Briefly

ARGENTINA

Debt won't be paid till recession over

Argentine Vice-President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner said that the government will not pay "even half a cent" of its debt back to the International Monetary Fund before the country gets out of recession. "The first thing we have to do in order to be able to pay is to exit the recession," Fernandez de Kirchner said at a presentation on Saturday of her book "Sinceramente" (Sincerely) at Havana's international book fair. Argentina needs to restructure $100 billion in sovereign debt with creditors, including part of a $57 billion credit facility that the IMF extended the country in 2018.

AUSTRALIA

Rain and floods add to fire woes

Australia has been hit in recent weeks by wild weather that has alternately brought heavy downpours, hail storms, gusty winds and hot and dry air. About a dozen fires were burning in Western Australia state on Sunday, with severe fire danger expected in several districts. New South Wales was in danger of life-threatening flash flooding as rain kept bucketed down for a third day in a row in downpours the like of which have not seen since 1998. In Queensland, meteorologists also warned of flash and riverine flooding on Sunday, following heavy falls overnight.

IRELAND

Three-way tie in general election

Ireland's three main parties are tied neck-and-neck following Saturday's general election, leaving the question of who will control the next government hanging in the balance. Prime Minister Leo Varadkar's incumbent Fine Gael party, its center-right rivals Fianna Fail and left-wingers Sinn Fein all received 22 percent of first preference votes. Ireland uses a single transferable vote system to elect multiple deputies from each of the 39 constituencies, making it hard to extrapolate a likely seat forecast from the exit poll figures for first preference votes.