First battery-grade lithium plant inaugurated in Argentina

French mining group Eramet and China's Tsingshan on Wednesday inaugurated a lithium production plant in Argentina to supply the booming electric car industry.

The site in the northwestern province of Salta represents an investment of US$870 million, Eramet said.

The plant is not a traditional mine nor one of the environmentally damaging salt flats from which the metal used in electric batteries is normally extracted in South America's so-called lithium triangle of Argentina, Bolivia and Chile (home to 60% of global lithium reserves).

Instead it uses an innovative "direct extraction" method, according to Eramet.

The plant is expected to produce up to 24,000 tons of battery-grade lithium carbonate per year at full capacity, Eramet CEO Christel Bories told AFP -- enough for 600,000 electric vehicle batteries.

At: https://www.barrons.com/news/new-lithium-plant-inaugurated-in-argentina-d266b40c

Eramet CEO Christel Bories during the inauguration of its battery-grade lithium carbonate plant in Salta, Argentina, yesterday - a joint project began in 2021 with China's Tsingshan.

Mining industry analysts believe that far-right President Javier Milei's Incentive Regime for Large Investments (RIGI) will spur new foreign investment in Argentina's mining sector, since it facilitates hard-currency availability; Argentine companies have long struggled with currency controls in the country.

Critics charge, however, that besides failing to guarantee hard-currency supply to foreign investors, the new RIGI legislation - Milei's first legislative accomplishment in nearly 7 months - may instead encourage money laundering, tax evasion and capital flight without materially improving on existing, business-friendly mining regulation dating from 1993 (at the height of the freewheeling Carlos Menem era).

Lithium carbonate output in Argentina rose eight-fold, to nearly 50,000 tons, from 2019 to 2023.

Voters kick all the Republican women out of the South Carolina Senate

The only three Republican women in the South Carolina Senate took on their party and stopped a total abortion ban from passing in their state last year.

Republican primary voters have now booted all the “Sister Senators” from their party out of office.

Argentina: A divided legacy marks 50 years since Peron's death

Monday marks 50 years since one of the key moments in Argentine history: the death of populist leader Juan Domingo Perón - just a year after his return to Argentina after an 18-year exile.

There was Argentina before Perón, and Argentina after it.

Of all the dividing lines that could be drawn in this polarized country of 46 million, this is one of the deepest — and it has stood the test of time.

In the 78 years since Perón, an army colonel with middle-class roots born in 1895, was first elected president of Argentina, the populist movement he created continues to be a dominant political force in the country.

Perón used his 1943-45 tenure as labor secretary and his 1946-55 presidency to improve wages and conditions and enshrine workers’ and women’s rights - while embarking on massive public works projects and nationalizing aging railroads and utilities.

Buoyed by the popularity and activism of his ill-fated second wife Evita, he branded his system as “justicialismo,” or social justice - which he described as a “third way” between “insatiably selfish capitalism and inhuman communism.”

On broken wings

But Perón's repression of political dissent earned him enemies on both sides of the political spectrum - and his reforms forged powerful enemies in the military, landowning elites, and the Roman Catholic Church.

Following a violent coup in 1955 - during which over 300 were killed in an air raid - Peronists gradually regrouped as uneasy allies: culturally right-wing trade unionists; and young, often radicalized leftist supporters.

By the time Perón returned from exile in 1973, a state of violent confrontation erupted between his left- and right-wing factions.

After his death in 1974, political violence intensified - culminating in a fascist (and anti-Peronist) military dictatorship that ruled from 1976 to 1983. Thousands of people, many of them left-wing Peronist dissidents and student activists, were murdered or disappeared - while the economy and real wages collapsed.

Since democracy returned in late 1983, Peronists - both right- and left-wing - have held office for 28 of the last 40 years.

The 28 years Peronists were in office saw GDP grow by 177%; the 12 years they were out of office, have seen GDP decline by 27%.

At: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/6/20/a-divided-legacy-marks-50-years-since-perons-return-to-argentina

Argentine populist leader Juan Perón greets supporters at a June 12, 1974, rally - his last.

Perón's pro-labor, statist policies helped reshape Argentina's then-agrarian economy and caste-oriented society - helping create the largest proportional middle class in Latin America, as well as the region's highest-paid, best-educated working class.

He also included women, Jews, Arabs, and the dark-skinned for the first time in Argentine politics - all of whom had been largely, and sometimes violently, excluded.

But he failed to reverse Argentina's relative decline - which began in World War I - and his authoritarianism stoked deep divisions between his mostly working-class (and in recent decades, left-wing) supporters, and his mainly middle- and upper-class (largely right-wing) opponents.

The election last November of another authoritarian - the rabidly anti-Peronist, far-right fast-talker Javier Milei - was hailed by right-wing media as “the defeat of Peronism.”

But the subsequent “Mileise” has, according to some polls, given many voters reason to give Peronism a second look.

Amid an economic crisis, Argentina's Milei made 9 trips abroad in less than 7 months

Since taking office less than seven months ago, Argentine President Javier has traveled abroad nine times.

The United States - where President Joe Biden refused him a meeting all four times he visited - was his main destination, and few of these trips were taken for reasons of state.

Milei, 53, has traveled abroad more than any other Argentine president in his or her first six months. In total, he has spent 38 days away - which averages out to one for every five days of his administration.

These international tours have likewise broken with the tradition of starting with Brazil - Argentina's largest neighbor and trading partner - and have also ignored the other neighboring countries, focusing almost exclusively on the United States and Europe.

Frequent flyer

The majority of these trips - the first five alone cost taxpayers a reported $218,000 - were, moreover, taken to meet with right-wing CEOs (none of whom have announced investments in Argentina), CPAC, and to collect right-wing accolades such as medals from the Hayek Society (Hamburg) and the Ayn Randian Atlas Network-linked Juan de Mariana Institute (Madrid).

An award last week from the pro-market Liberal Institute of Prague led to scandal when, according to its director, Martin Pánek, the award was bestowed by a dissident group and not by the institute's authorities.

Meanwhile, Milei's far-right administration - which has ruled solely by decree until just this Friday - has imposed deep cuts on pensions, provincial revenue sharing, federal payrolls, subsidies, and other social spending such as soup kitchen victuals and chemotherapy drugs - which few Argentines can afford.

Argentina's economy shrank by 5.1% in the first quarter from a year earlier, and unemployment jumped from 5.7% in the fourth quarter to 7.7% - with over 10% of the country's population falling into income poverty.

At: https://www-nueva--ciudad-com-ar.translate.goog/notas/202406/54160-en-medio-de-la-crisis-economica-milei-hizo-9-viajes-al-exterior-en-menos-de-7-meses.html?_x_tr_sl=es&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp

Argentina President Javier Milei arrives at Ezeiza International Airport, outside Buenos Aires, on his return from a January trip to the Davos Economic Summit.

This was one of only two foreign trips out of nine (in six months) taken by Milei that did not involve meeting with right-wing CEOs, CPAC, authoritarian heads of state, or collecting a right-wing prize.

Milei has meanwhile presided over the most severe recession since the 2020 global Covid shutdown.

Former Honduran president sentenced to 45 years for helping traffickers get tons of cocaine into U.S.

A defiant former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández was sentenced in New York Wednesday to 45 years in prison for teaming up with some bribe-paying drug traffickers for over a decade to ensure over 400 tons of cocaine made it to the United States.

Judge P. Kevin Castel sentenced Hernández, 55, to 45 years in a U.S. prison and fined him $8 million, saying that the penalty should serve as a warning to “well educated, well dressed” individuals who gain power and think their status insulates them from justice when they do wrong.

A jury convicted him in March in Manhattan federal court after a two-week trial, which was closely followed in his home country.

At: https://apnews.com/article/honduras-president-juan-orlando-hernandez-corruption-3f98be974c58bb8a1b492108c4a7f297

Good boy: Disgraced former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández was welcomed by then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in 2017.

The right-wing Honduran leader, long seen by most neo-cons as a "U.S. ally," had privately promised to "shove the drugs up the Gringos' noses."

Colorado Republican party officials begin process to try to remove chair Dave Williams

After a disastrous election night for party-endorsed candidates, and amid lingering anger over anti-LGBTQ Pride emails, efforts are moving forward to try to oust embattled Colorado GOP chair Dave Williams.

Williams has been dogged by criticism since being elected chair in the spring of 2022. He’s tried to move the party to the right, taking the exceptional move of publicly criticizing Republican candidates and office holders.

This spring the party broke with its long-standing tradition of neutrality in contested primaries by endorsing candidates who gave the right answers on a party questionnaire.

On Tuesday, voters issued a stinging rebuke to that policy, rejecting 14 out of 16 of the candidates who received the party endorsement.

That included Williams himself, who had the party’s backing for his primary run in Congressional District 5. He lost by a two-to-one margin to radio host Jeff Crank.

At: https://www.cpr.org/2024/06/26/dave-williams-petition-removal/

Far-right Colorado GOP chair Dave Williams - who lost his party's primary vote to succeed retiring Congressman Doug Lamborn by a two-to-one margin.

Williams was endorsed by former President Donald Trump.

“I think if he has half a brain, he should resign,” said State Senator Larry Liston. “He needs to not only resign, but quite frankly he's a bigot and he should move out of the state of Colorado.”

Alsobrooks tops Hogan by 11 points in Maryland Senate poll

Democrat Angela Alsobrooks has a double-digit lead over former Gov. Larry Hogan (R) in Maryland’s Senate race, according to the first poll released since the state’s primary earlier this month.

A Public Policy Polling (PPP) survey found that 45 percent of Marylanders support Alsobrooks, while 34 percent support Hogan and 5 percent support another candidate. In the choice between Alsobrooks and Hogan alone, the Democrat maintained a slightly smaller 8 point lead: 48 percent to 40 percent.

PPP, a firm affiliated with the Democratic Party, independently conducted the poll, according to a company spokesperson.

The Maryland Senate race opened up after Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) announced that he would be stepping down in early May - but it gained national attention after Hogan, the popular former governor, announced his bid and raised GOP hopes of flipping the seat.

At: https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4737126-alsobrooks-leads-hogan-senate-poll/

Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks (D) and then-Gov. Larry Hogan (R) at an event in 2022.

The two will face off in November to succeed retiring Senator Ben Cardin.

Hogan's evasiveness on the issue of restoring abortion rights have helped erode what Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republicans initially saw as their "best chance of flipping the Senate."

Anouk Aimee, star of 'La Dolce Vita' and 'A Man and a Woman', dies aged 92

Anouk Aimée, the French star of European New Wave classics including La Dolce Vita, A Man and a Woman and Lola, has died aged 92. Her daughter Manuela Papatakis announced the news on social media on Tuesday.

Born Nicole Françoise Florence Dreyfus in 1932 to actor parents (her father Jewish, her mother Catholic), Aimée began acting as Françoise Dreyfus, and was cast in a small role in her first film, The House Under the Sea, in 1946 aged 14.

Having broken into screen roles in the late 1940s, Aimée achieved international recognition with a series of high-profile successful films in the 1960s, associating her with the major directors of the era, Federico Fellini and Jacques Demy among them.

Arguably her most influential hit was the Oscar-winning A Man and a Woman, opposite Jean-Louis Trintignant, released in 1966 and which won the best foreign language film and best original screenplay Oscars, as well as a best actress nomination for Aimée herself.

At: https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/jun/18/anouk-aimee-star-of-la-dolce-vita-and-a-man-and-a-woman-dies-aged-92

Argentine playwright Roberto Cossa, co-founder of country's "New Realism" movement, dies at 89

Renowned playwright Roberto “Tito” Cossa, an icon of local independent theater, has passed away at age 89, author-rights association Argentores announced on Thursday.

A sharp and sardonic social commentator, Cossa penned such Argentine classics like La Nona, Yepeto, and Tute Cabrero.

Born in 1934 in Buenos Aires, Cossa began his professional career as a journalist, writing for top local newspapers as well as the Cuban news agency Prensa Latina. He produced his first play, Nuestro fín de semana (‘Our Weekend’), in 1964 - but it wasn’t until 1976 that he decided to focus on dramaturgy.

Cossa quickly stood out as one of the country’s finest exponents of a movement known as “New Realism” along with fellow director and playwright Carlos Gorostiza, who would direct Cossa’s 1976 hit La Nona.

The play is a grotesque comedy about a hundred-year-old Italian Argentine woman who burdens her working-class family with her senile dementia and endless appetite. An Argentine theater classic, Cossa later adapted into a screenplay for the 1979 film version directed by Héctor Olivera.

With Carlos Somigliana (who would later have a prominent role in the 1985 trial against top dictatorship officials), Cossa co-wrote the screenplay for Fernando Ayala’s 1982 social drama El arreglo ('The Deal') - about a working-class man who finds himself in a moral conundrum when a corrupt city official offers him to extend a much-needed water line in his neighborhood in exchange for a bribe.

An outspoken advocate for social justice and human rights, Cossa was a founding member of Teatro Abierto ('Open Theater') - a theater collective created in 1981 that challenged the military dictatorship.

The group premiered their first festival on July 28, 1981, at the Picadero Theater. The evening programme featured the play Gris de ausencia ('Pale of Absence'), Cossa’s tale of immigration, exile, and identity.

The dictatorship firebombed the Picadero shortly after, forcing the group to relocate.

At: https://buenosairesherald.com/society/argentine-playwright-roberto-tito-cossa-dies-at-89

Argentine playwright and director Roberto Cossa, 1934-2024.

"The theater is there to awaken sensibilities in the spectator," Cossa noted in a 2020 interview. "To entertain or seduce him or her - to make them laugh or cry."

Francoise Hardy, French pop singer and fashion muse, dies aged 80

Source: The Guardian

Françoise Hardy, whose elegance and beautifully lilting voice made her one of France’s most successful pop stars, has died aged 80.

Hardy had lymphatic cancer since 2004, and had undergone years of radiotherapy and other treatments for the illness. In 2021, she had argued in favour of euthanasia, saying that France was “inhuman” for not allowing the procedure.

Hardy was born in the middle of an air raid in Nazi-occupied Paris in 1944, and raised in the city, mostly by her mother.

Aged 16, she received her first guitar as a present and began writing her own songs, performing them live and auditioning for record labels. In 1961, she signed with Disques Vogue.

Inspired by the French chanson style of crooned ballads as well as the emerging edgier styles of pop and rock’n’roll, Hardy became a key part of the yé-yé style that dominated mid-century French music.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/music/article/2024/jun/12/francoise-hardy-french-pop-singer-and-fashion-muse-dies-aged-80