Aurelia Butler

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – Argentines are expected to eat the most beef in five years in 2023, extending the country’s reign as the No. 1 steak consumer per capita despite the painful impact of 109% inflation on food prices, a Rosario grains exchange report showed on Friday.The major beef producer, where “asado” barbecues are a key part of the culinary culture and steakhouses dot city streets, has seen in recent years beef consumption dip as prices climbed and diners shifted to cheaper chicken and pork.That, however, seems to be partly reversing, even in the face of one of the world’s highest inflation rates which has badly hurt spending power. Analysts expect inflation could hit 130% by the end of the year.”Despite everything, the traditional asado remains one of the pillars of the local gastronomic tradition, and a must at most Argentine dinner tables,” the exchange said, adding likely beef consumption this year would be 53.1 kilograms per person.The exchange said the relative cost of beef versus pork and chicken had dropped since 2021, though it remained elevated versus a historical average. Gross salaries were also slightly higher than in 2021, though again lower than historic averages.The proportion of beef in meat consumption climbed this year to 46% from 44% two years ago. However, the amount of beef and its share is still far below peaks of some 68 kg per capita and over 70% in the past two decades.The recent bump in the data underscores the importance of beef in Argentine culture, even as the highest inflation rate since 1991 has pushed some 40% of the population into poverty. More

(Reuters) -Indivior Plc said on Friday it agreed to pay $102.5 million to settle a lawsuit by dozens of U.S. states accusing it of illegally suppressing generic competition for its opioid addiction treatment Suboxone.The North Chesterfield, Virginia-based drugmaker denied wrongdoing in resolving claims by 41 U.S. states and Washington, D.C., which would end a lawsuit that began in 2016.Indivior also agreed to make additional disclosures to the states to ensure it does not use anticompetitive tactics.Suboxone was approved for U.S. sale in 2002, and Indivior had the exclusive right to sell the treatment in tablet form until 2009.States said Indivior switched to an oral film version of Suboxone from a tablet version to extend its monopoly, just as generic manufacturers were poised to sell their own lower-cost tablets. Generic tablets obtained federal approval in 2013.Indivior’s settlement requires approval by the federal judge in Philadelphia who oversees nationwide antitrust litigation concerning Suboxone. A trial had been scheduled for Sept. 18.”However long it takes, we will continue to hold companies accountable for alleged anticompetitive activities,” Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, whose state led the lawsuit, said in a statement.Indivior expects to pay the $102.5 million in cash this month. It set aside $290 million last year for potential costs in antitrust litigation.More than 80,000 people in the United States died in 2021 from overdoses involving opioids, out of more than 107,000 drug overdose deaths overall, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More

S&P left the country’s AA rating untouched after a regular review and said that the outlook remained negative due to “downside risks to our forecast for France’s public finances amid its already elevated general government debt”.A downgrade would have been the second in six weeks after rival agency Fitch cut its rating at the end of April to AA- over concerns about potential political paralysis and social unrest.Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told weekend newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche that S&P’s decision to keep its AA rating was a “positive signal” and that the government’s public finance strategy was credible.President Emmanuel Macron government is under pressure to prove that the government can stick to its deficit and debt reduction plans in the face of stubbornly high public spending and a rising cost of interest payments. More

Brussels’ Midi/Zuid station, a stop on Eurostar’s London-Amsterdam service © Thierry Monasse/Polaris/EyevineThe train from London to Amsterdam is a 3hr 52m joke at the expense of the nation state. Four countries zip past without so much as a courtesy announcement over the speaker at each crossing of a border. Staff of indeterminate citizenship offer drinks in three languages. The onscreen message (“Welcome à bord d’Eurostar”) is a franglais pun.In 2018, when this route began, Donald Trump held office, Jair Bolsonaro got elected and Brexit fans were still in my inbox. It has proved to have more staying power than all of them.Coach 16, seat 25, is a good place from which to observe the strange resilience of liberalism. I don’t just mean the electoral kind, though let’s start with that. The only major western head of government now who can be called populist is Giorgia Meloni, and even she has curbed her zeal. After a decade or so in which “metropolitan” became a slur, it is likely that Britain’s next leader will be a man whose constituency includes Primrose Hill and (just perfect, this) Bloomsbury.But I am really getting at something else: life on the ground. The turn against globalisation in the past decade was meant to spell the end of frictionless living. The movement of goods and people would gum up. This process was given a helpful nudge by a lockdown that sealed borders and cast a medieval silence over great cities. I was even feeling magnanimous about the trend of events. I’d had a good ride. Time for a clunkier and less immediate world.Well, where is it?Uber isn’t what it was circa 2015, but it is still fine and is improving. (I breezed through a year in Los Angeles without a car.) The labour shortages that afflicted airports and restaurants turned out to be the nuisance of a single summer. Almost whatever I want, Amazon still sends within 72 hours.

If you wish to spend a few years abroad, it would be even easier than a decade ago. These are bumper times for immigration. In 2021, Canada admitted more permanent residents than at any time since 1913. It let in even more last year (and as a target, not an oversight). France set a similar record. Net immigration to the UK is much higher than it was pre-Brexit. The foreign-born share of Germany’s population is now more than 18 per cent. What Hong Kong has lost as a global centre, Singapore has gone some way to picking up.Give it time, you’ll say. But more than five years have passed since Trump started (he might say “recognised”) the trade war with China. “Deglobalisation” was journalistic currency long before that. I should be feeling some change by now. While the rich can always buy their way out of life’s little frictions, I am your upper-middle-income globalist. I am more exposed to events. Yet the worst I have endured is that a beloved chaise longue took some time to arrive from the port of LA. As hardship goes, this isn’t the Spartan agōge.What else? Prices are higher, but that is true for everyone, not just those who live as I do. Family cars are dearer, not just hotel rooms and Uber rides. In other words, I am not a relative loser.You have to go a tax bracket or two below me for that. Although it is framed as elitist, what globalisation did was democratise things that rich people once kept to themselves. (Think of cheap flights and the spread of good coffee.) It follows that deglobalisation is imposing frictions on middle-earners: the 25-year-old me would be stifled. It is for anti-globalists to decide if these people constitute an acceptable tactical sacrifice for the cause.Either way, I’m fine, thanks, and perhaps so are you. The lesson? Don’t overrate the grand political trends that people like me write about. Their consequences tend to be spread around the population. Whereas one localised event — technological, infrastructural — can register at the personal level. The launch in 2015 of Monzo, which lets me bank via app, has done more to grease the wheels of my life than all the political tumult since then has done to clog them up. So has this train. I might do Paris next week. Or not. I’ll see how I feel on the day.Email Janan at [email protected] More