Sunday, October 16, 2016 Vidal mixes old and new in police reformWith tackling crime as one of the main goals of her administration, Buenos Aires Governor María Eugenia Vidal has had to tread a fine line between continuity and turning the provincial police inside out since she was sworn-in in December. Plans to reform the Buenos Aires Penitentiary Service are also underway. Old habitsDespite the efforts at reform, it is clear that the Bonaerense has not completely won over the Vidal administration as officers from four federal security branches have been set aside to be dispatched to Greater Buenos Aires and Mar del Plata in the coming days amid concerns over growing violence and drug-trafficking. Vidal did replace Hugo Matzkin, the former head of the police, with Pablo Bressi — a Bonaerense insider who had been in charge of the drug trafficking unit before his promotion. The provincial administration vowed to investigate Bressi and so far has said that it has found no evidence of wrongdoing, ensuring that in the first face-off between politics and the police, Vidal sided with her top cop.

Sunday, October 16, 2016 The electronic vote, a political suicideBy Mempo GiardinelliFor the HeraldIt is widely known, proverbial even, that the Argentine political class commits suicide every now and then. That is why the government is now seeking to hastily apply the single electronic ballot system throughout the country starting with next year’s elections. Electronic voting is, at this moment, the greatest immediate danger facing Argentine democracy. A true detritus of the wonderful cybernetic progress of these times, the single electronic ballot system is being questioned and has faced backlash throughout the world because it fundamentally thwarts the voters’ control over the elections. This is why England, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland and Finland have already banned electronic voting after trying it out for a few years.

BA Expat Comedy is back! The self-proclaimed “best and only stand up show in English in Buenos Aires” returns on Thursday nights to bring in the weekend with a laugh. Eliana La Casa was up next, playing the part of the sex-crazed millennial girl-next-door well, with entertaining insights into dating and the Tinder scene in Buenos Aires. And more laughs is exactly what the BA Expat Comedy crew intend to deliver with their arrival back onto the stage this evening. BA Expat Comedy: 8pm, Taburete Comedy Club (Jorge Luis Borges 1655).

Thursday, October 13, 2016 Sarmiento tunnelling finally kicks offThe tunneling of the Sarmiento train line could take up to four years and has a budget of US$3 billion. The works have a budget of US$3 billion and a consortium by the name of Consorcio Nuevo Sarmiento (CNS) will carry out the works. The tunnelling machine, named the Argentina, reportedly cost 40 million euros and requires a 15-person team of specialists to operate. Only in March of this year three bids were awarded to SES SA, of which Caputo has a 50 percent stake, by the City of Buenos Aires. Re-launchThe announcement that the tunnelling machine was finally starting up after having been initially moved into place in 2012 included the presence of Transport Minister Guillermo Dietrich, Buenos Aires Governor María Eugenia Vidal and Buenos Aires Mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta.

The man you’re seeing is Hipólito Yrigoyen, and there’s a reason he’s being so widely celebrated now. And 100 years ago today, he become the country’s first president elected via a popular, secret vote. Though sanctioned under president Luis Saenz Peña in 1912, it nonetheless would pave the way for Yrigoyen to take the presidency four years later. And it was a moment Yrigoyen would have trouble repeating while in office. The Radical party itself was never the same after Yrigoyen.

Thousands of demonstrators packed the Plaza de Congreso yesterday evening to call for justice for the victims of “insecurity, injustice, and impunity” in Argentina. Maciel and Novaresio read a list of demands that included creating a registry that would record victims and crimes that had gone unpunished. They called for legal processes that fairly include victims in their own cases, and for the provision of effective legal assistance to victims. Earlier in the day, Gustavo Ferrari, the Minister of Justice for Buenos Aires province, said that the government had been working on new legislation to ensure more transparent legal processes and legal counsel to victims. Despite harsh rhetoric aimed at the state’s law enforcement and legal institutions, the event also displayed national pride.

Argentina's First National Asado Competition from Argentina Indy on Vimeo. The first National Asado Competition took place on the streets of Buenos Aires this weekend. As they heated up their grill, Daniel and Diego from Jujuy claimed that “it’s essential to have good meat and charcoal. “The secret of a good asado is to have patience, good charcoal, and good fuel to make a fire which never goes out. You need patience to cook, you can’t cook an asado in half an hour or in an hour.

Wednesday, October 12, 2016 Peru ex-president Humala faces graft probePeru’s then-president Ollanta Humala (right) and his wife Nadine Heredia attending a ceremony at the Government Palace in Lima, in 2015. A Peruvian prosecutor said earlier this year that the late Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, and two Brazilian construction companies may have bankrolled Humala’s presidential campaigns before he took office in 2011. Representatives for Humala and his wife, Nadine Heredia, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Earlier this year prosecutors barred Heredia from leaving the country as they probed her finances for evidence of undeclared contributions. But in 2011, after losing the 2006 presidential election, Humala kept Chávez at a distance and won after campaigning in the more moderate style.

The cries for justice and accountability echoed loudly in the city of Rosario on the evening of 8th September 2016. Rosario Sangra – ‘Rosario is Bleeding’ – was the cry. This kind of violence is all too routine for the citizens of Argentina’s third largest city, home to around 1.3m people including the greater Rosario area. In recent years the violence plaguing the city has received its fair share of national, and even international media coverage. The streets of Rosario, left once again to the patrol of the provincial police, slowly but surely began to succumb to high levels of violence.

Tuesday, October 11, 2016 CGT escalates ‘strike’ threatUnion and gov’t meet tomorrow to discuss end-of-year bonus, income taxes and other demandsWith the government’s 10-day grace period set to expire tomorrow, the CGT umbrella union warned yesterday that it will mobilize and organize an imminent general strike if it doesn’t receive an adequate response to the demands of its members. If Macri’s Cabinet doesn’t give the union any satisfactory proposals to their demands, the CGT promised to put their words to action and go on strike. “If the response from the government isn’t satisfactory, there will be a strike,” announced Carlos Acuña, who is part of the triumvirate leading the union. CGT finance secretary Abel Frutos also confirmed that a strike would be called, and that they only needed to fix a date. Dissent withinAlthough the CGT leadership almost confirmed yesterday that they would strike, other union leaders have upped the pressure on the triumvirate to take more assertive action or they would leave.

Former Colombian leader calls for detention of rebels, limit to politics Monday, October 10, 2016 Uribe names terms for new FARC peace dealFormer president of Colombia Álvaro Uribe (left) greets President Juan Manuel Santos at Nariño Palace in Bogotá, on Thursday. In a statement posted on Twitter, Uribe, now a senator, stressed the importance that drug-trafficking offences are not regarded as being part of rebellion activities. He promised the residents of Bojayá that he won’t give up on securing peace despite voters’ rejection of the deal. More than 96 percent of residents of Bojayá voted for the peace deal. “The victims have taught me that the capacity to forgive can overcome hatred and rancour.”Of the 81 municipalities nationwide hardest-hit by the internal conflict, 67 voted for the peace deal, according to the Bogotá-based Peace and Reconciliation Foundation.

Monday, October 10, 2016 Legendary Polish director Andrzej Wajda diesAndrzej Wajda speaks at the opening of a retrospective of his movies held on the occasion of his birthday in Warsaw, in March, 2016. Wajda had recently been hospitalized and died last night, his colleague, film director Jacek Bromski, told the Associated Press. “In 1945 it experienced an influx of Paris-educated professors, who painted beautifully in the French postimpressionist manner,” Wajda once said. They initiated a new current called the “Polish Film School,” which tells the stories of folk heroes from both during and after the war and challenges the national tradition of martyrdom and romantic heroism in art. In 2011, continuing the mission of the school, Wajda and Marczewski founded a film production studio — The Wajda Studio, which focuses on auteur film projects.

Monday, October 10, 2016 Clinton, Trump sling mud in ugly debateUS Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and US Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton take the stage without shaking hands at their presidential town hall debate at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, last night. Trump unexpectedly appeared live at a press conference hours before the debate with women who have accused the former president of rape and unwanted advances. The four women were seated with the Trump family in the front row of the audience of the debate hall. The tension between Trump and Clinton was palpable from the start of their 90-minute debate, the second time they have faced off in the presidential campaign. About Sanders, who eventually endorsed Clinton, Trump says, “I was so surprised to see him sign on with the devil.”Trump went on to repeat debunked claims that Clinton started rumours that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States.

But I think the media are going after ratings before going after the news. Macri referred to the “Dirty war” to describe the years of the dictatorship and Esteban Bullrich talks about “a new Conquest of the Desert”? I think that Macri wasn’t thinking about state terrorism in the 1980s or in the 1990s. Macri isn’t a youth, he is 15 years older than Obama when he took office for the first time. Macri is going to turn 60 while he is the president of Argentina.

Following investigation into late la plata judge suspected of graft Saturday, October 8, 2016 Court rules no statute of limitations for corruption casesA court in La Plata, Buenos Aires province took a step towards a possible radical change to Argentina’s laws surrounding graft after approving a request filed by Civic Coalition (CC) lawmaker and government ally Elisa Carrió to remove corruption charges under the current Criminal Code from the statute of limitations. Carrió previously demanded that statute limitations be removed for the criminal investigation into Miralles, who died in 2013 while the case was ongoing, as part of a broader effort to make corruption investigations open-ended and any subsequent prosecutions not restricted by time. PrecedentThe ruling was based on an interpretation of Article 36 of the national Constitution, which says that “corruption offenses punishable under Title XI of the Criminal Code” are not subject to the statute of limitations. Carrió has regularly campaigned for a tougher legal stance to fight corruption and argued with former political allies in 2014 that corruption should not be subjected to the statute of limitations, in the same way that a Supreme Court decision previously ruled that crimes against humanity cases should be exempted from such regulation. The “breakthrough” heralded by the CC leader reportedly made history as it is the first time a court had ruled in favour of removing the statute of limitations in a corruption case.