Unnamed: 0
int64 0
3.83k
| text
stringlengths 75
808
|
|---|---|
2,400 | <s>[INST] But independent economists say activity is [/INST] already rapidly slowing, and foresee 1999 growth of 3.5% or less. </s> |
2,401 | <s>[INST] To do better, they argue, [/INST] further reform is needed, to cut business costs. </s> |
2,402 | <s>[INST] And Mr Menem has [/INST] shown little interest in that of late. </s> |
2,403 | <s>[INST] Notably, he has let his labour minister present a bill [/INST] that would entrench trade-union power and scrap emergency provisions, allowing employers to offer temporary jobs free of red tape. </s> |
2,404 | <s>[INST] That helped create 800,000 jobs [/INST] last year and to lower unemployment to 13.7%. </s> |
2,405 | <s>[INST] This year was expected to be a pause between [/INST] last October's congressional elections, won by the Alliance, and the presidential election of October 1999. </s> |
2,406 | <s>[INST] Within his Justicialist Party, Mr Menem's supporters are manoeuvring [/INST] to obtain a (dubious) interpretation of the constitution to let him run for a third term. </s> |
2,407 | <s>[INST] At the least, he aims to keep control of the party at [/INST] a convention this month, and see off a waning challenge for the candidacy from his rival Eduardo Duhalde, governor of Buenos Aires province. </s> |
2,408 | <s>[INST] In this he needs the [/INST] aid of Justicialist trade-union leaders, who oppose labour-market reform. </s> |
2,409 | <s>[INST] Yet after nine years [/INST] of Menemism, Argentines seem ready for change. </s> |
2,410 | <s>[INST] Most expect the Alliance to win in 1999, provided [/INST] it holds together during a potentially bruising contest in November to choose its presidential candidate. </s> |
2,411 | <s>[INST] For that job, the Radical Union's Fernando de la Rua, [/INST] mayor of Buenos Aires, looks likely to pip Graciela Fernandez Meijide from Frepaso, the Alliance's younger and smaller component. </s> |
2,412 | <s>[INST] Frepaso's concern now is to commit the Alliance to [/INST] rules ensuring a fair share of top posts for it if Mr de la Rua becomes president. </s> |
2,413 | <s>[INST] Tackle corruption, says Mrs Fernandez Meijide, and emphasise [/INST] reforms that Mr Menem has neglected, notably of the judiciary and social policy. </s> |
2,414 | <s>[INST] As for the economy, it [/INST] would probably tinker with his reforms, not undo them. </s> |
2,415 | <s>[INST] It might even have to promise more to win help, in [/INST] a presidential run-off, from Domingo Cavallo, who as economy minister in 1991-96 brought in convertibility and now leads his own party. </s> |
2,416 | <s>[INST] The Alliance's blend of liberal politics and Blairite economics might [/INST] prove a balm to the wounds left by Mr Menem's mixture of liberal economics and Sicilian politics. </s> |
2,417 | <s>[INST] Meanwhile Argentina and its fixed peso face [/INST] the risks of a world where other currencies are depreciating by the day. </s> |
2,418 | <s>[INST] ___ Document 363 of 400 The Americas: The [/INST] season of El Nino Author: Anonymous Publication info: The Economist 347.8067 (May 9, 1998): 35-38. </s> |
2,419 | <s>[INST] accountid=28034 Abstract: The El Nino of 1997-1998 is [/INST] returning to its cradle, after scarring Latin America with drought and fire, storm and flood. </s> |
2,420 | <s>[INST] But it is not over yet, and the fall-out, economic, social [/INST] and political, will not be cleared up for many months or even, in some places and activities, for years. </s> |
2,421 | <s>[INST] The economic costs imposed by [/INST] El Nino on the region have been huge. </s> |
2,422 | <s>[INST] The heaviest cost, though not the [/INST] most noticed, has been to human happiness, health and lives. </s> |
2,423 | <s>[INST] Amid all the averages, many people, mostly [/INST] poor ones, have lost everything: crops, jobs, homes and often hope. </s> |
2,424 | <s>[INST] The authorities' response to warnings of El Nino, and [/INST] to its arrival, has varied widely - and has been widely, but not always fairly, criticized. </s> |
2,425 | <s>[INST] Full text: Headnote At last, the El Nino of [/INST] 1997-98 is returning to its cradle, after scarring Latin America with drought and fire, storm and flood. </s> |
2,426 | <s>[INST] But it is not over yet, and the fall-out, economic, social and political, will not [/INST] be cleared up for many months or even, in some places and activities, for years IT SWEPT away roads and bridges, homes and farms, lives and livelihoods. </s> |
2,427 | <s>[INST] It created a vast lake in [/INST] a north Peruvian desert, and ruined the fisheries of Chile. </s> |
2,428 | <s>[INST] It battered Mexico's Pacific-coast resort of Acapulco, [/INST] and lowered water levels, enforcing draught restrictions on ships in the Panama canal. </s> |
2,429 | <s>[INST] Across stretches of northern Brazil, Guyana and Suriname, even [/INST] in the island of Trinidad, it dried up vegetation and-often with human help-burned up forests. </s> |
2,430 | <s>[INST] It parched crops too, bringing Brazil's always dry [/INST] north-east food shortages that had the president scurrying there this week to see relief efforts. </s> |
2,431 | <s>[INST] Farther south, it swelled the mighty Parana river to eight metres above [/INST] its normal height, flooding millions of hectares and driving hundreds of thousands of people from their homes in Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina. </s> |
2,432 | <s>[INST] Overall, it killed at least 900 [/INST] human beings and livestock by the hundreds of thousands. </s> |
2,433 | <s>[INST] It hit economies for perhaps [/INST] $20 billion, much of that still to be paid. </s> |
2,434 | <s>[INST] And, in many countries, it [/INST] exposed governments to harsh tests and harsher criticism. </s> |
2,435 | <s>[INST] Every year, usually around December-hence the name El [/INST] Nino, the Christchild-a warm Pacific current flows east to the coasts of Ecuador and Peru. </s> |
2,436 | <s>[INST] But at random intervals [/INST] of years, this current becomes a flood. </s> |
2,437 | <s>[INST] And though satellite observations and new weather buoys now enable a fierce El Nino to be [/INST] foreseen months in advance-as the last big one, in 1982-83, was not-no one can be sure exactly in what form and where the extremes of weather that it brings will strike. </s> |
2,438 | <s>[INST] Latin America and the Caribbean [/INST] will not swiftly forget the El Nino of 1997-98. </s> |
2,439 | <s>[INST] Drought, flood and uncertainty Of his two faces, El Nino this time [/INST] broadly (see the map on the next page) showed drought to the north of the equator, floodor at least torrential storms-to the south. </s> |
2,440 | <s>[INST] So were Mexico's centre and south-but its Pacific coast was [/INST] struck by hurricanes of wind and rain, rare on that side; the third of these in October smashed Acapulco. </s> |
2,441 | <s>[INST] The Caribbean has been short of rain: Cuba recently [/INST] had forest fires, and some east Caribbean islands have had to cut water supplies at night. </s> |
2,442 | <s>[INST] Colombia has had half its normal rain, and the [/INST] drought has stretched eastward across Venezuela into northern Brazil, Guyana, Suriname and down into Brazil's north-east. </s> |
2,443 | <s>[INST] It was Peru's Sechura desert, on its far-northem coast, that was [/INST] converted into a lake, of several thousand square kilometres at its largest, though it is now degenerating into a stagnant swamp. </s> |
2,444 | <s>[INST] Peru's government had done much to [/INST] prepare against the rains, building dykes, cleaning waterways and strengthening bridges. </s> |
2,445 | <s>[INST] El Nino from January to March made light of [/INST] its efforts, badly damaging 600 kilometres (370 miles) of Peru's main roads and 30 bridges along them. </s> |
2,446 | <s>[INST] The authorities had expected the [/INST] normally dry south to grow drier still. </s> |
2,447 | <s>[INST] Not so: a swollen river three months ago flooded the southern city of [/INST] Ica, near the coast, and it was in the southern mountains that 20 people died when a village was buried by a landslide. </s> |
2,448 | <s>[INST] Bolivia for six months has had highland droughts and lowland floods, an unlikely mixture [/INST] due to unusually high temperatures: what would normally fall as snow on the peaks fell as rain, and ran straight off to drown areas below. </s> |
2,449 | <s>[INST] Chile had a week [/INST] of fierce floods last June, midwinter there. </s> |
2,450 | <s>[INST] But all these pale beside the floods that for four weeks now [/INST] have swamped northern Argentina and parts of Paraguay and Uruguay, as several big rivers, headed by the giant Parana, have burst their banks. </s> |
2,451 | <s>[INST] The 250,000 people of Resistencia, capital of Argentina's Chaco province, spent May day [/INST] wondering whether the Parana, already eight metres above normal, would summon up the extra metre to overwhelm the dyke hurriedly built around their city. </s> |
2,452 | <s>[INST] It did not; but, in all, some 80,000 square kilometres (31,000 [/INST] square miles) of Argentina were under water this week-and that excludes areas flooded earlier but now starting to dry out. </s> |
2,453 | <s>[INST] Costs, short-term and long The economic [/INST] costs imposed by El Nino on the region have been huge. </s> |
2,454 | <s>[INST] Most of the figures, of course, [/INST] are heroic estimates, and many are heroic forecasts, at that. </s> |
2,455 | <s>[INST] Cattle drowned can be crudely counted (140,000, says one estimate for Argentina's Santa Fe province, [/INST] stretched along 800km of the Parana), and the loss of crops ruined by flood or drought can be reckoned, but the longterm effects may take years to show up. </s> |
2,456 | <s>[INST] As now in Argentina and Uruguay, one rancher's drowned beast [/INST] is another's higher beef price, and, more widely helpful, today's disaster can be tomorrow's rebuilding, maybe for the better. </s> |
2,457 | <s>[INST] Chile's 1997 skiing season [/INST] was prolonged by abundant snow into October. </s> |
2,458 | <s>[INST] June's flash floods there made [/INST] 80,000 people homeless and hit some farmers, especially vegetable-growers. </s> |
2,459 | <s>[INST] But both also filled reservoirs for the many [/INST] Chilean farmers who artificially irrigate their land and had suffered three years of low rainfall. </s> |
2,460 | <s>[INST] So they did for the hydro-power [/INST] companies, which were within days of enforced electricity rationing. </s> |
2,461 | <s>[INST] In many countries, road-builders and suppliers [/INST] of concrete can look forward to a profitable year. </s> |
2,462 | <s>[INST] The first to suffer [/INST] were the fishermen on the Pacific coasts. </s> |
2,463 | <s>[INST] Peru's boats as early as mid-1997 [/INST] started finding the shrimps and lobsters usually caught in Ecuador's waters. </s> |
2,464 | <s>[INST] The Peruvians' usual prey had swum [/INST] south, looking for food in colder waters off Chile. </s> |
2,465 | <s>[INST] Peru normally exports $1 billion [/INST] a year of fishmeal from anchoveta, the Pacific pilchard. </s> |
2,466 | <s>[INST] That business has collapsed, and [/INST] jobs at sea and in processing plants with it. </s> |
2,467 | <s>[INST] Chile's jack mackerel in turn went farther [/INST] south, cutting its catch by 40% in the first quarter of this year. </s> |
2,468 | <s>[INST] In the fishing port of San Antonio, nine of ten [/INST] fishmeal plants have closed, and the tenth is handling 20 tonnes a day instead of its usual 100. </s> |
2,469 | <s>[INST] Drought in Central America has cost Guatemala [/INST] perhaps 10% of its grain and hard-hit El Salvador 30% of its coffee. </s> |
2,470 | <s>[INST] Parts of central Panama have been reduced to a dustbowl, and [/INST] thousands of cattle have had to be slaughtered (not wholly a loss: they were already helping to make the dustbowl). </s> |
2,471 | <s>[INST] In Colombia drought has parched 5,000 [/INST] square kilometres of pasture and 2,000 of maize, sorghum and soya. </s> |
2,472 | <s>[INST] Overall, says the ministry of agriculture, El Nino has cost [/INST] 7% of normal output, with the cotton harvest cut by a quarter and milk currently 30% down. </s> |
2,473 | <s>[INST] In Brazil's north-east, SUDENE, the regional [/INST] development agency, talks of drought losses above $4 billion. </s> |
2,474 | <s>[INST] Cattle have begun to die and [/INST] the many subsistence farmers have seen their crops wither. </s> |
2,475 | <s>[INST] Even in this area, not famous for [/INST] its grain, 2 1/2m tonnes of that are reckoned to have gone. </s> |
2,476 | <s>[INST] Argentina's economy ministry this week estimated the [/INST] total costs of El Nino's floods at $3 billion, almost 1% of GDP. </s> |
2,477 | <s>[INST] Farming will bear much of that: cattle apart, perhaps 40% [/INST] of the expected 1 1/2m tonnes of cotton has been lost, 30% of the rice, 50% of the tobacco. </s> |
2,478 | <s>[INST] This week the wheat and soya crops [/INST] in the pampa humida, Argentina's breadbasket, west of Buenos Aires, were in danger. </s> |
2,479 | <s>[INST] In the Andean region of Mendoza, home [/INST] of the country's-rapidly improving and valuable-wineries, vineyards have been damaged by storms. </s> |
2,480 | <s>[INST] Uruguay's cattle have largely escaped, but [/INST] 10% of its main grain crop, rice, has gone. </s> |
2,481 | <s>[INST] But even if their fields were untouched, growers of tropical fruit [/INST] and vegetables-key crops in the government's ef forts to wean farmers off coca-growinghave often seen their roads to market washed away. </s> |
2,482 | <s>[INST] In the high altiplano, poor peasants depend [/INST] for much of their water on the slow melting of snow. </s> |
2,483 | <s>[INST] With snowfall lacking, many have lost [/INST] their crops and will find livestock dying in the coming winter. </s> |
2,484 | <s>[INST] They may raise salt levels [/INST] Irrigation, especially during drought, can also have that effect. </s> |
2,485 | <s>[INST] And in Guyana and Suriname, coastal farmers irrigating with [/INST] water from river estuaries have had to stop: because of the rivers' weak flow, it was sea-water. </s> |
2,486 | <s>[INST] Roads, power and output The [/INST] losses, of course, extend much wider than farming. </s> |
2,487 | <s>[INST] In Panama, famous for its tropical downpours, the big river Chagres shrank [/INST] almost to a brook Lack of rain not only meant draught restrictions on ships (and loss of toll revenue) in the canal. </s> |
2,488 | <s>[INST] It has also brought power cuts: like most [/INST] of Central America (except Nicaragua) Panama gets about 70% of its power from hydro-electricity. </s> |
2,489 | <s>[INST] Several countries, taught by a sharp drought [/INST] in 1994, have invested in thermal plants, avoiding what they suffered then. </s> |
2,490 | <s>[INST] But the price, in [/INST] capital and fuel costs, has been heavy. </s> |
2,491 | <s>[INST] Colombia too has seen power suppliers struggling to keep up, and [/INST] river transport, not least of oil, disrupted on its big Magdalena river, which runs north-south deep into the country. </s> |
2,492 | <s>[INST] Ecuador has been savaged by this El Nino, recording [/INST] more rain-7,000mm (275 inches)in the past 14 months than in 17 of the El Nino of 1982-83. </s> |
2,493 | <s>[INST] It will have to rebuild 19 large [/INST] bridges and repair 2,500km of roads, at a cost put at $800m. </s> |
2,494 | <s>[INST] But on top come [/INST] the unquantifiable costs of disruption to transport. </s> |
2,495 | <s>[INST] Lorries stand in interminable queues [/INST] where roads and bridges have been washed away. </s> |
2,496 | <s>[INST] So do pedestrians, waiting [/INST] to pay to cross makeshift plank-and-rope bridges. </s> |
2,497 | <s>[INST] As in much of Latin America, especially its many mountain [/INST] areas, a road blocked is movement blocked:without an enormous detour, if at all, traffic simply has no way round. </s> |
2,498 | <s>[INST] That has been convenient for Bolivia's weekend travellers to the tropical [/INST] valleys east of La Paz, who have found "landslide" a neat excuse for not being at the office on Monday morning. </s> |
2,499 | <s>[INST] No complaint cameexcept from her father-when a young Ecuadorean [/INST] was forced by a sudden flood to pass the night at the house of her boyfriend. </s> |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.