Thousands of Argentines poured into the streets on Monday, banging pots and honking car horns to demand the government resume talks to end a 100-day farmers strike that has blocked grain exports and emptied supermarket shelves of food.
The nationwide protests came as a pro-government activist warned that farm groups opposed to grain export taxes, allied with business groups and dissident members of Argentine President Cristina Fernandez’s Peronist party, were possibly attempting to topple her administration.
About 2,000 people banging pots and yelling “Dialogue Now!” gathered in front of the presidential residence outside Buenos Aires late on Monday.
The demonstrations demanding talks between the government and striking farmers were held in cities across Argentina, including one that drew at least 3,000 people in Gualeguaychu in Entre Rios Province.
The crisis began in March when Argentina’s center-left government raised export taxes on grains more than 10 percent, arguing that the profits farmers were earning from high world prices should be spread around to help the poor.
Farmers countered that they could barely make a living with the higher taxes and that they needed to reinvest profits in their farms to boost production and meet higher demand.
The two sides have since been locked in a bitter standoff in which on-again, off-again highway blockades by protesting farmers have emptied supermarket shelves of food in Argentina and blocked exports from one of the world’s leading exporters of soy beans and corn. The economic damage from the strike has led to fears of a recession.
Farmers reinitiated road blockades over the weekend after police broke up a protest and briefly arrested 19 activists, including prominent farm leader Alfredo de Angeli.
The protesters accuse the government of intransigence for refusing to negotiate their key demands, while the government accuses strikers of hurting Argentines by cutting the food supply.
“We have shown the government that we are a peaceful people. But let it be clear, Madam President, that we are not conspiring against your government. We only want you to govern for all sectors,” de Agneli, leader of the Entre Rios Agrarian Federation, said on Monday.
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person