Biden,

Trudeau concerned about Haiti

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and US President Joe Biden both expressed concern about the deteriorating situation in the French-speaking Caribbean Community (Caricom) member state of Haiti, when they met during Biden’s two-day visit to Canada, that concluded on Friday.

In a joint statement, the leaders pledged to increase community support to the people of Haiti, in particular by offering them security and humanitarian aid and better support for the National Police of Haiti (PNH).

ing a presidential candidate, who will be elected in a vote among themselves. Diaz-Canel, leader of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), is expected to win a second term.

The vote comes at a time when Cuba is facing its worst economic crisis in decades, with shortages of food, an unprecedented wave of migration, galloping inflation, and crippling US sanctions. (Excerpt from Al Jazeera)

Former Argentine President says he will not contest upcoming elections

Former Argentine President Mauricio Macri said on Sunday that he will not be a presidential candidate in the country's October General Election, as the Opposition coalition moves to confirm its candidates.

The centre-right Macri's decision to opt out opens the door wider for other candidates of the Opposition coalition "Together for Change", considered the front-runner against the incumbent Peronist-led leftist party of President Alberto Fernandez.

Opposition candi- dates Buenos Aires Mayor Horacio Rodriguez Larreta and former Security Minister Patricia Bullrich applauded Macri's decision not to run.

"I will not be a candidate in the next election," Macri said in a video posted on social media on Sunday.

"I am convinced that we must expand the political space for the change that we initiated," added Macri, who was President from 2015 to 2019, but lost his re-election bid to Fernandez.

Although Macri had previously suggested he would not run for the October elections, other Opposition members speculated he would still announce his candidacy.

In the midst of a prolonged economic crisis with 100 per cent annual inflation, nearly half of Argentina's population has been thrust into poverty.

The Opposition coalition appears poised to garner more support than the ruling party, which has not yet defined its candidate amid major internal disputes between Fernandez and his Vice President Cristina Fernandez.

(Excerpt from Reuters)

In a press release, the office of the Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau, said that in order to counter the crisis and support peace and security, “Canada is investing an additional US$100 million to provide enhanced policing support and equipment to the Haitian National Police, to bolster Haitianled solutions to the crisis and support peace and security”, rather than lead an international force of several thousand men in Haiti.

In addition, the Canadian Government said that it would be imposing sanctions on two other members of the Haitian elite – former senator Nenel Cassy and business- man and former presidential candidate Steeve Khawly, whose Canadian assets have been frozen. They are also prohibited from entering Canada.

For his part, Biden said that his Administration was looking to support the Police department in Haiti and looking into whether the United Nations could play a role to quell the violence in the country.

“The biggest thing we could do, and it’s going to take time, is to increase the prospect of the Police department in Haiti having the capacity to deal with the problems,” Biden said during a press conference with Trudeau. (CMC)

Mexican Government to challenge Supreme Court’s suspension of electoral reform

The Mexican government said Sunday it would challenge the Supreme Court's temporary suspension of parts of a controversial electoral reform pushed by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

The Supreme Court on Friday halted parts of the reform, which was a scaleddown version of a failed constitutional reform originally sought. The court also confirmed it would consider a lawsuit from independent electoral institute INE that seeks to overturn it.

Mexico's Government said in a statement it would challenge the decision through its legal department and blasted the court's suspension.

"It is false that the fundamental rights of citizens are put at risk, as well as the organisation of the elections ... so it is an unjustified and unnecessary resolution," the Government said.

"It is essential that the Ministers that make up the (Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation) act within the powers that correspond to them, without trespassing the limits imposed by the Constitution and the laws," it added.

The Supreme Court said in its statement Friday that the case involved "the possible violation of citizen's political-electoral rights".

The leftist Lopez Obrador has bitterly clashed with electoral authorities throughout his political career.

Late last month,

'Stateless' after ISIS in Trinidad

Close to eight years after Ismael Roberts returned to T&T with his mother, Marsha Roberts, from ISIS-controlled territories in Syria, he is still unable to attend school, without documents and is, for all intents and purposes, stateless.

Ismael, eight, and 38-year-old Marsha were repatriated to T&T from Turkey in October 2015 after three years in the Middle East.

Marsha said Government officials helped their family to return home, but she now feels like her son has been abandoned and discarded by the State.

“Without a child having an identity, without a child having a chance to be in school and get an education, what will you leave him to come out to be? And then you’ll blame it on ISIS, but he’s back home and we are trying to live a different life,” Marsha said.

“I just want my child to have a fair chance in life. When I returned, he was one-year-old, and now he’s eight, and he hasn’t been in school. I have to be unemployed and homeschool him and teach him to read and write. I want a better life for him.

“I feel the pain mostly in the evenings because I will see children coming from school and my son will say, ‘Mommy, I want to go to school’. He says, ‘My friends ask me if I go to school and I have to lie and say I go to school’. This has been happening over and over for years without any help. I reach out for help in private schools, Government schools, the Ministry of Education on my own, going in on my own and everybody shutting me down,” Marsha said, as her eyes turned red and filled with tears.

A room at the front of their one-story home in Maloney is Ismael’s makeshift classroom. His entire education has been developed by his mother in this six-by-seven-foot room. On one of the walls rests a whiteboard. Mathematics was Saturday’s subject of the day when the Sunday Guardian visited.

“I feel my son has been abandoned. Every day I

Mexico's Senate gave its final approval to the electoral reform known locally as "Plan B", which critics warn would undermine democracy since it significantly downsizes the INE while giving more power to local officials, many of whom are members of Lopez Obrador's MORENA party.

The government has said the reform seeks to reduce the bureaucratic costs of elections and strengthen democratic principles.

(Reuters) feel deep pain because I want the best for my son, and it’s like we’re going deeper down a hole because it’s like he doesn’t exist. He has no identity here.

“I would like my son to have a normal life as any child, any citizen of Trinidad and Tobago. I would like to see him in a school, playing with children his age. Be able to get dental, free dental, and healthcare. Everything as a normal average child,” Marsha said.

Since their return, Marsha said they’ve not been offered any form of support from the State, or any professional counselling or rehabilitation.

(Excerpt from Trinidad Guardian)

After a major decline that saw oil prices fall to multiyear lows, oil markets appear to have bottomed out and begun an encouraging ascent higher. Over the past two weeks, a general bearish and risk-off sentiment cut across asset markets and triggered a lengthy unwind of speculative positions in oil futures. A top commodity analyst blamed the unusually steep decline to significant selling by banks in response to gamma-effects as prices closed in a concentration of producer puts around USD 75/bbl for Brent and USD 70/bbl for WTI crude. Luckily for the bulls, in the past week, oil prices have staged a remarkable turnaround, with Brent climbing from a twoyear low around US$70 per barrel on Monday to USD 77.20 per barrel on Thursday’s intraday session while WTI has recovered from around US$63 per barrel to US$71.20 over the timeframe. That’s a nearly 10% rally in the space of just three days.

And now commodity experts at Standard Chartered are saying that the path of least resistance for oil prices at this point is higher, not lower. Previously, the analysts had said that the unwinding of speculative length appears to be complete at this juncture, thus lowering selling pressure, but had warned that prices might retest the lows if the FOMC hikes its policy rate by more than the widely expected margin of 25bps.

Thankfully, the markets have successfully scaled that wall of worry after the Fed’s hike on Wednesday came inline with expectations. The Fed also indicated that the current rate hike cycle is nearing an end.

It gets better for the bulls: StanChart expects last week’s gamma effects to reverse course with banks buying back positions thus reinforcing the short-term rebound. Beyond that, StanChart says oil prices will largely be dictated by OPEC’s and consuming countries’ strategic inventory policy shifts.

Specifically, the experts have predicted the current surplus will persist till early Q2; however, they expect the rest of the year to be in a modest deficit.

Goldman Sachs' Jeffrey Currie has acknowledged that the unexpected banking crisis has soured the macroeconomic outlook significantly and weighed heavily on oil prices, calling the situation a "big, scarring event." Still, the analyst expects prices to rally from here, and has only lowered his 2023 end-of-year target from US$100 to US$94 a barrel.

According to Currie, fundamentals in the oil markets remain largely unchanged thus supporting the previous bull case. He has pointed out that key physical indicators, such as refining margins and time spreads, have remained stable, a positive sign that in-use demand remains strong and is likely to continue driving the physical market higher. Currie has also argued that the banking crisis will only have short-lived effects but very limited impact over the longterm. However, he has warned that the turmoil will result in a "... a longer path forward."

Hedge fund manager Pierre Andurand of Andurand Capital is not a mere bull but an ultra-bull: Andurand has predicted that crude will hit US$140/bbl by the end of the year. Just like Currie, Andrurand argues that the recent oil price crash due to banking jitters was purely speculative. Further, he expects crude oil demand to peak around 2030, but "even when we peak, oil demand won't fall down so fast. We will reach peak demand towards 110M bbl/day and then a slow decline from there."

Oil and gas stocks have also been surging higher in tandem with the commodities they track: the energy sector’s benchmark, the Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund, is up 4.1% since the beginning of last week. (Excerpt from Oilprice.com)