The Congolese Press Agency (ACP, in French) informed that the measure stems from comments made by the general during an interview on Congolese national radio and television (RTNC) this weekend, in which he promoted the “supremacy” of a segment of the population.
Among the issues addressed by Ekenge was that Congolese men should not marry Tutsi women, whom he described as Rwandan intelligence agents.
These statements were widely disseminated and exploited by Rwandan officials in a context of persistent tensions between Kinshasa and Kigali, reinforcing the image of a Congolese State that does not protect its citizens equally, precisely as Rwanda and the rebels allege.
The Congo River Alliance-March 23 Movement (AFC/M23) issued a statement describing the comments as “genocidal propaganda” and saying they are part of a “persistent pattern, consistent with the final stage of preparations for genocide, directed against Congolese Tutsis in general, and against women and children in particular.”
City did not have it all their own way when they beat Sunderland at Etihad Stadium, but they dismantled them in the end and they are capable of doing the same at the Stadium of Light.
It is hard to see anyone stopping City at the moment, really. Rayan Cherki is a big talent, and with such quick feet. Phil Foden almost scored against Forest on Saturday, and when Haaland draws a blank, like he did in that game, you know a goal is not far away.
Still, Sunderland have the aggression that saw them rattle Arsenal and they are so well organised defensively too.
That’s why they still haven’t lost at home this season, and I feel bad for writing them off so often, but I am sorry to say I am going to do it again.
I feel like City have found their flow so I can’t back against them, but I am expecting Sunderland to put up one heck of a fight.
Sutton’s prediction: 1-3
Tom’s prediction: My heart is telling me one thing, and my head is telling me another!
From my heart, this is the sort of game we just win. I don’t know if we will, but even just the fact we are at home to City on New Year’s Day again really gives me that feeling – I’ve got very good memories of Ji Dong-won getting our winner against them on 1 January 2012.
With my head, though, it is going to be tough. We had chances at the Etihad a few weeks ago but, being realistic, I think we need a full-strength side to get anything from City and we don’t have that at the moment because we have lost players to the Africa Cup of Nations.
We definitely won’t have enough to win the game, but I am never going to say we will get beaten – I can’t do that. So, with my fingers crossed, I am going to say we will get our noses ahead but then City will pile on the pressure and I don’t see us absorbing it and holding out. 1-1
From a quiet street in Montevideo, Marcos Galperin prepares to hand MercadoLibre’s CEO role to Ariel Szarfsztejn, while Mercado Pago chases banking licenses and Amazon, Temu, and Shein circle. Argentina watches, counting jobs, credit, and politics in a volatile region.
Montevideo Hush, Buenos Aires Noise
On a humid morning in Montevideo, Uruguay, Marcos Galperin walks beside Bloomberg Businessweek reporters Brad Stone and Patrick Gillespie. Nobody guards the 54-year-old co-founder of MercadoLibre Inc., Latin America’s most valuable company. Worth about $10 billion on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, he seems to savor a rare kind of quiet.
He points to a tennis club, a farmers market, and the beach on the Río de la Plata. At the market, sellers who once insisted on cash now accept Mercado Pago. He says he came for privacy: “In Argentina, they’re asking for pictures, this and that. Uruguay is a paradise for me.” He drives himself.
The distance is small—about a half-hour flight from Buenos Aires—and Galperin calls his neighborhood “like a small Palo Alto,” saying, “I can live freely here.” In the Río de la Plata, crossing water can be a pressure valve: far enough to think.
A Free Market Built on Frictions
Thinking now includes succession. At the end of the year, Galperin will relinquish the CEO title at MercadoLibre and become executive chairman, handing the job to deputy Ariel Szarfsztejn, another Stanford Graduate School of Business MBA. “Real power is choosing when to step away,” he says.
Stone and Gillespie report that the decision cost him tears and complex questions. He wanted to leave while the performance was strong. He says MercadoLibre just posted its 27th straight quarter of 30% or higher revenue growth, adding, “I wanted to control the process.” The Strategic Management Journal has studied founders as both engine and bottleneck.
The engine started in 1999, after Penn’s Wharton School and Stanford in Palo Alto, California, when he returned to Argentina to build an eBay-style marketplace; eBay invested early. He later built Mercado Pago, now used by more than 70 million people to pay in stores, manage money, and buy on credit. He says it lets distant customers “buy the same product at the same price,” “a dream come true for tens of millions.” World Development has debated what that inclusion unlocks—and what it concentrates.
Note: Mercado Libre is a registered trademark of MercadoLibre, Inc.
Power After Profit in Argentina
The platform’s scale is continental. With a market capitalization near $105 billion, MercadoLibre operates across 18 countries, runs planes in Brazil and Mexico, and employs more than 100,000—about tenfold the number before Covid-19. Mercado Pago is pursuing banking licenses in Argentina and beyond; without one, he says, “you cannot pay salaries into a digital wallet,” which he calls “quite outrageous.”
Competition is tightening. Amazon.com Inc. partnered with Nu Holdings Ltd. on payments and loans, and MercadoLibre’s stock dropped 8% that day. Galperin says battling Jeff Bezos made his company “a much better company,” pushing it to build more than 30 fulfillment centers. Temu and Shein add another threat, shipping cheap goods directly from Asian factories, often duty-free. He won’t say whether he urged Argentine President Javier Milei to intervene: “You could argue it’s unfair,” he says, but “it’s not up to us to lobby governments for that.”
Asked how his wife, Karina, and their three grown children feel about semiretirement, he pauses: “That’s maybe the toughest question you’ve asked.” He predicts Szarfsztejn will still take his direction: “whatever I think is important, he will listen to me and act accordingly.” Galperin vows to stay focused on MercadoLibre for at least the next five years, chasing artificial intelligence—an adviser inside Mercado Pago that pays bills and invests what’s left, “the best private banker in the world,” for “the average guy.”
Politics has become part of the brand. Stone and Gillespie report that he hosted Milei at MercadoLibre’s office in Buenos Aires, supports his free-market reforms and deep spending cuts, and hopes broader reforms will clear Argentina’s Congress. He calls the Trump administration’s $20 billion backstop and a free-trade framework “very positive,” saying it will cut tariffs and “enhance competition.” On X, he promotes cryptocurrencies while criticizing wokeism, biased journalism, and immigration policies. “Meritocracy is the way to run a business and to run a country,” he says.
He won’t rule out politics for himself: “I’ve learned to avoid certain words like ‘never’ or ‘always.’” He says the ideology was always embedded in the name MercadoLibre, “free market,” and adds, “it’s always been quite clear what our ideology is.” In a region where apps can become infrastructure overnight, his succession is more than corporate theater. This feature is adapted from Bloomberg Businessweek reporting by Brad Stone and Patrick Gillespie.
Hamas leader Mahmoud Mardawi affirmed that the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues its policies of murder.
Mardawi criticized the Israeli restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid into the territory, which he considered an attempt to starve the Palestinian people.
He said the international community must not remain silent in the face of Israel’s continued crimes against the Palestinians.
In this regard, he called on the United States to pressure its main ally in the Middle East to force it to comply with the commitments made as part of the ceasefire.
The diplomat, who gave an interview to Izvestia newspaper this Monday, noted significant potential for cooperation between China and Russia in high-tech areas such as information technologies and artificial intelligence (AI), microelectronics and semiconductors, as well as the construction of civil aircraft.
The ambassador said, “We welcome and look forward to the active participation of the Russian side in the Chinese initiative to create a global cooperation organization in the field of AI.
We intend to further deepen bilateral interaction in the development of AI technologies, industrial development, personnel training, and management.”
The Chinese side, in turn, is also willing to jointly deepen cooperation with Russia in areas such as semiconductor materials, the design of specialized microchips, the development of advanced manufacturing processes, and the creation of equipment to improve the stability and security of supply chains.
Manager Unai Emery says any talk of the title “does not make sense” for Aston Villa despite their historic form.
The Spaniard has overseen a club-record equalling 11 straight wins in all competitions – eight in the Premier League, where Villa sit third.
They are three points behind Arsenal and travel to the Gunners, Emery’s former club, on Tuesday (20:15 GMT) but the head coach continues to play down Villa’s title chances.
He said: “To speak about the title does not make sense for us. Now, in December, it does not make sense. We are motivated and excited but for the moment we are motivated for the match we play tomorrow.
“With three points difference between them and us, this is our motivation.
“With how we are performing, we can feel proud of everything we are building. Tactically, mentally, individually. We are trying to feel inside as a family, we are spending more time here than with family.
“The next challenge is very difficult, the most difficult challenge we can face now because it’s the best team.”
The parties welcomed the signing, on December 27, of the joint ceasefire declaration at the third special meeting of the Cambodia-Thailand General Border Committee (GBC).
Participants noted that the agreement serves the fundamental and long-term interests of both peoples and sends a positive signal for regional peace and stability.
China voiced support for both nations’ efforts to ensure a comprehensive and lasting ceasefire as a foundation for peacebuilding.
All three sides endorsed the work of the Joint Boundary Commission (JBC) to implement the signed declaration and advance coordination mechanisms. China expressed its willingness to provide necessary support, including humanitarian cooperation for demining and support for the functioning of the observer team of the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations).
The meeting stressed the priority of gradually restoring normal exchanges and cooperation in border areas, as well as the livelihoods of displaced persons.
Here is what to look out for on the final round of Scottish Premiership fixtures for 2025, including Celtic v Motherwell, Djeidi Gassama’s form and the pressure on David Martindale.
Lonely hunter pumas now operate in groups, given the abundance of penguins
A recent study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B has documented an unprecedented ecological interaction in Argentina, where Pumas (Puma concolor) are hunting Magellanic penguins (Spheniscus magellanicus) along the Patagonian coast as a direct result of historical human intervention.
Historically, penguins nested primarily on offshore islands to avoid land predators. However, in the early 20th century, the expansion of sheep farming led to the massive hunting and near-extinction of pumas in coastal areas.
With pumas gone, penguins began colonizing the mainland coast (such as Monte León National Park in the province of Santa Cruz) because there were no large terrestrial predators to threaten their nests.
In the 21st Century, successful rewilding and protection efforts have seen the puma -known typically to be solitary hunters that rely on mammals like guanacos (a relative of the llama)- return to coastal regions. Researchers from Rewilding Argentina and international universities tracked 14 pumas with GPS collars between 2019 and 2023.
Among their findings is the highest density of pumas near penguin colonies ever recorded, roughly double that of other regions. Additionally, the presence of large numbers of penguins in one spot resulted in these otherwise solitary cats interacting with each other more frequently. Coastal pumas move much less and maintain smaller territories because they no longer need to travel long distances to hunt guanacos.
The pumas that consume penguins interact more with other pumas, because they find themselves in the colony or its surroundings, and have smaller territories and move less, since they do not have to make long journeys to find their prey, explained Rewilding Argentina Scientific Director Emiliano Donadio, a co-author of the study.
Data showed that the penguin colonies were in no way at risk. In fact, they were found to be stable and even growing. The pumas’ impact is not yet threatening the survival of the species.
When penguins migrate away from the coast for the season, the pumas simply switch back to their traditional diet of guanacos.
Mitchel Serota, the study’s lead author, warned that because pumas and guanacos are the dominant predator-prey pair in Patagonia, this shift to eating penguins could have a domino effect on the vegetation and other animals in the region.
The return of the puma is seen as a success for conservation, showing that the landscape is recovering its native predators, with new behaviors and interactions that scientists are just beginning to understand.
Carnivores are being reintroduced into an ecosystem that does not necessarily resemble the one that saw them become locally extinct, warned Iowa State University Ecologist Jake Goheen, who did not participate in the research.
