Yamandú Orsi came out ahead of two conservative rivals as voters rejected a controversial pension reform plan
Uruguay is heading for a tight presidential election runoff next month after a center-left candidate came out ahead of two candidates who split the conservative vote in Sunday’s first round.
Voters also rejected a controversial pension reform plan in one of two plebiscites.
Continue reading...Protesters say recently approved tax-free datacentre will ‘provide nothing except toxic waste and greenhouse gases’
Google’s plans to build a datacentre in Uruguay have angered environmentalists, who say the project will release thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide and hazardous waste.
Uruguay’s environmental authorities recently approved the datacentre, which will use air conditioning to cool its servers. The company initially proposed using millions of litres of fresh water to cool its infrastructure, but this caused an outcry in a country that suffered its worst drought since 1950 last year, causing its capital city to run short of drinking water.
Continue reading...Amelia Sanjurjo, a member of Uruguay’s Communist party who disappeared in 1977, was identified and laid to rest
A Uruguayan woman who was abducted by security forces during the country’s military dictatorship has received a proper burial, nearly 50 years after she was forcibly disappeared.
Bone fragments of Amelia Sanjurjo were exhumed exactly a year ago from a military base in a small southern town in Uruguay. She was finally identified last week after investigators took DNA samples from her maternal aunt and nephews in Uruguay, Spain and Italy in hopes of finding a match.
Continue reading...Coach of Miramar Misiones heard abusing referee Javier Feres in video of incident that spread quickly
A row at a Monday afternoon football match in Uruguay has ignited a national debate on prejudice and discrimination in a country which has previously resisted a reckoning on race and racism.
The incident began when a player for Miramar Misiones was sent off in the final minutes of the team’s 20 May match against Liverpool Fútbol Club. Miramar’s Argentinian coach, Ricardo Caruso Lombardi, confronted referee Javier Feres and was clearly heard to call him “negro de mierda” (Black piece of shit).
Continue reading...South American neighbours respond to blocking of Corina Yoris, who was favoured to beat strongman Nicolás Maduro in elections
A chorus of Latin American nations, including Brazil and Colombia, have voiced concern over the deteriorating political situation in Venezuela after the opposition politician best-positioned to challenge its strongman leader, Nicolás Maduro, in July’s presidential election was prevented from registering for the vote.
Corina Yoris, an 80-year-old philosopher, was little-known outside academic circles until last Friday, when she was catapulted on to the frontline of Venezuela’s long-running political crisis by being named as the substitute for María Corina Machado, a prominent opposition figure who had been banned from running in the election.
Continue reading...After years of underinvestment, reservoir has had to be topped up from estuary, raising health concerns
More than half of Uruguay’s 3.5 million citizens are without access to tap water fit for drinking, and experts say the situation could continue for months.
Some had predicted the crisis years ago when pointing out the vulnerability of the single reservoir supplying water to the metropolitan area around the capital, Montevideo.
Continue reading...Country suffering its worst drought in 74 years, with government even mixing saltwater into drinking supply
A plan to build a Google data centre that will use millions of litres of water a day has sparked anger in Uruguay, which is suffering its worst drought in 74 years.
Water shortages are so severe in the country that a state of emergency has been declared in Montevideo and the authorities have added salty water to the public drinking water supplies, prompting widespread protests.
Continue reading...Uruguayan-born Viñoly’s sometimes controversial work included more than 600 structures around world
Rafael Viñoly, the Uruguayan-born and New York-based architect known for designing landmark buildings around the world, has died aged 78.
Viñoly’s death on Thursday was announced by his son, Roman, on the website of the family firm, Rafael Viñoly Architects.
Continue reading...Analysis: Another week of extremes with peaks pushing 40C in Spain and a rare subtropical cyclone in Uruguay and Brazil
Unseasonably high temperatures have been affecting both Iberia and France over recent days. Temperatures have been about 10-15C above average thanks to a southerly flow of very warm and dry air from north Africa.
On 17 May, temperatures across much of Spain, as well as southern and central France, widely exceeded 30C. A top temperature of 35.5C was recorded in the southern Spanish province of Huelva, with a provisional high of 32.9C recorded in the French commune of Montélimar. La Hague near the Channel hit 26.6C, beating the May record for this location set 100 years ago.
Continue reading...Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and Paraguay are reeling from a historic heatwave with temperatures as high as 113F
Cities and towns across southern South America have been setting record high temperatures as the region swelters during a historic heatwave.
“Practically all of Argentina and also neighboring countries such as Uruguay, southern Brazil and Paraguay are experiencing the hottest days in history,” said Cindy Fernández, meteorologist at the official National Meteorological Service.
Continue reading...Maximiliano Contenti’s horror flick attempts to unpick voyeurism but lacks the sophistication of others in the genre
Nostalgia for idiosyncratic analogue film style is the simplest explanation for the recent giallo revival – but maybe there’s more to it than that. This most stylised of horror modes is perfect for our over-aestheticised age, so the newcomers – such as Berberian Sound Studio, Censor and Sound of Violence – make artists and viewers accessories to violence, often unleashed through that giallo mainstay, the power of the gaze. Set almost entirely in a tatty Montevideo rep cinema, Uruguayan slasher The Last Matinee joins this voyeuristic club, even if it ends up more in the raw than the refined camp.
On a rainswept night in 1993, engineering student Ana (Luciana Grasso) insists on taking over projectionist duties for a screening of Frankenstein: Day of the Beast (an in-joke – it was released in 2011 and was directed by Ricardo Islas, who plays the killer here). She shuts herself in the booth, trying to ignore the inane banter of usher Mauricio (Pedro Duarte) – but neither have noticed a heavy-set trenchcoated bogeyman enter the auditorium to size up that night’s film faithful: three teenagers, an awkward couple on a first date, a flat-capped pensioner and a underage kid stowaway (Franco Durán).
Continue reading...Thuzar Wint Lwin, in dress of besieged Chin minority, highlights brutal repression since coup in Myanmar
In the months leading up to the Miss Universe pageant, most contestants were busy making promotional films and rehearsing for their moment in the limelight. Thuzar Wint Lwin of Myanmar was on the streets of Yangon, protesting against the country’s brutal army.
As the military used increasingly deadly force to crush rallies opposing its February coup, she visited the relatives of those who had been killed, donating her savings. Online, she raised awareness of military violence, despite the risk of retaliation.
Continue reading...About 15,000 to 20,000 Argentinians are estimated to have moved to Uruguay since the pandemic began
Agustina Valls’ phone is ringing off the hook.
“It started as a trickle when the pandemic first hit Argentina, but now we’re getting over 20 calls a day,” she said from her office in Uruguay’s luxury beach resort of Punta Del Este.
Valls runs a thriving business guiding well-off Argentinians through the red tape of acquiring Uruguayan residence – a skill she learned arranging her own residency application after marrying a Uruguayan lawyer last October.
Despite sharing borders with Brazil, small countries can claim victory against virus
Latin America has become the new centre of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic but two small countries, Uruguay and Paraguay, have bucked the regional trend and can claim a near total victory against the virus.
Though they are strangely dissimilar – Uruguay is a progressive enclave with the lowest poverty index in Latin America, while Paraguay has poverty estimates of 30-50% and is rife with corruption – both nations have kept their coronavirus death rates surprisingly low.
Continue reading...Thousands of Australians caught up in India’s sweeping lockdown are pleading for government help to get home
Thousands of Australians caught by India’s dramatic nationwide shutdown say they face running out of food and water or being evicted from accommodation, as 1.3 billion people across world’s second-most populous nation are ordered to stay indoors.
One state leader, Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, warned if the lockdown was not obeyed, he would order police to shoot-on-sight those who went outside.
Continue reading...Covid-19 struck 44 guests at a glamorous wedding after a designer attended despite having had a fever and just arriving from Spain
It was supposed to be a highlight of the social season in the Uruguayan capital, Montevideo: but a glamorous wedding celebration in the upmarket neighbourhood of Carrasco has gained a different kind of notoriety after it emerged that 44 guests contracted the coronavirus at the party.
Related: Bolsonaro’s son enrages Beijing by blaming China for coronavirus crisis
Continue reading...Dictatorships of six countries conspired to kidnap and kill political opponents in 1970s
An Italian court has sentenced 24 people to life in prison for their involvement in Operation Condor, in which the dictatorships of six South American countries conspired to kidnap and assassinate political opponents in each other’s territories.
Related: How an Argentinian man learned his 'father' may have killed his real parents
Continue reading...Rocco Morabito and three other prisoners let themselves down by rope to an adjacent farm, where they robbed the owner
An Italian mafia boss known as the “cocaine king of Milan” has escaped from prison in Uruguay where he was awaiting extradition to Italy, the South American country’s interior ministry has announced.
Rocco Morabito, 53, leader of Italy’s most powerful organised crime group – the Calabrian ’Ndrangheta – fled the prison in Uruguay’s capital, Montevideo, through a hole in the roof of the building.
Continue reading...Eagle with swastika under its talons, recovered in 2006, was part of German battleship’s stern that sank off the coast
A court in Uruguay has ordered the country’s government to sell a huge Nazi bronze eagle that was recovered off the South American country’s coast in 2006.
The eagle with a swastika under its talons was part of the stern of the German battleship Admiral Graf Spee that sank off Uruguay’s coast at the outset of the second world war. The divisive symbol has been kept hidden inside a sealed crate in a Uruguayan navy warehouse for more than a decade.
Continue reading...Failure leaves people in Argentina and Uruguay without electricity
Tens of millions of people across South America were left without electricity early on Sunday after a massive power failure left Argentina and Uruguay almost completely in the dark.
The Argentine newspaper Clarín said the “gigantic” power collapse – which it called the worst in Argentina’s recent history – had struck at just after 7am local time, affecting virtually the entire country as well as Uruguay, Paraguay and some cities in Chile.
Continue reading...