Argentina will be “worse than before” in the coming months, but reducing the fiscal deficit is the only recipe to “avoid catastrophe,” the new Minister of Economy, Luis Caputo, announced this Monday in a package of measures with little flavor.

“We are facing the worst inheritance in our history, repressed prices and debts of more than 400,000 million dollars. If we continue as we are we will inevitably lead to hyperinflation. We can reach levels of 15,000 percent annually, with milk going from 400 pesos per liter to 60,000 pesos in one year.. Our mission is to avoid this catastrophe,” Caputo said in a message that, without explanation, was delayed more than two hours from the originally scheduled time.

Caputo, who was minister and president of the Central Bank briefly during the administration of Mauricio Macri (2015-2019), was chosen by the ultraliberal Javier Milei for the announcement of an economic plan that ultimately was not such.

If the previous president, the Peronist Alberto Fernández, boasted of not believing in economic plans, in his first steps as president, Milei did not offer epic or groundbreaking decisions, but rather a package of financial measures. The obsession: a “fiscal anchor” to avoid the third hyperinflation in less than 35 years in Argentina.

“This is an emergency package whose purpose is to neutralize the crisis and stabilize economic variables,” said the minister, whose expertise is in Finance, and not in the real economy.

Among the announcements is the devaluation of the peso in the official market: one dollar, which until Tuesday cost 400 pesos, will be worth 800. What is not clear is the final value, since the use of foreign currency is burdened with multiple taxes in the third largest economy in Latin America.

“The genesis of our problem has always been fiscal. Those that appear as problems are actually the consequence of how this deficit has been financed, which is when more is spent than what is collected,” added Caputo, in a speech that tried to be didactic, but only half succeeded..

“If there is an overabundance of oranges, the price of oranges falls,” he said to exemplify what happens from the uncontrolled issuance of pesos that occurred during Fernández's four-year term.

“It is the first time in more than a hundred years that a candidate explains this, that people understand it and that people vote for him very largely.. We are facing a historic opportunity, society understood that there is no more money, that we cannot spend more than what we collect,” insisted Caputo, who when speaking of “the people” paradoxically showed a distance from the citizens who were intended zoom in.

Volodimir Zelensky and Joe Biden met this Tuesday in a meeting marked not so much by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but by the blocking of military aid to that country by the US Republican opposition.. With less than a hundred hours until the US Congress suspends its sessions for Christmas, US weapons deliveries to kyiv are about to end right in the middle of winter and while Russia continues its offensive in Eastern Ukraine. Not giving aid would be “a Christmas gift” for the Kremlin, Biden said after the meeting. But everything indicates that that is what is going to happen.. Although the US president announced $200 million more in weapons for kyiv at the beginning of the meeting, Washington is literally scraping the bottom of the barrel of aid for Ukraine approved a year ago..

For the moment, the only thing Washington can do is deliver more information obtained by its spy services to kyiv and, in the longer term, strengthen industrial cooperation between both countries so that Ukraine has more autonomy to manufacture its own weapons.. For this reason, Zelensky met with Biden accompanied, among others, by his Minister of Strategic Industries, Alexander Kamyshin.. On the American side, in addition to Biden, the two architects of US foreign and security policy participated, the Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, and the National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan.. Another possibility is that Biden uses his powers as president, but that solution would be politically very controversial, given that about half of the American public believes that Ukraine is receiving too much support.

In the short term, what counts are the weapons. And it seems impossible that they will arrive before, hopefully, mid-January. By then, it may be too late for Ukraine to maintain current front lines.. For this reason, according to the Washington Post, Zelensky issued a warning: if Ukraine is defeated in a conventional war by Russia, it will resort to guerrilla warfare.

It is a promise and a warning, because the US knows that guerrillas are, by definition, more difficult to control than conventional armies subject to the authority of a government.. Washington is also aware that there are NATO allies — such as Poland and the Baltics — who would most likely support a partisan movement in Ukraine, regardless of what the US says.. A guerrilla war would ultimately increase the possibility that NATO would become embroiled in the conflict.

That was one of Zelensky's messages in his meetings with the president of the House of Representatives, the 'Trumpist' Mike Johnson, who is one of the main people responsible for the paralysis of aid, and with several senators.. The Ukrainian president also addressed the Senate, where the Republicans have also blocked aid but are more flexible. Zelensky insisted that the idea of a negotiation to end the conflict, suggested by some Republicans, is not realistic, and summed it up in one sentence: “Putin does not need to negotiate.”. To date, Moscow continues to demand the same thing as a year ago: a neutral and demilitarized Ukraine, which would turn that country into a puppet similar to Belarus for a neighbor like Russia, with 5,000 atomic bombs on the other side of the border.

But Zelensky did not convince the Republicans, who with each passing day lean more in the direction of the isolationism that their party renounced in the 1940s, although an appreciable part of their base sympathizes with Vladimir Putin.. Officially, the Republican Party demands a tougher fight against illegal immigration, something that is impossible for Democrats to accept, especially in an election year and with an unpopular president running for reelection like Joe Biden.

No one publicly confronted Zelensky. In fact, Johnson said that “we stand with Ukraine and against Putin's brutal invasion,” although he called for a clear strategy from the Biden Government on the war beyond helping Ukraine defend itself.. But, no one from the opposition changed their mind after the visit either.. As Republican Senator Roger Wicker said, “both parties are going to have to negotiate very seriously and stop reaffirming their positions over and over again.” By the time they reach an agreement, it could be too late for Ukraine.

It has been the trial of the century. Every gesture of the accused, every phrase of the president of the court, every reply of the four defense lawyers, every detail of the witnesses' statements immediately jumped to the media and social networks.. The recent ruling of the Constitutional Court against the budgetary tricks of the Government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz did not have as much echo, it did not awaken the voracity of the Germans.

But anyone who thinks that a mass murderer, a former Nazi, a pedophile or a corrupt head of state sat on the bench is wrong.. On the bench was the Jewish musician Gil Ofarim, 41 years old.. He was accused of defamation and false accusations for a video published two years ago on Instagram in which he accused reception staff at The Westin hotel in Leipzig of anti-Semitic discrimination..

Apparently, when Ofarim tried to check in, the manager Markus W. He rejected him and asked him – according to the singer's vision – to “keep” his necklace with the Star of David.. Ofarim, offended, recorded a video narrating what happened and four million followers clicked on it.

National outrage spread to Berlin government circles. The hotel was seen as a haven for racists, its manager was publicly criticized on social media and the receptionist was fired.. In addition, his address was published on the Internet and he received death threats..

The Government's Anti-Semitism Commissioner, Felix Klein, expressed his condolences to Ofarim, Schleswig-Holstein's Education Minister, Karin Prien, immediately demanded “personal consequences” and the Federal Government's Commissioner for East Germany, Marco Wanderwitz encouraged society. to rise up against “the anti-Semitism that is among us.

The trial started with a spectacle. Ofarim's defense lawyer, Alexander Stevens, opened his intervention with a plea of almost an hour, when the normal time is between five and 10 minutes.. Stevens spoke on the subject of “truth” as if he were in the pulpit. He compared the 'Ofarim case' with the classic 'Me too' cases, and, logically, spoke of anti-Semitism.

But his client's version fell apart. Ofarim's four lawyers tried to discredit the prosecution witnesses as unreliable with sometimes scandalous accusations, until the experts spoke.

The hotel's surveillance cameras had documented the musician's angry gestures, but experts could not confirm that the singer was wearing the chain with the Star of David at that time, which was hanging from his neck when the video was recorded.. Anti-Semitic resentment evaporated. The hypothesis was imposed that Ofarim decided to assert his Jewish status to accuse the hotel of anti-Semitism for the simple reason that the reception did not give him VIP treatment allowing him to skip the line to check in.. What hurt him was his ego.

For Ofarim, the result of the trial has been a moral disaster. Before the sentence was read, he admitted having invented the incident at the hotel and apologized.. The scandal was huge. The politicians who threw the stone in his favor hid their hands and the Jewish community accused him of having weakened the fight against anti-Semitism.. To try to fix it, Ofarim's lawyers explained that he decided to confess to avoid an unfair sentence.. They made it worse.

Volodimir Zelensky arrived in Washington this Monday on a desperate mission: save US aid to his country so that Ukraine can face the Russian invasion. At stake are the 61.4 billion dollars (59.5 billion euros) that Joe Biden's Government wants to deliver to kyiv and that would allow Ukraine to resist at least throughout 2024, an electoral year in which legislative activity will be practically paralyzed. .

But Zelensky is not the only one in Washington lobbying on Ukraine. Your enemies have also arrived. As reported on Sunday by The Guardian newspaper, the Trumpist think tank Heritage Foundation is holding a closed-door meeting between today and tomorrow in which advisors to Hungarian President Viktor Orban will talk with Republican congressmen.. Although the official agenda is to discuss the “culture wars” – fundamentally, gender issues – it seems unlikely that they will not touch on the Ukrainian issue.. Orban has blocked the delivery of €50 billion from the EU to Ukraine, and has clearly aligned himself with Vladimir Putin in the war.

Republican opposition opposes aid. Their official position is that, to approve it, Democrats must agree to immigration reform. But they don't even have a clear position. In the Senate they demand a reform of asylum legislation, so that it is more difficult for the Administration to accept newcomers under that assumption and, in addition, expand the so-called express deportations, which allow officials to return immigrants to their countries. of origin without the intervention of a judge. In the House of Representatives, they basically demand to implement the immigration policy that Donald Trump promised, including the construction of hundreds of kilometers of the wall with Mexico.

The first of these options is unacceptable for Democrats. The second is, rather, anathema. The White House knows that it has a very small margin to give in on immigration because the Democratic left considers that political chapter non-negotiable.. Furthermore, a portion of young Democratic voters, whom Biden needs to win the election, are already furious with the president for his unconditional support for Israel in Gaza.. If we add to this the abandonment of the immigration cause, Biden can now begin to think about how he is going to pack his bags to return to Delaware in January 2025.

Immigration as an excuse

But immigration is just an excuse. Republicans do not want the US to support Ukraine. A poll by the Michigan Ross company for the Financial Times newspaper reveals that 65% of that party's voters believe that the United States is giving too much aid to kyiv. Among independents, the figure falls to 52%, and with Democrats, to 32%. Aid to Ukraine is not popular in the United States, largely due to the proliferation on social networks of all kinds of atrocities about Zelensky's alleged yachts, the trafficking of children from Ukraine to feed the world's pedophiles, or even the creation of Covid-19 in CIA laboratories in that country.

All these atrocities have permeated public opinion. Added to them is the sympathy of the Republicans towards Vladimir Putin, whom they see as a political model, and whose system of Government is very similar to the one that Donald Trump is saying he is going to put into practice if he wins the elections, including arrest of journalists and political rivals and banning the broadcasting rights of the MSNBC television network, which is highly critical of him.

Minutes after giving his first speech as president of Argentina and swearing in Congress, Javier Milei got into a Mercedes-Benz CLK Cabriolet that took him to the Casa Rosada. During the transfer of the ultraliberal, an individual threw a glass bottle at him that passed a few centimeters from the head of the new president. At his side was his sister Karina, who was the first to notice the flying object.

After an intense search, the aggressor was identified this Monday as Gastón Ariel Mercanzini, 51 years old, as confirmed by the Minister of Security, Waldo Wolff.. He explained that, as soon as the attack occurred, the man, who received a loud boo from those who were next to him, was detained by police officers but was released instantly because at that moment no one had realized the seriousness of the incident.. However, the videos that circulated on the networks later triggered alarms and were essential for the identification of the man.

The projectile hit one of the police guards accompanying Milei, causing minor injuries to his head.. The cash suffered a cut for which he had to be treated by doctors on the side of the street. The situation went unnoticed by the majority of witnesses, even in the media that were capturing the libertarian's transfer live, but network users warned about the bottle that passed very close to Milei in what could have been a real tragedy.

The incident occurred on Rivadavia and Rodríguez Peña streets and the cell phones of those present captured the glass projectile that hit the head of one of the guards who was traveling next to the vehicle.. The case is being investigated by the Argentine Federal Police (PFA).

For Sunday's operation, the Argentine Government summoned the Gendarmerie, the Prefecture and the Airport Security Police to coordinate a Unified Command that was responsible for custody and protection in all related acts, as well as safeguarding security. of dignitaries and special guests. The City Police and the National Directorate of Criminal Intelligence of the Ministry of National Security also participated in the deployment along with the other forces.

Patricia Bullrich, new Minister of Security, published on the social network member of the presidential custody of the Federal Police. Which he makes pay”.

As soon as he arrived at the Casa Rosada, Milei received on Sunday the King of Spain, Felipe VI, and the presidents Volodimir Zelenski, of Ukraine, Luis Lacalle Pou, of Uruguay, Santiago Peña, of Paraguay, Gabriel Boric, of Chile and Daniel Novoa , from Ecuador. In addition, former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro was present.

It was 10 seconds until the midday news bulletin was broadcast on the BBC.. Presenter Maryam Moshiri simulated the countdown and, as a joke with her colleagues, raised her middle finger while raising her eyebrows and gesticulating playfully at the camera.

The news program started like this, with the presenter 'stretching the bird', as they say in the British Isles. Or what is the same, 'giving the finger' to the spectators who were left speechless: until the presenter realized that they were on the air and announced very seriously: “Live from London, this is the news from the BBC…”

The joke went unnoticed for hours, but someone leaked the clip and the finger went viral on the networks and went around the world.. The BBC opened an internal investigation and producer Robert Coxwell vengefully warned: “Someone's Christmas holidays are going to come early.”

The commotion reached such a point that the presenter was forced to apologize on her X account: “Hello everyone. Yesterday, right before the news show, I was joking with the crew in the studio. “I pretended to count to 10 with all my fingers until I reached one, not realizing at the time that it would be caught on camera.”

“It was a private joke, and I'm very sorry it was broadcast,” Moshiri added.. “It was not my intention and I apologize.. I didn't want to 'stretch the bird' to the viewers. “It was a silly joke for my teammates.”. With his hyper-professional face, Moshiri immediately went on to recount the appearance of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson before the Covid investigation, which has fueled speculation about the possible recipient of digitus impudicus, as the Romans called it.. There was also a rumor that the finger was aimed at Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his plans to deport migrants pending asylum applications to Rwanda, the second news of the day.

In any case, Maryam Moshiri has become world famous for her eloquence and telegenicity.. Born 46 years ago in Tehran, she lived with her family in the United Kingdom since she was a child. She was a correspondent for Al Jazeera before making the jump to the BBC, working for 15 years in news programs such as The Business Briefing, The Context and The Daily Global. .

Last September, Moshiri also made headlines due to a technical problem on another news program, when he was announcing the story of the supermoon and the video did not appear on time.. “I'm sorry we can't see the images,” he said, while using his hands to make a circle in front of the cameras to simulate the moon.. The recent gaffe has brought to mind a slip that occurred in 2010, when cameras caught BBC weatherman Tomasz Schafernaker giving the middle finger to presenter Simon McCoy.. and surreptitiously putting it to his chin when he realized that they were in the air.

Two years later, the singer MIA gave the note in the Superbowl final by showing the famous finger and exonerating herself by claiming that it was “a spiritual gesture of the Hindu goddess Matangi”. Then, as now, quotes from anthropologist Desmond Morris abounded, reminding us that it is “one of the oldest known offenses” and that its interpretation is the same in all cultures: “The middle finger is the penis and the fingers bent on each side are the testicles.