MercoPress

Ibero-American foreign ministers meeting in Madrid unanimously approved a special communiqué backing Argentina’s sovereignty claim over the Falklands and calling on Argentina and the United Kingdom to resume negotiations, on the eve of the Hamburg hearing on the Sea Lion oil project.

Heavy rains linked to the El Niño phenomenon triggered a flash flood on Santa Cruz island in Ecuador’s Galápagos archipelago overnight from Friday to Saturday, leaving one person dead and more than 2,000 affected, according to local mayor Fanny Uribe. Water reached up to three metres deep in some neighbourhoods of Puerto Ayora, the island’s main town.

Paraguay’s Senate on Wednesday approved a reform of the deposit guarantee law that would allow customers of Ueno Bank, taken over by the Central Bank on Tuesday, to receive an advance of up to 40 minimum wages, about 121 million guaraníes, within 24 hours of the bank’s resolution. The bill now goes to the Chamber of Deputies, which was due to consider it on Thursday.

Speaker of the US House of Representatives Mike Johnson, a Republican, said he will not seek to continue leading his party in the new Congress, while Vice President JD Vance blamed the Iran war for the Republican defeat in Tuesday’s midterm elections, an explanation President Donald Trump called “largely true” even as he defended the conflict.

Peru’s government has declared a two-month state of emergency over the risk of heavy rains linked to the El Niño phenomenon in 1,380 of the country’s 1,891 districts, about 73%, including all the places Pope Leo XIV will visit in northern Peru from November 13. The measure covers districts in all 24 departments and the province of Callao.

Argentine President Javier Milei did not attend the opening of the 30th Ibero-American Summit in Madrid on Wednesday or the dinner hosted by the King and Queen of Spain for the delegations, and that evening met Santiago Abascal, leader of the Vox party, in the middle of the campaign for Spain’s November 29 general election.

The Democratic Party on Tuesday regained control of both the US House of Representatives and the Senate in the midterm elections, winning in Republican strongholds such as Texas, Ohio and Kansas in a heavy blow to President Donald Trump, who will govern for the remaining two years of his term with Congress in opposition hands.

Paraguay’s Central Bank on Tuesday took over Ueno Bank, one of the country’s largest banks, after its solvency ratio fell below 50% of the legal minimum, and froze all its assets and liabilities, including the savings of some 3 million customers and more than US$800 million in public funds. The bank immediately suspended all its services.

US President Donald Trump said he accepts the results of the midterm elections, in which Democrats regained control of both chambers of Congress, and signalled willingness to negotiate with the opposition, but blamed the Republican defeat on his absence from the ballot and threatened to veto the new Congress’s legislation.

The US dollar weakened against major currencies on Wednesday morning and gold rose more than 2% to above US$4,000 an ounce as markets assessed the Democratic victory in the midterm elections, which will give the opposition control of both chambers of Congress for the final two years of Donald Trump’s presidency.

Pope Leo XIV will arrive in Buenos Aires on Sunday on a visit that Javier Milei’s government presents as strictly pastoral, but which takes place amid tension with Argentina’s Catholic hierarchy, one of the most critical voices against the president’s austerity policies. The pontiff will begin a tour in Uruguay on Friday that will continue in Argentina from November 8 to 11 and end in Peru.

The president of the Madrid regional government, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, on Monday awarded the region’s International Medal to Chilean President José Antonio Kast, who is in the Spanish capital for the 30th Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State and Government. “On both sides of the Atlantic we defend the same things,” Ayuso said at the ceremony.

The United States votes on Tuesday in midterm elections in which corruption has emerged in the final stretch as one of voters’ main concerns, second only to the cost of living, according to several polls. At stake are all 435 seats in the House of Representatives, 35 of the 100 Senate seats and numerous governorships and state legislatures.

The Falkland Islands Government Representative to the UK and Europe, Richard Hyslop, has placed a commemorative cross at the House of Commons Garden of Remembrance in London in memory of Falkland Islanders killed in both world wars and those who lost their lives in 1982.

British jurist Vaughan Lowe, emeritus professor of public international law at the University of Oxford, will be the judge ad hoc chosen by the United Kingdom in the case between Argentina and London before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea over hydrocarbon exploitation north of the Falklands. Lowe will make his solemn declaration on Monday, November 9, the day before the hearing.

Argentina’s case against the United Kingdom over the Sea Lion oil project north of the Falklands “could fall at the first hurdle”: the jurisdiction of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, which cannot settle territorial sovereignty disputes, according to Australian law of the sea expert Donald R. Rothwell. The tribunal will hold hearings on Argentina’s request on November 10 and 11 in Hamburg.

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of France and Germany on Saturday to protest against the cost of living and deteriorating public services, in mostly peaceful demonstrations that ended in clashes between police and masked groups in several cities. In France, where the third day of protests in a month took place, 565 people were arrested.

Nearly a hundred Argentine intellectuals, jurists, historians and politicians have signed a declaration rejecting the transformation of the Falklands dispute into a “national cause” that “admits no dissent”, and criticising Javier Milei’s government for acting with “flagrant opportunism” amid escalating tensions with the United Kingdom over the Sea Lion oil project.

The United States holds midterm elections on Tuesday in which the Democratic Party hopes to regain control of Congress, with the polls in its favour. At stake are all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 Senate seats, in a vote shaping up as a test of Donald Trump’s second presidency.

Pope Leo XIV will begin a tour of South America in Montevideo on November 6 that will take him to Uruguay, Argentina and Peru, with open-air Masses, meetings with Presidents Yamandú Orsi and Javier Milei, and events with young people, workers and prisoners. His stop in Argentina, from November 8 to 11, will be the first papal visit to the country since John Paul II’s in April 1987.