizens, he said as he received the rotating presidency from host Santiago Peña of Paraguay, at the 68th summit of heads of state held in Luque.

Mercosur on Tuesday announced the start of trade negotiations with Japan and reaffirmed its intention to diversify alliances toward Asia during its biannual summit in Asunción, where Paraguay handed over the bloc's pro tempore presidency to Uruguay. The meeting, however, closed without an agreement on the internal distribution of export quotas under the treaty with the European Union, and again exposed the differences between Argentina and Brazil over the bloc's direction.

Argentine President Javier Milei will take part on Monday and Tuesday in the Mercosur summit of heads of state in Asunción, a meeting whose trade agenda —led by the agreement with the European Union— will coexist with open political tensions with Brazil that threaten to overshadow the bloc's progress. Paraguay's Foreign Minister, Rubén Ramírez, confirmed the presence of seven leaders, among them the presidents of Chile, José Antonio Kast, and Ecuador, Daniel Noboa.

The internal distribution of export quotas under the trade agreement between Mercosur and the European Union will dominate much of the debate at the bloc's summit of heads of state, to be held on June 30 in Asunción, where Paraguay will hand over the six-month presidency to Uruguay. The meeting coincides with the 35th anniversary of the Treaty of Asunción, the bloc's founding charter.

By Gwynne Dyer - Tulsi Gabbard, the recently resigned, retired or fired U.S. Director of National Intelligence told Congress just two months ago that U.S. intelligence agencies had concluded Iran was not building nuclear weapons. Indeed, she said, experts also determined Iran had not resumed its suspended 2003 nuclear weapons program.

Uruguay will assume the pro tempore presidency of Mercosur on June 30, during a summit of the bloc in Paraguay, with the distribution of the quotas from the agreement with the European Union (EU) among the main items on its agenda. Foreign Minister Mario Lubetkin said the country is already preparing to take on that role and that “the technical teams are already working.”