Stability Über Alles
NEED TO KNOW
Stability Über Alles
URUGUAY
Last fall, when Uruguayans were asked in a referendum whether they would like to retire five years early with bigger pension payments, they resoundingly said no.
They worried that the country would become unstable if it took on more debt to fund the changes.
It’s unusual for voters to vote against their own personal interests anywhere. But in this small, prosperous South American country of 3.4 million people in the center of a region marked by violence, instability, and authoritarian governments, voters see stability as their interest.
That drive for moderation and stability is evident in the politics of the country – here, elections are fought from the center, wrote World Politics Review. That was especially true of the elections last fall. For example, the winner, Yamandú Orsi of the left-wing Broad Front party, won on a campaign that promised stability and “Safe change that won’t be radical.” His opponent, Álvaro Delgado of the center-right National Party, delivered a similar message.
During the election, as the Americas Society/Council of the Americas explained, voters liked the idea of decreasing the retirement age from 65 to 60. But they worried it would put too much pressure on the national budget.
Some say that such caution isn’t helping the country solve its problems. For example, one top concern is the deteriorating security situation, mainly due to the rise of criminal gangs, which is harming the country’s reputation as a beacon of stability.
Cocaine shipments to Europe have surged through the port of the capital, Montevideo, fueling a rise in gang violence, wrote Insight Crime. The murder rate has almost doubled in a decade to 11 per 100,000 people. That has shocked the population, which is unaccustomed to such violence.
“Uruguay is in a precarious position,” wrote Reuters, “fighting a lonely battle against cocaine-smuggling gangs” that have expanded into every corner of Latin America over the last decade, turning once-tranquil nations like Ecuador into cartel badlands.
Other issues facing the country, in spite of it being one of the wealthiest countries in Latin America, are the cost of living, education, and poverty. About half of all children finish high school, one in five children live in poverty, and the country has one of the highest youth unemployment rates in Latin America – about 26 percent.
Another issue that worries voters is the economy and trade. Economic growth is slow and steady in the country, at around 4 percent last year. But Ecuadorians are rattled by US President Donald Trump’s tariff threats and other shocks to the global economy.
As a result, Uruguayans are growing closer to China and also Europe.
“Energy is expensive. China is now seen as a complicated competitor. The US is getting more and more protectionist. In this new geopolitical scenario, it is key for Europe to strengthen the partnerships they can have,” Uruguay’s Foreign Minister Omar Paganini told Politico. “For Latin America, the situation is rather similar … in the sense that we are being pulled by different powers like China, the US. We need long-term friendships with stable partners.”
Top European Union officials visited Uruguay in December to sign a landmark free-trade agreement with the Latin American Mercosur trade bloc, made up of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay. The deal had been in the works for decades.
Meanwhile, China and Uruguay are negotiating a bilateral trade deal even as Uruguay is also pushing for a wider Mercosur trade agreement with China. China and Brazil are Uruguay’s top trade partners.
Uruguayan officials say they have tried for years to get a free trade agreement with the US and would have preferred that, given that they have “issues related to how the Chinese believe, and their political organization, the human rights issues,” Uruguay officials explained.
“So let’s be pragmatic, we are a small country in a complicated world, we need trade partners – and they are stable people,” added Paganini. “Moreover, the world is changing and not for good for those who believe in rules-based relationships and agreements.”
THE WORLD, BRIEFLY
Round Two
UKRAINE
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday fired back at US President Donald Trump’s comments that Ukraine is to blame for the 2022 Russian invasion, a claim that came just a day after Washington and Moscow held talks in Saudi Arabia to end the three-year war, the Washington Post reported.
Following Tuesday’s US-Russia meeting, Trump blamed Ukraine for the start of the war while responding to complaints from Kyiv about not being invited to the talks in Saudi Arabia.
“Well, you’ve been there for three years,” Trump said, referring to the Ukrainian leader. “You should have ended it – you should have never started it.”
He also accused Zelenskyy of being extremely unpopular in the country with an approval rating of four percent – a claim echoing Russian narratives about the Ukrainian leader’s legitimacy, the newspaper wrote.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has described Zelenskyy’s ongoing term as illegitimate, citing the postponement of the country’s 2024 presidential elections due to martial law, according to ABC News.
Zelenskyy dismissed Trump’s remarks over his popularity, calling it disinformation that “is coming from Russia.”
A Wednesday survey by the Ukrainian polling organization, Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, found that around 57 percent of Ukrainians trust Zelenskyy – an increase of five points from a survey in December.
However, Trump’s remarks provoked an unusual display of unity across Ukraine’s political spectrum: Opposition figures and critics of Zelensky rallied behind him, seeing Trump’s comments as an attack on Ukrainian sovereignty.
Some Ukrainians warned that elections should not happen until the war is over, while others warned that an election could spark chaos in the war-torn country, a gift for Putin.
The recent controversy came a day after US and Russian diplomats met in the Saudi capital to discuss an end to the war that began in February 2022.
The Saudi talks did not include the participation of Ukraine or other European nations, a move that raised alarms among Washington’s allies that the US is preparing to pressure Kyiv into making territorial concessions to Russia.
Zelenskyy said Ukraine would reject any agreement without Kyiv’s involvement.
The diplomatic overtures have also caught many of Washington’s European allies off-guard as they struggle to come up with a united strategy to address the recent developments, according to the Wall Street Journal.
On Monday, European leaders met in the French capital Paris to coordinate a unified response to Trump’s shift in policy and Ukraine’s exclusion.
But that meeting exposed divisions over how to properly respond, including questions on whether to deploy European troops in Ukraine.
Even so, European Union nations agreed Wednesday on another package of sanctions against Russia amid concerns that the Trump administration is softening its stance on the country, Reuters added.
Colorful Daggers
BRAZIL
Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was charged Tuesday with planning a coup to overthrow the government after narrowly losing the 2022 presidential election, a plot that prosecutors say included murdering the current president and a supreme court justice, the BBC reported.
The far-right former president was charged following a two-year police investigation into Bolsonaro and his supporters’ actions in the run-up to the elections and the riots that ignited afterward in the capital of Brasilia following President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s inauguration in early 2023, Reuters reported.
Among the charges, Bolsonaro and 33 of his allies – including his running mate Walter Braga Netto – are accused of leading a “criminal organization” to subvert the democratic order, participating in a coup d’état, and attempting the violent abolition of the democratic rule of law.
The charges included attempted murder regarding an alleged plot to poison Lula and assassinate Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes – the judge overseeing this case and a foe of the former president.
“The members of the criminal organization structured a plan at the presidential palace to attack institutions, aiming to bring down the system of the powers and the democratic order, which received the sinister name of ‘Green and Yellow Dagger,’” Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet wrote in a 272-page indictment, according to the Associated Press. “The plan was conceived and taken to the knowledge of the president, and he agreed to it.”
Bolsonaro often dons Brazil’s yellow-and-green national soccer jersey, and the colors have become associated with his political movement.
In November, Brazilian police filed an 884-page report with Gonet detailing the scheme, alleging a systematic effort to sow distrust in the electoral system, drafting a decree to provide legal cover for the plot, pressuring top military brass to go along with the plan, and inciting the riot in the capital.
In the indictment, Gonet described the alleged crimes as part of a chain of events articulated with an overarching objective of stopping Bolsonaro from leaving office, “contrary to the result of the popular will at the polls.”
Bolsonaro denies the accusations and says he is being politically persecuted. “I have no concerns about the accusations, zero,” Bolsonaro said Tuesday.
Now, if the Supreme Court accepts the charges, Bolsonaro and the other 33 accused will stand trial. If the cases go to trial, Bolsonaro faces up to 12 years in prison, the BBC said.
Analysts called the charges “historic”. “The charges show Brazil’s institutions are robust, independent, and agile,” Luis Henrique Machado, a law professor at the IDP University in Brasilia, told the AP. “They are a role model for other countries where democracy is at risk.”
Even so, banned from running for president until 2030 due to a law that bars convicted individuals from office for certain periods, analysts said Bolsonaro and his supporters will use the trial to say they were victims of politics in order to stage a comeback in the 2026 election, the AP wrote.
Denying History
CAMBODIA
Cambodian lawmakers unanimously approved a bill this week that will ban anyone from denying the atrocities committed by the hardline communist Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s that killed nearly two million people, the Associated Press reported.
On Tuesday, all 115 legislators in the lower house voted in favor of the draft law, which they said would help prevent a recurrence of such an event in the future and honor the victims of that regime.
The legislation bans individuals from denying or condoning the atrocities perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge, with violators facing five years in prison and fines of up to $125,000.
The bill defines the atrocities as genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, echoing the convictions of top Khmer Rouge leaders by a United Nations-backed court nine years ago, according to Agence France-Presse.
The bill replaces a 2013 law that proscribed prison terms of up to two years and fines of up to $1,000 for such violations. The bill will now pass to the upper house of the legislature.
The Khmer Rouge, led by the late leader Pol Pot, ruled Cambodia between 1975 and 1979 before it was ousted by an invasion by neighboring Vietnam. The regime is accused of the deaths of around 1.7 million people from starvation, execution, and illness.
A series of tribunals that began in 2009 found the ousted government guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity, among other charges.
Few Cambodians who lived during that period have denied the Khmer Rouge’s human rights violations.
Last year, former Prime Minister Hun Sen called for an update to the 2013 law because some politicians still refuse to recognize the Khmer Rouge’s crimes.
Still, critics say the bill is an attempt by the government to undermine the opposition.
The former prime minister stepped down in 2023 after 38 years in office and was succeeded by his son, the current prime minister, Hun Manet.
DISCOVERIES
A Shifty Center
Deep beneath the planet’s surface, Earth’s inner core may not be as unyielding as once thought.
New research suggests the solid core’s surface is shifting over time, reshaping in response to the turbulent outer core that surrounds it. This discovery challenges the traditional view of the inner core as a static, iron-nickel sphere and raises new questions about how Earth’s deepest layers influence the planet’s magnetic field and even the length of a day.
“The interesting thing is that the surface of the inner core is dynamic,” John Vidale, a seismologist at the University of Southern California and the study’s lead author, told Live Science. “It seems to be responding to the changing forces from the rotation and probably rising and falling a noticeable amount.”
For their paper, Vidale and his team analyzed earthquake waves that skimmed the edge of the inner core between 1991 and 2023.
Using seismic data from earthquakes near the South Sandwich Islands in the Atlantic Ocean, they noticed subtle differences in how waves traveled through the core’s surface over time. These variations persisted even when the core rotated into a previously recorded position – suggesting the outermost layer of the inner core may be shifting.
The researchers believe this movement is likely caused by churning currents in the liquid outer core. This molten layer – composed mostly of iron and nickel – surrounds the solid inner core and is responsible for generating Earth’s magnetic field. As the outer core’s flow changes, it may be subtly deforming the surface of the inner core.
“The molten outer core is widely known to be turbulent, but its turbulence had not been observed to disrupt its neighbor, the inner core, on a human timescale,” Vidale explained in a statement. “What we’re observing in this study for the first time is likely the outer core disturbing the inner core.”
Since the 1990s, scientists have debated whether the inner core rotates independently of the rest of the planet. A previous study co-authored by Vidale found that the inner core once spun faster than Earth’s surface but began slowing around 2010, now lagging slightly behind. The new findings suggest that, in addition to rotation, the inner core may experience structural changes driven by external forces.
The implications of these findings extend beyond seismology. The solidification of the inner core plays a crucial role in the flow of heat through the outer core, which in turn sustains Earth’s magnetic field. Understanding the core’s dynamics could offer insight into the planet’s deep history and the evolution of its magnetic shield.
Still, other researchers noted that the current data only covers a small fraction of the core’s surface, with the authors acknowledging that much remains uncertain about the inner core’s behavior.