A 65-year-old Argentina man won a record prize of 2,946,969.38 pesos (nearly one million dollars) at a slot machine in the Hipodromo of Palermo.According to La Nación, the size of the prize was a record not only in Argentina but in all of Latin America.All that is known about the man who won is that his first name is Juan and he was a regular player of slot machines.The machine that gave the prize was a Star Wars machine.Many types of gambling in Buenos Aires are illegal, but slot machines are not, and this particular gambling location is finding by the National Lottery.The managers of the Hipodromo claim that this is not the first time someone has won over a million pesos; last year a man won 1,200,000 pesos.

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Buenos Aires born writerMaría Cecilia Barbetta won a prize for her first novel, Änderungschneiderei Los Milagros (Tailor Shop of Miracles).According to Revista Ñ, Barbetta lived in Argentina for the first twelve years of her life before moving to Berlin, Germany and beginning to write in German.She won the Aspekte Prize, worth 10,000 Euros, and was praised by the judges for a novel that contained the richness of Latin American fables.Judges also noted that she handled some of the great literary themes with a remarkably sure hand, considering that this is her first novel.The prize will be presented to her on October 16th at the Frankfurt Book Festival.

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María Eugenia Cerutti, a photographer for the Clarín (a major newspaper in Buenos Aires), won the photography prize from the Fundación Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano (Foundation of New Journalism in Latin America) which Gabriela Garcia Marquez presides over.The highest honor for a photographer in Latin America, this prize honors Cerutti’s work on the photo article entitled “Una empresa eléctrica y mortal” (“A Business Electric and Deadly”). This photo essay showed the effects of a high tension electrical station on the nearby residents of Ezpeleta, who were getting extremely sick. The research took three years to complete and Cerutti says that the prize makes her believe in continuing her hard work as a journalist. Cerutti will journey to Monterrey, Mexico to receive her award.

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