AMIA: Judge requests extradition of former Iranian official
22° anniversary of attack Wednesday, July 20, 2016 AMIA: Judge requests extradition of former Iranian officialJudge Rodolfo Canicoba Corral submitted requests to Singapur and Malasia for the extradition of Alí Akbar Velayati, who was Iran’s Foreign Minister at the time of the 1994 AMIA deadly bombing in Buenos Aires. The request was submitted to those countries as it was known the former Iranian official Landed in those countries to offer several lectures. When asked if he would be willing to appear before an Argentine court, he responded that there's no reason why an Iranian official should have to respond to another nation. Last Monday, during a ceremony to commemorate a new anniversary of the tragedy, AMIA leaders and victims’ relatives urged the government to consider the probe a “state priority.” Accused of being one of the masterminds of the terrorist attack against the Jewish community centre which left 85 people killed, Velayati has denied his role in the bombing.
Source:Bueno Aires Herald
July 20, 2016 18:22 UTC
AFA head: priority is naming new coach
Martino quit the national team after losing the Copa América Centenario final to Chile in the United States. “There are many priorities but the national team needs a new coach. It will be a committee’s decision but we have to meet ourselves and consider all the options to make the right decision,” Pérez said on Radio Cooperativa yesterday. Messi decided to quit a few minutes after the painful defeat at the Copa América Centenario final, his fourth final defeat in a row with the national team. Argentina is the best team in the world and it has no coach,” he said on TN channel.
Source:Bueno Aires Herald
July 20, 2016 03:32 UTC
La Plata: federal court indicts former military officers for human rights abuses
8 Wednesday, July 20, 2016 La Plata: federal court indicts former military officers for human rights abusesA federal court in La Plata has indicted 21 suspects charged with crimes against humanity committed during the last military dictatorship (1976-1983) in Police Station No. 7 unit and the Intelligence 101 Detachment of La Plata, in coordination with the Buenos Aires provincial authorities. 8 of Buenos Aires province’s capital, which functioned as a clandestine detention centre during that period. The police station was just one link in the chain of clandestine detention centres that functioned in La Plata and in the surrounding areas. Retired officers Carlos del Señor Hidalgo Garzón and Ricardo Luis Von Kyaw are charged with kidnapping and torturing 81 people between 1976 and 1978 in the Greater Buenos Aires district of La Matanza.
Source:Bueno Aires Herald
July 20, 2016 03:11 UTC
The road to 2030: challenges in water scarcity, poverty and hunger
— The proportion of the global population suffering from hunger declined from 15 percent in 2000-2012 to 11 percent in 2014-2016. — Third-generation (3G) mobile-broadband covered 89 percent of the urban population but only 29 percent of the rural population last year. — In 2015, 6.6 billion people, or 91 percent of the global population, used an improved drinking water source, compared with 82 percent in 2000. — In 2013, 59 million children of primary school age were out of school and gender inequality remains a persistent challenge for countries worldwide. — Water scarcity affects more than two billion people worldwide.
Source:Bueno Aires Herald
July 20, 2016 03:11 UTC
Colombia high Court approves peace plebiscite
Wednesday, July 20, 2016 Colombia high Court approves peace plebisciteFormer president Uribe, critic of FARC negotiations, calls vote ‘a government trick,’ urges rejectionBOGOTÁ — A Colombian high court late Monday night ruled in favour of allowing a plebiscite to approve a peace deal being negotiated with Marxist FARC rebels that seeks to end more than five decades of war. A final peace accord could be signed in a question of weeks and the vote held by year-end. Yesterday Uribe, a leading critic of the government’s peace negotiations with the FARC, said that his Democratic Centre party had not decided whether to participate in the plebiscite on an eventual peace agreement endorsed late Monday night by the country’s own Constitutional Court. The Constitutional Court decision would allow the accords to be approved with 13 percent, or 4.4 million, of the electorate and would be a response to one question. Some 33 million of Colombia’s almost 49 million population are eligible to vote.
Source:Bueno Aires Herald
July 20, 2016 03:10 UTC
Chubut sells US$650M in oil-backed bonds
So far, however, with low interest rates across the globe, Argentina remains attractive in the short term. Investors have already absorbed some US$7.275bn in Argentine bonds over the last month and a half alone — much of that provincial debt. Wednesday, July 20, 2016 Chubut sells US$650M in oil-backed bondsProvince becomes latest to join in local debt spree after country’s return to global marketsArgentine borrowers continued to play the market yesterday, as the province of Chubut sold US$650 million in bonds at 7.75 percent interest, continuing the massive, months-long provincial debt spree. Sean Newman, a senior portfolio manager at Invesco, still sees further upside potential investing in provincial bonds despite the fact that their value has already improved in secondary markets over the last few weeks. The bonds will be backed by the province’s oil and gas royalties.
Source:Bueno Aires Herald
July 20, 2016 03:10 UTC
Where are the constructive alternatives?
Wednesday, July 20, 2016 Where are the constructive alternatives? Any third way out of this quandary must come from the political world since court rulings by definition must follow a binary logic of either rubberstamping Macri’s indigestible increases or reverting to an unsustainable status quo. It should not be a mission impossible to come up with a way of updating utility billing which is superior to the complete hash coming from Macri’s team, but this particular public service is nowhere to be found. The courts are showing signs of accelerating their always lethargic timetables to shorten the legal limbo surrounding the definition of gas pricing, but it should never have depended on them in the first place — this issue has always been a political problem which should have been resolved by the politicians. Much the same situation applies today — Macri deserves virtually all the criticism he is receiving and more but the opposition should also be showing the way ahead out of this predicament since going back to the absurd subsidy mountain is not an option.
Source:Bueno Aires Herald
July 20, 2016 03:10 UTC
Uruguay denies pulp mill pollution
After complaints from Gualeguaychú municipality Wednesday, July 20, 2016 Uruguay denies pulp mill pollutionThe new UPM pulp mill planned for construction near the Río Negro in Uruguay will have no effect on the Uruguay river, the neighbouring country’s environmental agency said yesterday. But Gauleguaychú’s government argues that the Río Negro eventually flows into the Uruguay river, which borders the Argentine province, and thus could affect Uruguay’s neighbours. “Uruguay was already able to analyze to pulp mills and follow how they worked, with no environmental impact at all in either of the previous two projects. “If the law is followed, everythings points to no pollution problems” in the river shared by both countries, Nario told Radio Sarandí. The plant will require a US$5-billion investment, the largest in the history of the country.
Source:Bueno Aires Herald
July 20, 2016 03:10 UTC
Extreme poverty affects 1 in 8 globally
On the day that a mass soup kitchen protest snarled traffic in the nation’s capital, drawing attention to the rising numbers of people living in poverty here, the UN said that one in eight live in extreme poverty globally. “This translated to one in eight people worldwide living in extreme poverty in 2012. Despite a significant drop from 2002 to 2012, the UN warned that 13 percent of the global population still remain mired in extreme poverty. Wednesday, July 20, 2016 Extreme poverty affects 1 in 8 globallyUN says Latin America leads the way in tackling hunger, but warns over high homicide ratesThe number of people living in extreme poverty across the world has halved over a 10-year period, a report by the United Nations declared yesterday. According to the Sustainable Development Goals Report, the proportion of the global population living below the extreme poverty line dropped by half between 2002 and 2012, from 26 to 13 percent.
Source:Bueno Aires Herald
July 20, 2016 02:48 UTC
Theatre world mourns icon Carlos Gorostiza
Wednesday, July 20, 2016 Theatre world mourns icon Carlos GorostizaArgentine playwright, novelist and theatre director Carlos Gorostiza, a revered icon of the local stage, died yesterday in Buenos Aires. Breaking new groundGorostiza was born on June 7, 1920, to Basque Argentine parents in the Buenos Aires neighbourhood of Palermo. Produced in a professional version by director Armando Discépolo at the prestigious Argentine Theatre, El puente was adapted into a film with Gorostiza directing it in 1950. Herald with Télam, online mediaThe local artistic scene yesterday came together online to pay tribute to theatre veteran Gorostiza. Following El puente’s success, Gorostiza returned to theatre direction, though without the draw of spectators he had earlier enjoyed.
Source:Bueno Aires Herald
July 20, 2016 02:48 UTC
Soup-kitchen protests highlight rising poverty
Wednesday, July 20, 2016 Soup-kitchen protests highlight rising povertyWith big pots full of soup, stew and milk, social organizations yesterday gathered at a hundred major Buenos Aires intersections to protest Mauricio Macri’s policies as well as to highlight the situation concerning the homeless in the city. The study also reports that the poverty rate is at its highest level in seven years now reaching one million people more. According to the report, poverty levels hit 29 percent in 2015 to reach 34.5 percent in the first trimester of this year. “Since we took office, we decided not to hide poverty because that stigmatizes and does not help to solve the problems,” Stanley said. After that, many groups marched to Plaza Congreso, where the organizations staged the closing rally to end the day.
Source:Bueno Aires Herald
July 20, 2016 02:48 UTC
50,000 suspended from jobs as Turkey targets education sector
ISTANBUL — Asserting that “all the evidence” points to a US-based Muslim cleric as the mastermind of last week’s failed coup, Turkey yesterday fired tens of thousands of teachers, university deans and others accused of ties to the plot as its purge continued. “A person of this kind can easily be extradited on grounds of suspicion,” said the spokesman, Ibrahim Kalin. Deep Split as Erdogan’s purge widens dramatically Wednesday, July 20, 2016 50,000 suspended from jobs as Turkey targets education sectorTurkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, right, shakes hands with Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili after having returned to the nation’s capital for the first time since an attempted coup in the country, at the presidential palace in Ankara, Turkey, yesterday. “And there is very strong suspicion for his involvement, for Gülen’s involvement, in this coup attempt. Turkish media, in rapid-fire reports, said the Education Ministry had fired 15,200 educators, while the Interior Ministry dismissed 8,777 employees and Turkey’s Board of Higher Education called for the deans’ resignations.
Source:Bueno Aires Herald
July 20, 2016 02:48 UTC
Venezuela edges closer to constitutional crisis
Wednesday, July 20, 2016 Venezuela edges closer to constitutional crisisCARACAS — Venezuela could be heading toward a constitutional crisis, to add to its economic collapse, after the opposition-controlled National Assembly challenged the power of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice that backs President Nicolás Maduro. The National Assembly last week voted to strip 13 of 32 Supreme Tribunal of Justice judges of their powers and said any decisions the justices participated in would be invalid. Diosdado Cabello, a government lawmaker, said the three lawmakers would probably end up in jail if reinstated, adding weight to Maduro’s repeated threats to close down the National Assembly. Lawmakers are now studying the appointment of its own judges, according to the head of the National Assembly President Henry Ramos Allup, of the opposition coalition, Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD). “The opposition appears to be taking a calculated risk,” Francisco Rodriguez, chief economist at Torino Capital in New York, said Monday.
Source:Bueno Aires Herald
July 19, 2016 23:26 UTC
S&P pulls back from record; Dow notches eighth day of gains
Tuesday, July 19, 2016 S&P pulls back from record; Dow notches eighth day of gainsThe S&P 500 pulled back from record highs on Tuesday, while the Dow industrials edged up for an eighth straight day of gains, as investors digested mixed earnings reports amid lowered expectations for global economic growth. The Dow's eighth straight session of gains marked its longest winning streak since March 2013. Even with the economic concerns triggered by Britain's recent vote, the S&P 500 and Dow have hit record highs in the past week. The S&P 500 lost 3.11 points, or 0.14 percent, to 2,163.78 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 19.41 points, or 0.38 percent, to 5,036.37. Netflix's disappointing quarterly results weighed on the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq, while Johnson & Johnson's strong earnings and forecast helped prop up the Dow.
Source:Bueno Aires Herald
July 19, 2016 20:26 UTC
US Republican Party formally nominates Trump for president
After eliminating 16 party rivals, warring with much of the Republican establishment and provoking controversy at the party convention, Donald Trump on Tuesday had his name formally placed in nomination for the White House. Senator Jeff Sessions, an early backer of Trump, placed the New York businessman's name in nomination, calling him "a warrior and a winner." Senator Mike Lee said efforts by some delegates to block Trump's nomination appeared finished. The alphabetical roll call vote began with Alabama. Despite threats of another chaotic day, anti-Trump Republican U.S.
Source:Bueno Aires Herald
July 19, 2016 20:23 UTC