If Javier Milei, the front-runner in the campaign for the presidency, wins the election scheduled for later this year, the country’s own currency could be abolished and replaced with the US dollar.
Anecdotal stories abound of people keeping money buried in the garden, hidden in the walls or even secreted in heating systems - occasionally with disastrous consequences if there is an unexpected cold snap and the cash isn’t retrieved before it goes up in smoke.
During that time, uncontrolled price rises eroded the value of wages and made a mockery of savings, to the point where people lost faith in their own currency.
And yet the public’s hunger for dollars continues, while everyone from taxi drivers to restaurateurs happily accepts the greenback as payment for goods and services.
But showing the eternal Brazilian ability to bend the rules, they gave themselves some wiggle-room, allowing the real’s value to fluctuate, within limits, against the dollar.
And it might be easier to achieve than the idea recently mooted by the Argentine and Brazilian presidents - a common currency for the two countries, possibly to be called the “sur” or even the “gaucho”.
Technical faults meant that for several hours on Tuesday, some Bank of Ireland customers could withdraw large sums from cash machines despite having little or no funds in their accounts.Pictures and videos shared on social media showed long queues at machines in the Republic of Ireland.The bank said it had been experiencing technical faults, but on Wednesday morning it said the issues had been resolved.It warned transfers and withdrawals would still be applied to customers’ accounts.A spokesperson said on Wednesday morning that the bank’s app and 365 Online banking services were now working again.The issues also affected customers in Northern Ireland, but the bank said “we didn’t have similar reports of customers using Northern Ireland ATMs late last night”.
“We are aware that the technical issue meant some customers were able to withdraw or transfer funds above their normal limits,” the spokesperson said.
"These transfers and withdrawals will be applied to customers’ accounts today.
"“We urge any customer who may find themselves in financial difficulty due to overdrawing on their account to contact us.”
On Tuesday night gardaí (Irish police) said they were aware of an “unusual volume of activity” at some cash machines and “of issues relating to certain financial institutions”.
The problems first emerged on Tuesday afternoon when customers were unable to access the services although contactless, card and cash machine services were unaffected.Reports on social media suggested that some customers had been able to transfer more money than they had in their Bank of Ireland accounts to other external accounts and then withdraw the cash.
Van - not her real name - is posing as a buyer for a Chinese crime boss in a trade illegal in many parts of the world, the trafficking of pangolins which are eaten in Africa, while their scales are used in traditional medicine in Asia.
In 2018, Carmody noticed huge seizures of trafficked animal parts hidden in shipping containers en route from West Africa to Asia.
Over months she gained the trust of Morybinet Berete, who is from Guinea in West Africa but was based in Nigeria, the hub for the illicit trade in pangolin scales.
Carmody describes the hardest part of any global investigation as finding a "small group of dedicated law enforcement officers that can’t be bought.
In July 2021, he tipped off NCS officials, who raided Berete’s compound in Nigeria and seized 7,000 kilos of pangolin scales, with smaller amounts of claws and elephant tusks.
That shifted the focus of the investigation from Nigeria back to Vietnam, where a surveillance operation was mounted in March last year to follow the buyers.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has cancelled a trip to Australia, New Zealand and Fiji after her government plane was forced to make a second emergency landing in two days.
In 2018 the same Airbus plane had a technical fault which forced the then Chancellor Angela Merkel to miss the opening of a G20 summit in Argentina.
Earlier that year, Olaf Scholz - Germany’s finance minister at the time and now chancellor - was stranded in Indonesia after rodents chewed through cables on that plane.
Ms Baerbock was en route to the Indo-Pacific on Sunday when the wing flaps on her plane malfunctioned, forcing the pilots to make an emergency landing in the United Arab Emirates.
“We have tried everything: unfortunately it is logistically impossible to continue my Indo-Pacific journey without the defective plane,” Ms Baerbock wrote on X.
Owing to the mishap, Germany’s Luftwaffe Air Force announced that it would retire the plane early.
yeah, I could totally see myself doing this in my younger years.
When I was visiting Austin, TX one time, my friend and I were headed back home in the crowds after the bars closed. We saw some dude passed out on the grass, so we woke him up to see if he was okay. Turned out, he was some Irish tourist that got drunk, lost his friends, and didn’t know where he was, so he went to sleep to sober up. We took him with us, got him some Whataburger, then took him home. I still have pictures that we took with him. People get drunk and easily confused in a foreign country. I get that the Eiffel Tower is under high scrutiny because of the bomb scares, but drunk tourist having a blast and then getting lost is normal. It’s not like he assaulted anyone. I don’t see why this has to be “world news”.
I think there was a scene showing a gay couple checking out Ken for a couple of seconds when they arrived at the beach
Would be very funny if they did leave that out in their release there and it still got banned for that since everyone knows that it’s not about that why they don’t want people seeing that movie
Fine... Why should I ever be able to just enjoy shallow entertainment as such? Guess I have to rewatch the movie at least another time to look for details I might have missed because I'm not properly sensitized like a good morally uncorrupted Algerian.
Algeria has banned the popular Barbie film three weeks after its release in the mainly Muslim North African nation.
The movie promoted homosexuality and did not comply with Algeria’s religious and cultural beliefs, an official source told the Reuters news agency.
The film was officially being banned for “damaging morals”, the privately owned news website said, adding that since its release viewings had sold out every day.
There has been criticism in the Arab world about the movie’s social values, with Kuwait banning Barbie last week to protect “public ethics”.
The film, starring Hollywood A-listers Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, is a coming-of-age story based on the children’s toy, where Barbie journeys to the real world and explores her identity.
Barbie has received a warmer welcome from leaders in other countries, such as the UK and Spain, where British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and the Spanish royal family were pictured on cinema outings to see it.
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