Peru Gets its First Female President After Pedro Castillo is Impeached

Peru Gets its First Female President After Pedro Castillo is Impeached

• Dina Boluarte became Peru’s first female president amid a political maelstrom when her predecessor and former boss Pedro Castillo was ousted in an impeachment trial and detained by police after he tried to illegally shut down Congress.
• For the markets, the crisis in Peru may be important because it makes for nearly 15% of the world’s copper exports as per 2020 data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
• The latest political crisis in Peru is a continuation of a series of events that have led to four Presidents since 2020. Castillo, a left-wing former school teacher, was elected in June 2021 and since then, he’s mired in charges of corruption. He has survived two impeachment proceedings in the last 18 months and a third one was due when he decided to make a dramatic move.
• On December 7, Castillo declared a state of emergency in Peru, and that the Congress, which is controlled by his rivals, will be dissolved. Many of his own ministers resigned in protest. The sequence of events that followed ended in Castillo’s ouster and Boluarte taking over as the country’s President.

U.S. Congress clears Bill to protect same-sex unions

• The U.S. Congress on Thursday passed landmark legislation to protect same-sex marriage under federal law, and President Joe Biden has vowed to quickly sign the measure.
• The vote in the House of Representatives saw 39 Republicans join a united Democratic majority in a rare show of bipartisanship, provoking loud cheers on the floor less than 10 days after the Senate passed the same Bill.
• The conservative led Supreme Court in June had overturned long­standing abortion rights, prompting lawmakers of both parties to move quickly to prevent the court from taking away same-sex marriage rights, as some feared it might do.
• The new legislation, known as the Respect for Marriage Act, does not require states to legalize same-sex marriage but does require them to recognize a marriage so long as it was valid in the state where it was performed. It repeals previous definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Sushmita Shukla appointed First Vice President, Chief Operating Officer of Federal Reserve Bank of New York

• Sushmita Shukla, an Indian-origin veteran of the insurance industry, has been appointed as First Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, making her the second-ranking officer at the prominent institution.
• The appointment was approved by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the New York Fed said in a statement Thursday.
• Shukla, 54, has been appointed by the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York as First Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, effective March 2023.