Due to a severe lack of gasoline in Argentina, the country has been forced to import fuel for the first time in three decades. Yesterday, YPF, the former state owned company now owned by Spanish company Repsol, announced that next week it will import the equivalent to 20% of their monthly production.

Yesterday the Superior Court of Chubut unanimously endorsed the request for a 15-year-old victim of rape from Comodoro Rivadavia to terminate her pregnancy. The ruling reversed the decision of Appellate Court that refused the request in February. Symbolically, yesterday was International Women’s Day.

Today Argentina celebrated winning an Oscar for best foreign language film with “El Secreto de Sus Ojos”. This is the first time that Argentina has won an Oscar in 25 years. The film beat entries from Peru, Israel, Germany and France and is based on a novel by Eduardo Sacheri.

President Cristina Kirchner has suffered the double blow of losing control of the Argentine Senate and also having her nomination for head of the central bank, Mercedes Marco del Pont, rejected. Kirchner lost control of the House of Deputies a few weeks ago, so the opposition now controls both houses of government.

Today the first gay marriage took place in Buenos Aires. Damian Bernath and Jorge Salazar were married at 10am in a civil registry along with close friends and family. There were several appeals against the marriage, but they failed to stop the ceremony.

Yesterday the Argentine Congress began its new session with an address to the Legislative Assembly by President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. Kirchner arrived just before 11am along with her husband, the former president Néstor Kirchner. She began her address by expressing her solidarity with the people of Chile following the devastating earthquake at the weekend and said that Argentina is sending aid. The president then announced that she was repealing the Bicentennial Fund.

Former Navy lieutenant Roberto Guillermo Bravo was arrested last Thursday in Miami for his involvement in the massacre of 16 political prisoners in Rawson prison, Trelew. Bravo, a citizen of the United States since 1977, is facing extradition to Argentina to face charges for the murders that took place on 22 August 1972 at the Almirance Zar Naval Base, Patagonia.

The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a human rights organisation dedicated to recovering the identities of individuals born to parents who were disappeared during the last military dictatorship, have reunited Francisco Madariaga Quintela with his father, Abel Pedro Madariaga, who had been looking for his son for the past 32 years.

On Monday the British company Desire Petroleum began drilling in its oil exploration project 100kms off the coast of the Falklands/Malvinas islands. The drilling has commenced amid high tensions between Argentina and Britain over the sovereignty of the islands and the surrounding territory, believed to potentially contain large oil and natural gas reserves. Last week Argentina issued new restrictions requiring that ships travelling between the mainland and the islands apply for prior authorization from the Argnetine government.

On Friday, for the second time in a week, Buenos Aires was subjected to torrential rains. An estimated 80 millimetres fell in less than three hours of the early evening, catching many citizens on their way home from work. The downfall crippled transit in the city and caused severe flash floods in many neighbourhoods, widespread power outages, traffic gridlocks, an interruption of service for all the underground lines, a 20 minute halt of flights at the international Airport, the disappearance of a child and two deaths.