International

Argentina govt loses Congress majority, seeks opposition dialogue

AFP

Argentina’s center-left President Alberto Fernandez called for dialogue with the opposition after Sunday’s midterm parliamentary elections, with projections showing his governing coalition has lost control of Congress.

Ahead of the election, there was widespread discontent over the state of the economy, which has been in recession since 2018 and was hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Having already been in the minority in the Chamber of Deputies — the lower house — Fernandez’s Frente de Todos (Everyone’s Front) coalition looked set to drop from 41 to 35 seats in the 72-member Senate, based on projections with over 90 percent of votes counted.

“If the numbers are confirmed, effectively we’ve lost the quorum in the Senate,” a government source told AFP.

This would be the first time since Argentina’s return to democracy in 1983 that Peronism — a leftist movement based on former president Juan Peron that now covers a broad spectrum of political leanings — would not have a majority in the Senate.

Fernandez will now likely be forced to make concessions to the opposition during the last two years of his mandate in order to pass laws or make key appointments, including to the judiciary.

“We need to prioritize national agreements if we want to resolve the challenges we face,” said Fernandez, adding that he would approach opposition groups to try to find common ground.

“An opposition that is responsible and open to dialogue is a patriotic opposition.”

Nearly half the seats in the Chamber of Deputies were up for grabs, as well as a third of Senate seats, in Sunday’s vote.

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Interior Minister Wado de Pedro said turnout in the compulsory election was between 71 and 72 percent.

– ‘Difficulty ahead’ –

Fernandez had been on the defensive since the Frente suffered a bruising defeat in September’s primaries, picking up just 33 percent of the vote compared with 37 percent for the main opposition group Juntos por el Cambio (Together for Change), led by Fernandez’s predecessor Mauricio Macri.

“These next two years are going to be difficult,” Macri said Sunday, while assuring voters that his coalition would “act with great responsibility.”

Fernandez “will have to negotiate law by law,” said Raul Aragon, political scientist at the National University of La Matanza.

He predicted the opposition would be open to talks though.

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“It won’t serve them to not engage in dialogue, and appear anti-democratic” before the presidential elections in 2023, Aragon said.

Since the primaries, the government had been in damage limitation mode, announcing last month a deal with the private sector to freeze prices on more than 1,500 basic goods following street protests demanding greater food subsidies.

It has also increased the minimum wage and family allowances.

The government’s supporters have been forced to keep a low profile during the long pandemic lockdowns.

But pro-government trade unions and social organizations recently announced they would march in support of Fernandez on Wednesday, regardless of the election results.

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– IMF debt looms –

Argentina’s GDP dropped 9.9 percent last year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The country has one of the world’s highest inflation rates, at 40 percent so far this year, and a poverty rate of 42 percent for a population of 45 million.

“I fear for the economy,” pastry worker Oscar Navarro told AFP on Sunday, without revealing his vote.

“Salaries are not sufficient. Whoever wins, it will take a long time for the country to recover.”

The government is also in the midst of a tricky renegotiation with the International Monetary Fund over the repayment of a $44 billion debt, originally secured by the Macri government in 2018.

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“In this new stage, we will deepen our efforts to secure a sustainable deal with the IMF,” said Fernandez.

He said the country needed to get past the “uncertainties that come with unsustainable debt,” while creating jobs and reducing inflation.

If Fernandez does not manage to reach a new repayment schedule, Argentina will have to repay $19 billion in 2022 and as much again in 2023.

International

Science Brings Back the Extinct Direwolf with Successful De-Extinction Project

Science has achieved what was once confined to the realm of fantasy: the direwolf, extinct for over 10,000 years and popularized by the Game of Thrones series, has been brought back to life thanks to an ambitious de-extinction project led by the biotechnology company Colossal Biosciences.

The Texas-based company announced on Monday the birth of three direwolf pups, created through a combination of cloning and genetic editing. The pups include two males, Romulus and Remus, both six months old, and a three-month-old female named Khaleesi, in honor of the character from the HBO series.

The process that led to these wolves began with the extraction of ancient DNA from a 13,000-year-old tooth and a 72,000-year-old skull. Using this genetic material, scientists edited 20 genes in the cells of a modern gray wolf, its closest relative. These cells were then implanted into domestic dog eggs for gestation.

“The birth of these pups is a huge milestone,” said Ben Lamm, CEO of Colossal, who emphasized that this is the world’s first successful de-extinction. “This achievement shows that our technology works and marks the beginning of a new era for species conservation,” he said.

Central America

Trump Administration Asks Supreme Court to Block Return of Deported Salvadoran

The Trump administration on Monday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block a lower court order requiring the return of a Salvadoran migrant who was mistakenly sent to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador, despite having legal protection from deportation.

The U.S. government has until Monday to bring Kilmer Armado Ábrego García back to the United States, as ordered by Judge Paula Xinis in a Maryland court.

According to The Washington Post, the administration argues it lacks authority to comply because Ábrego García is currently in Salvadoran custody.

The U.S. had appealed Judge Xinis’ ruling to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, but the court declined to act immediately—prompting the administration to take the case to the Supreme Court. In its filing, the government stated that “the Constitution entrusts the President, not federal district courts, with the conduct of foreign diplomacy and the protection of the nation from foreign terrorists, including through deportation.”

Ábrego García, a resident of Prince George’s County, Maryland, and married to a U.S. citizen, came under scrutiny in 2019 after an informant claimed he was a member of the MS-13 gang (Mara Salvatrucha).

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Although he was initially slated for deportation, a judge later granted him a stay of removal after he requested asylum, according to the lawsuit.

Nevertheless, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained him on March 12, claiming his status had changed, and sent him to a detention center in Texas.

International

Teachers in Southern Mexico Bring Education to Stranded Migrant Children

Teachers in southern Mexico have created a program to provide classes for migrant children stranded in the region, following a year-over-year increase of over 70% in irregular migration among minors—many of whom lose months or even years of education during their journey toward North America.

In Tapachula, the largest Mexican city bordering Central America, three teachers offer preschool, elementary, and secondary education through the Chiapas State Migrant Education Program (Pemch).

This initiative has been replicated in key municipalities across Chiapas, including San Cristóbal de Las Casas, the capital Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Palenque, Comitán, and other border towns. Currently, there are around 1,345 migrant students and a total of 35 teachers working across farms and shelters.

Pablo Arriaga Velázquez, a teacher with the migrant education program in Tapachula, told EFE that the project was born in response to the large number of migrant minors, as enrolling them in regular schools is often difficult.