The elections were to elect those who will reform the Constitution and also local offices.

The party of Argentine President Javier Milei came third in Sunday's elections in the province of Santa Fe, where the coalition of Governor Maximiliano Pullaro won in the opening of an electoral year with national legislative elections in October.

Santa Fe, to the north of Buenos Aires, elected this Sunday those who will reform its Constitution and also local offices. Sixteen months ago, the ultra-liberal Milei obtained there 62.8% of the votes in the ballot that led him to the presidency, but now his candidates reached 14%, according to provisional results.

The district is the third most important in Argentina and its electorate represents 8% of the electoral roll.

With 98.7% of the votes counted, Governor Maximiliano Pullaro, who headed the list of his political space, a coalition of the Unión Cívica Radical, Propuesta Republicana and Socialist parties, won with 34.6% of the votes.

He was followed by the candidate of the Justicialist Party (Peronist), Juan Monteverde, with 15.2%, according to the provisional scrutiny.

The local aspirant to the Constituent Convention of Milei's force La Libertad Avanza (LLA), the national deputy Nicolás Mayoraz, added 14.11% of the votes.

The beginning of the electoral calendar took place two days after the support given by the International Monetary Fund to the government program, with a loan of 20 billion dollars to strengthen the reserves, in the midst of an exchange crisis which forced the Central Bank to sell more than 1.8 billion dollars in two weeks.

The vote also took place after Milei announced the elimination of the exchange control as from this Monday, when a fluctuation of the value of the currency between bands of 1,000 to 1,400 pesos will be in force.

The head of the local public opinion consultant, Roque Cantoia, said that these elections do not represent “a plebiscite for the national government”, but the first stop in the race towards the national parliamentary elections of October 26.

“The national key lies in the fact that it is the first electoral instance since Milei is president, and it can give us an idea of the power that the brand has to transfer political flow”, said Cantoia, to underline that it was an election “without Milei on the ballot”.

The Argentine electoral schedule will continue on May 11 in the provinces of Salta, San Luis, Chaco and Jujuy, and on May 18 in the City of Buenos Aires.

The Brazilian government has granted political asylum to a former first lady of Peru recently sentenced to 15 years in prison for money laundering. Nadine Heredia was convicted on Tuesday along with her husband of laundering campaign contributions, including those from the infamous Brazilian construction conglomerate Odebrecht. Peru will allow Heredia and her youngest son to leave, following a formal request from Brazil, according to a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Peru's government previously acknowledged that Heredia had entered the Brazilian embassy seeking asylum. Heredia's husband, former President Ollanta Humala, was arrested Tuesday following the sentencing. But Heredia did not physically attend the hearing and instead went to the Brazilian embassy seeking protection. Peru is famous for jailing more former presidents than virtually any other nation in the world, and legal problems often involve their partners as well.

Heredia was first lady between 2011 and 2016 and was considered very influential in Humala's government, which ruled on a leftist platform akin to the leftist governments in place in Brazil at the time.

A Peruvian court on Tuesday sentenced ex-president Ollanta Humala and his wife to 15 years in prison for graft linked to a globe-spanning corruption scandal involving Brazilian construction group Odebrecht paying bribes to politicians.

The court found the 62-year-old and his wife Nadine Heredia guilty of money laundering for receiving illegal contributions from Odebrecht and the Venezuelan government in two presidential campaigns.

Humala was taken into custody in the courtroom after the ruling, and Judge Nayko Coronado ordered the arrest of Heredia, who did not attend the sentencing hearing.

Humala, a former army officer who led the country from 2011 to 2016, became in 2022 the first Peruvian ex-president to go on trial in the Odebrecht corruption scandal, which has also seen three other former presidents implicated.

Two-term leader Alan Garcia committed suicide in 2019 when police came to his house to arrest him, while Alejandro Toledo (in power from 2001-06) was sentenced last year to more than 20 years in prison for accepting multi-million-dollar bribes in exchange for government contracts.

Investigations continue into the fourth ex-president who was implicated, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (in office from 2016-2018).

Prosecutors had sought a 20-year prison term for Humala and 26 years for Heredia for accepting $3 million in illegal contributions for his 2011 campaign from Odebrecht.

The company is considered responsible for one of the biggest foreign bribery schemes in history.

Bribes for influence

The pair were also charged with illegally diverting about $200,000 sent by Venezuela's then-president Hugo Chavez for Humala's failed 2006 campaign, and Heredia with "concealment of real estate purchases" made with some of the money.

They have consistently denied all charges, and Humala's legal team said he would appeal the sentence.

In 2016, Odebrecht agreed to pay $3.5 billion in penalties in Brazil, the United States and Switzerland arising out of payments of more than $788 million in bribes to foreign leaders and government officials in order to win infrastructure projects.

The company admitted having paid at least $29 million in bribes to Peruvian officials between 2005 and 2014.

Leftist Humala came to the presidency in 2011 after beating right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori in a runoff election.

Fujimori herself spent 16 months in pre-trial detention in a case linked to Odebrecht.

His administration’s housing plans foresee the resettlement of 345,000 people into new apartments by 2030. During a State Council meeting on Tuesday, President Vladimir Putin invited those “young people” who share “the values we uphold” to come live in Russia.

“We truly need promising young people who will start families and either be educated here or come already educated. We need a group of people who are close to our way of life and to the values we uphold,” he said.

Last year, Putin had already signed a decree to grant residency to foreigners who share “traditional Russian values.” The Russian president also presented today the housing reconstruction plans, which foresee the resettlement of 345,000 people into new apartments by the year 2030. “At least 6.2 million square meters of uninhabitable buildings will be eliminated,” he added.

During the meeting, the current housing situation in Russia was also discussed—a sector showing a downturn that may be linked to the decline in credit applications due to the continued policy of high interest rates led by the Russian Central Bank.

“Given the current economic and macroeconomic situation, there are risks of a slowdown. In total, the completion of more than 2,000 housing projects across the country has been postponed for six months,” Putin said, referring to the stagnation in the sector.

At the same time, the beginning of 2025 saw a wave of bankruptcies among Russian construction companies that had been operating with minimal profitability due to the lack of residential apartment sales and a shortage of domestic investment.