Sam Meadows

1 month ago | spectator.co.uk | Sam Meadows

Javier Milei has reduced poverty in Argentina. This week brought the publication of a tranche of government poverty figures, covering the period from July to December last year. Much had been made of the immediate surge in poverty that occurred in Milei’s first six months in office. The fall – down to 38.1 per cent from 41.7 per cent in the same period last year, when the country was governed by the Peronists – would seem to be a vindication of the chainsaw-wielding libertarian and his policies.

2 months ago | sg.finance.yahoo.com | Sam Meadows

In this article: Ride-hailing services have been in the UK for a number of years now, however, it’s not always clear which to go for. Two of the biggest in the UK are Bolt and Uber, and many of us face the dilemma of which to choose. Both Uber and Bolt are pre-booked taxi services (as opposed to taxis you hail down in the street), similar to other options such as Addison Lee or your local minicab firm.

2 months ago | newhumanist.org.uk | Sam Meadows

The defining image of Javier Milei’s rapid rise to power in Argentina was his favourite campaign stunt: waving a chainsaw above his head and promising to crush the political elite. The garden tool served as a symbol of his libertarian, small-state ideology. The state is not the solution, he told delegates of the World Economic Forum; it is the problem. When Milei took office in December 2023, Argentina was in the grips of a deep economic crisis, with monthly inflation at 25 per cent.

2 months ago | thespectator.com | Edward Howell |Sam Meadows |Niko Vorobyov |Philip Patrick

For a country that is notorious for its lack of connection to the outside world, North Korea is one of the world experts in cyber warfare. Only this week, North Korean hackers managed to steal $1.5 billion from the cryptocurrency exchange Bybit, in what is the largest cryptocurrency hack on record. The fact that the stolen money is just over 5 percent of the country’s GDP does not mean the profits will be going to the North Korean people or economy though.

2 months ago | spectator.co.uk | Sam Meadows

In the Oscar-nominated movie The Holdovers, one of the characters says in a moment of frustration: ‘I thought all the Nazis ran away to Argentina.’ This line got a big laugh in cinemas in Buenos Aires. But while the events this joke alludes to now lie far enough in the past for today’s Argentines to chuckle at, the flight of Nazis to its shores remains an extremely uncomfortable period in the history of the South American country.