Pressured by strict U.S. sanctions, Venezuela’s oil exports plunged by 376,500 barrels per day (bpd) in 2020, according to Refinitiv Eikon data and internal documents from state-run PDVSA, financially squeezing socialist President Nicolas Maduro’s government. The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump also put curbs on PDVSA’s main trading partners, the owners of tankers still transporting Venezuelan oil and on the fuel supply to the gasoline-thirsty nation. The punishment, aimed to oust Maduro after his 2018 reelection was called a sham by most Western nations, has led PDVSA to pursue new customers, rely on mostly unknown intermediaries to resell its oil and deepen ties with Iran, another country under U.S. sanctions. Venezuela’s exports of crude and refined products fell 37.5% in 2020 to 626,534 bpd, the lowest in 77 years. The decrease was even larger for fuel imports, which fell 51% compared with 2019, to 83,780 bpd, according to the data. The drop in the crude oil was several times that of the global market, which fell about 9% last year amid COVID-19 constraints. PDVSA did not reply to a request for comment. The state-run company’s inability to revive exports and its new dependence on imported fuel have sunk OPEC member Venezuela’s petroleum industry to levels not seen since the 1940s, when it was boosting crude output while planning its first refineries. PDVSA inaugurated the 310,000-bpd Cardon refinery on the country’s northwest coast in 1947. The facility, along with neighboring Amuay, remain mostly idled because of a lack of maintenance, parts and proper crude to operate. Despite the sanctions’ impact on the economy, Maduro has held onto power with the support of the military, and backed by Cuba, Russia and China. 
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The U.S. Treasury Department on Monday issued a new license allowing certain transactions with Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido despite U.S. sanctions on the country, reaffirming Washington’s support for the politician as Venezuela’s legitimate leader.
 
The license, which replaces a similar previous one, also allows for certain transactions with Venezuela’s National Assembly and some others, effectively recognizing the extension of the opposition-controlled National Assembly’s term by a year.
 
The term was extended after the mainstream opposition boycotted a parliamentary election on Dec. 6 handily won by President Nicolas Maduro’s ruling socialists that the opposition and most Western democracies said was neither free nor fair. Venezuela’s Supreme Court last week ruled that the move by the opposition-controlled National Assembly to extend its term an additional year was invalid, paving the way for allies of Maduro to take over the body this month.
 
Washington in January 2019 recognized Venezuelan politician Guaido as the OPEC nation’s rightful leader and has ratcheted up sanctions and diplomatic pressure in the aftermath of Maduro’s 2018 re-election, widely described as fraudulent.
 
Maduro remains in power, backed by Venezuela’s military as well as Russia, China and Cuba.
 
The recognition of Guaido as interim president by the United States and others derives from his position as speaker of the National Assembly. Guaido invoked Venezuela’s constitution to assume a rival interim presidency in 2019, declaring Maduro was usurping the presidency after rigging his 2018 re-election.
 
The Treasury Department in the license said that transactions involving the Venezuelan National Constituent Assembly convened by Maduro or the National Assembly scheduled to be seated on Tuesday are not authorized.
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Cuba on Wednesday warned the outgoing U.S. administration against redesignating the island as a state sponsor of terrorism, a move reportedly under discussion that could hinder President-elect Joe Biden’s diplomacy. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is reviewing the possibility before leaving office on January 20 of returning Cuba to the blacklist, which severely impedes foreign investment, a person familiar with the situation said. FILE – Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks to the media at the State Department, Nov. 24, 2020.CNN, quoting an unnamed senior administration official, said that Pompeo would make the designation “in the coming days.”The New York Times first reported that the State Department had drawn up the proposal but said it was unclear if Pompeo would sign off on it.  “I denounce Sec of State Pompeo maneuvers to include #Cuba in the list of States sponsoring terrorism to please the anti-Cuban minority in Florida,” Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez wrote on Twitter. “#US grants shelter and impunity to terrorist groups acting against Cuba from that territory,” he said, in a familiar charge against Cuban-American anti-communist activists who deny any wrongdoing. The discussion comes ahead of the 60th anniversary on January 3 of the United States severing relations with the nearby island following Fidel Castro’s communist revolution. Tensions finally eased under former President Barack Obama, who declared the policy of isolating the island to be a failure, established diplomatic relations and removed Cuba from the terrorism list in 2015. FILE – U.S. President Barack Obama, right, and Cuban President Raul Castro shake hands before a bilateral meeting at the United Nations headquarters in New York, Sept. 29, 2015.Biden, who was Obama’s vice president, has given only broad details of his Cuba policy but has indicated he would again relax restrictions on Americans traveling to Cuba and sending money to family on the island, while still raising concerns on human rights. Biden could again remove Cuba from the blacklist, but his State Department would need to undertake a formal review that declares that the country has not been involved in terrorism over the previous six months. It is unclear on what ground Pompeo would designate Cuba, but before Obama the United States would point to Havana’s support of leftist movements in the Western Hemisphere. A State Department spokesperson said the agency does not “discuss deliberations or potential deliberations regarding designations.” President Donald Trump’s tough stance on Cuba and its ally Venezuela was credited with wooing immigrant communities and helping him win the crucial state of Florida in last month’s election. Only three nations remain on the U.S. terrorism blacklist — Iran, North Korea and Syria — after Trump last month removed Sudan. The designation comes with broad sanctions that scare away many foreign investors who do not want to risk penalties in the world’s largest economy. 
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Honduran authorities said Wednesday that they were investigating the killings of two activists and Indigenous leaders slain in separate incidents over the weekend.Félix Vásquez, a longtime environmental activist from the Lenca indigenous group, was shot by masked men in front of relatives Saturday in his home in Santiago de Puringla.On Sunday, Jose Adán Medina was found shot to death in a remote location in the community of El Volcan, also in western Honduras. Medina was a member of the Tolupan Indigenous group.Vásquez, who was seeking the nomination of the opposition Libre party to run for congress, had fought hydroelectric projects and land abuses for years. National elections are scheduled for March.Yuri Mora, spokesman for the Honduras prosecutor’s office, said that the office on ethnic groups and cultural patrimony was investigating Vásquez’s killing. He said investigators had executed searches and were about to call people in to make statements, but no arrests had been made.He said Vázquez had filed complaints with the prosecutor’s office in the past against hydroelectric projects and on land management issues.Honduras’ National Human Rights Commission condemned both killings and said it would investigate. It confirmed that Vásquez had reported threats and harassment. The commission had requested protective measures for Vásquez in January 2020, but they were never carried out.’Union of terrible interests’Rafael Alegría, coordinator of the nongovernmental organization Via Campesina in Honduras, said Vásquez had been filing complaints and reporting threats since 2017, but the government never acted.Alegría, himself a former national lawmaker, said that activists had been reporting harassment from mining, timber and hydroelectric companies, as well as large landowners, in the La Paz department for years.”There is a union of terrible interests in western Honduras,” Alegría said. “There is constant persecution of farmers and Indigenous communities. They murdered Bertha Cáceres in Intibuca and now Félix Vásquez, and others have been threatened.”Cáceres, also a Lenca environmental activist, was killed in March 2016, when gunmen burst into her home and shot her. Her slaying captured global attention in part because she had been awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize. She fought for years against a dam project. Several men have been convicted in her murder, but her family continues to pursue justice against those believed to be the masterminds.Honduras is among the world’s most deadly nations for environmental activists. Via Campesina says that 12 activists have been killed there in 2020. In March, Global Witness reported that 27 environmental activists had been killed in Honduras since Caceres’ murder.Dania Cruz, spokeswoman for the National Police, said they were investigating the deaths of Vásquez and Medina, but told local media she wouldn’t share additional information to avoid interfering with the investigations.
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Argentina’s Senate voted early Wednesday to legalize abortion, setting off cheers from the crowd of thousands of people gathered outside who supported the measure.
 
The 38-29 vote came after 12 hours of debate.   
 
The bill allows abortions up to the 14th week of pregnancy.  After that time, abortions are allowed in cases of rape or if the mother’s life is in danger.
 
The country’s lower house approved the measure earlier this month, and President Alberto Fernández supported it.
 
Fernández tweeted after the vote that “safe, legal and free abortion is now the law,” and that Argentina is “a better society that expands women’s rights and guarantees public health.”
 
Argentina is the largest country in Latin America to legalize abortion.
 
Pope Francis, who is from Argentina, reflected the Catholic Church’s opposition in a tweet before the vote.  He wrote, “The Son of God was born an outcast, in order to tell us that every outcast is a child of God.”
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Argentina was on the cusp of legalizing abortion Tuesday over the objections of its influential Roman Catholic Church, with the Senate preparing to vote on a measure that has the backing of the ruling party and already has passed in the lower house. 
 
If passed, the bill would make Argentina the first big country in predominantly Catholic Latin America to allow abortion on demand. The vote is expected to be close after what was expected to be a marathon debate, beginning at 4 p.m. local time (1900 GMT) and likely to stretch into Wednesday morning. 
 
Demonstrators both for and against the bill came from around the country to stand vigil in front of the Senate building in Buenos Aires. Argentine senators attend a session to debate an abortion bill in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Dec. 29, 2020.”Argentina is a pro-life country,” one woman, who said she was from Cordoba province, told local television as she sat in a folding chair under an umbrella sheltering her from the Southern Hemisphere summer sun. She and others who knelt in prayer nearby said they were against the proposed change in law. 
 
Maria Angela Guerrero of the Campaign for Legal Abortion activist group, speaking to reporters in front of the Senate, said she was “cautiously optimistic” the bill would pass. 
 
On the other side of the debate is the Catholic Church, which is calling on senators to reject the proposal to allow women to end pregnancies up to the 14th week. Argentina is the birthplace of Pope Francis. 
 
Argentine law now allows abortion only when there is a serious risk to the health of the mother or in cases of rape. 
 A woman against an abortion bill prays as Argentina’s Senate prepares to vote on a measure that has the backing of the ruling party and has already passed the lower house, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Dec. 29, 2020.Legal abortion is extremely rare in Latin America because of the long history of opposition by the Church. Across the region, abortions are available on demand only in Communist Cuba, comparatively tiny Uruguay, and some parts of Mexico. 
 
The change in law has been rejected by Argentina’s Congress before, but this is the first time such a bill is being presented to lawmakers with support from the ruling government. In 2018, before center-left Peronist Alberto Fernandez was elected president, a similar bill was rejected by a slim margin. 
 
The measure is accompanied by side legislation aimed at assisting women who want to continue their pregnancies and face severe economic or social difficulties. 
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Aurora Leticia Cruz has tried to keep up with her blood pressure medication since fleeing Guatemala more than a year ago, but the limbo she finds herself in — stuck in a sprawling camp at the Texas border after traversing Mexico — has made that hard. When Cruz felt woozy on a recent day as her blood pressure skyrocketed, it could have ended in tragedy, leaving her 17-year-old granddaughter and two toddler great-grandchildren alone in the camp in Matamoros. But instead, a nurse practitioner from Oregon and a Cuban doctor, who like Cruz is awaiting U.S. asylum proceedings, were able to pull up her medical record and prescribe the correct dosage.  The health care workers who helped Cruz are with Global Response Management, a nonprofit that is attempting to go beyond crisis response and build a system to make it easier to track the health of migrants along their journey from Central America to the U.S. border. Cruz’s medical record was created in June by the group, which has been collecting patient information. FILE – Dairon Elisondo Rojas, a doctor from Cuba who is seeking asylum in the U.S., checks a woman at a clinic set up for asylum-seekers hoping to enter the U.S. and living and waiting in Matamoros, Mexico, Nov. 19, 2020.”I envision this as a relay race in which we are passing the medical baton to other providers as people work their way north,” said Blake Davis, a paramedic from Maine who volunteers for the organization. The efforts are part of a growing trend in humanitarian aid that has accelerated amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has highlighted the difficulties in getting basic health care to migrants. With public hospitals overwhelmed by virus cases, migrants with heart conditions or problematic pregnancies have nowhere to go. Others have been prescribed ineffective medications because a changing array of doctors are forced to treat them without any medical history. Led by U.S. military veterans, Global Response Management is staffed by volunteers primarily from the U.S. and paid asylum-seekers who were medical professionals in their homelands. The group has treated thousands of migrants over the past year at two clinics in Matamoros, including one inside the camp. Medics with the group have innovated to bring care to the austere environment, building on what they learned from the organization’s work with displaced people in countries such as Bangladesh and Iraq.  They have used telemedicine to consult specialists in the United States and connected a portable device to an iPhone to perform a sonogram. They have also worked with local leaders in the camp to control the spread of the coronavirus by encouraging mask wearing, increasing the number of hand-washing stations and setting up an isolation area. Only one person from the camp has been hospitalized with the virus, even as medical facilities in the area struggled to keep up with infected patients this summer. Treatment in transitBut the group’s goal is not just to care for migrants once they reach the border. It wants to offer health care along the routes migrants take.  “Humanitarian aid has to be thought of in a different light,” said executive director Helen Perry, an Army Reserve nurse.  FILE – Volunteer Mark McDonald enters data at a clinic set up for asylum-seekers waiting in Matamoros, Mexico, Nov. 19, 2020.It’s uncertain how long the camp will exist since U.S. President-elect Joe Biden pledged to undo the Trump administration policy known as Remain in Mexico, which has forced tens of thousands of asylum-seekers to wait across the border while their cases are considered by U.S. courts. Regardless, there will continue to be people fleeing violence and poverty in Central America, and aid agencies are trying to figure out how to protect them.  Davis, the paramedic from Maine, plans to set up a clinic next year in Tapachula, on Mexico’s southern border. He recently flew over the isolated terrain migrants traverse in Guatemala to view the challenge medical teams would face in treating people in transit. “There is nothing out there for them to get help,” Davis said. “We want to be able to fill that void.”  The group is working to connect migrants to health care and other resources by asking them what they need via WhatsApp. The idea is to make contact as early as possible with migrants, treat their health problems before they worsen, and create a system where their records can be accessed by doctors along the way.Challenges  It is a daunting task that will require finding the migrants, many of whom are trying to avoid detection, and winning their trust. The group’s members also must get government officials on board.  And they must tread carefully, so the health data cannot be used against the migrants. As they do in Matamoros, the group will label each record with a number, rather than a name. Other aid groups are also tackling the challenge. The International Rescue Committee next month is launching InfoDigna, an interactive map in Mexico that connects migrants to shelters, health care providers and other services wherever they are. It will offer live chats to answer migrants’ questions about everything from the latest COVID-19 restrictions to the status of immigration court operations. InfoDigna is part of the group’s global digital information service, which informs asylum-seekers from Italy to Colombia via smart phones. “It meets people where they’re at,” said Edith Tapia, who coordinates the effort in Mexico. The organizations are stepping into a gap that the World Health Organization has urged governments of host countries to fill, but few have. The issue of how to care for vulnerable people on the move is only likely to grow: A record 80 million people are fleeing poverty, conflict and environmental disasters, according to the WHO. FILE – Maria de Jesus Ruiz Carrasco, center, from Cuba and seeking asylum in the U.S., uses crutches as she arrives at a clinic in Matamoros, Mexico, to have her broken leg bandages changed.Maria de Jesus Ruiz Carrasco says she would have lost her foot if Global Response Management hadn’t stepped in.  The 31-year-old Cuban woman was rescued by Border Patrol agents who found her along the Rio Grande with a broken leg in October after she crossed from Matamoros.  She underwent two surgeries at a hospital in Brownsville, Texas. But two weeks later, Carrasco was sent back to Matamoros with an oozing wound and 14 pins in her leg. U.S. Customs and Border Protection guidelines recommend asylum-seekers with medical problems not be returned to Mexico.  The agency said that because of privacy laws it could not discuss Carrasco’s case, but generally if a patient is “cleared for travel” upon release from a medical facility, then the asylum-seeker may be returned to Mexico. Decisions are made case by case. A Mexican official at the border directed Carrasco, who was on crutches and in need of help, to the Global Response Management clinic, where she met Mileydis Tamayo, a nurse from Cuba who is also seeking asylum. Tamayo has been treating Carrasco’s wound for 10 weeks. “If this group wasn’t here,” Tamayo said later, “many people would be in very bad shape.” 
 
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Although small in the face of South America’s giants, Haiti is slowly developing its cocoa industry, earning better incomes for thousands of farmers and refuting the stereotype that culinary art is the preserve of wealthy countries.Haiti’s annual production of 5,000 metric tons of cocoa pales in comparison to the 70,000 metric tons produced per year by neighboring Dominican Republic, but the sector’s development is recent in the island nation.Feccano, a federation of cocoa cooperatives in northern Haiti, became the first group to organize exchanges in 2001 by prioritizing farmers’ profits.”Before, there was the systematic destruction of cocoa trees because the market price wasn’t interesting for farmers who preferred very short-cycle crops,” said Guito Gilot, Feccano’s commercial director.The cooperative now works with more than 4,000 farmers in northern Haiti.By fermenting its members’ beans before export, Feccano has been able to target the market for fine and aromatic cocoa.”Feccano’s customers pay for quality: they don’t have the New York Stock Exchange as a reference,” Gilot said.Just-in-time collectionSmelling potential, Haiti’s private sector began investing in the cocoa industry, which until then had been supported solely by non-governmental organizations and humanitarian efforts.By setting up its fermentation setter in 2014 in Acul-du-Nord, the company Produit des iles (PISA) entered the market. But the logistical challenges are many.”The producers we work with farm less than a hectare, often divided into several plots, whereas, in Latin America, a small producer already owns four or five hectares,” said Aline Etlicher, who developed the industry at PISA.”We buy fresh cocoa, the same day as the harvest so the farmer no longer has the problems of drying and storing that they would have if they sold it to an intermediary,” the French agronomist said.In recent months, this just-in-time bean collection from all sites has been more challenging because many roads were regularly blocked because of socio-political unrest.Maintaining organic and fair-trade certifications for the cocoa is delicate, but the Haitian style has made its mark abroad.”Today there are bars sold in the United States that are called Acul-du-Nord,” Etlicher said.”With our customers, we are part of the ‘bean to bar’ movement of chocolate makers who transform the cocoa bean into the chocolate bar,” she said, adding that by cutting out the middleman, Haitian producers’ revenues have doubled.And on the other end of the chain, bean processing remains local.’Plant your cocoa’For master chocolatier Ralph Leroy, making a rum ganache — Haitian, just like all the products he uses — was not an obvious choice.After years in Montreal, he returned home to Haiti as a haute-couture stylist.His shift to cocoa began when he made clothes out of chocolate for a culinary trade show. The training he then underwent for a year in Italy fueled his passion as much as his pride.”The first week, I think I was insulted when the professor said, ‘Chocolate is made for Europe. You there, plant your cocoa, we buy the cocoa and do the work,'” he recalled.Today, Leroy runs the chocolate company he founded in 2016, Makaya, and the edible sculptures that come out of his workshop are a huge sensation at parties. His company now has about 20 employees who share his passion.”Even in cooking schools, we don’t learn this. I learned everything here and I am very, very proud,” said Duasmine Paul, 22, head of Makaya’s laboratory.Echoes of car horns reach the ears of Makaya employees carefully sorting cocoa beans, a side effect of the chaotic traffic that paralyzes Haitian capital Port-au-Prince at the end of the year.From his workshop, where he also concocts chocolate-based cocktails, Leroy sees as sweet revenge the great marketing of his bars.”The greatest pleasure is when, before traveling, Haitians come here to buy a lot to offer abroad. It’s become their pride. And also when Europeans come and buy all the stock. … I tell myself that I am doing a good job,” he says with a burst of laughter.
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At the entrance to Argentina’s Congress is a plaque reminding legislators that Our Lady of Lujan is the patron saint of the country’s political parties, a not-so-subtle nod to religion in a nation considering whether to allow abortions.As Argentina’s Senate prepares to vote on a bill that would legalize the practice, the Catholic Church has joined forces with evangelical Christians to fight the measure tooth and nail.The bill, which aims to legalize voluntary abortions at up to 14 weeks, was passed by the Chamber of Deputies on Dec. 11 and will be debated and voted on in the Senate on Tuesday.Two years ago, a similar bill passed the lower house but was defeated in the Senate following a determined campaign by both Catholics and evangelicals.Argentina’s constitution guarantees freedom of religion, and a 1994 reform removed the requirement that the president be Catholic.However, it retains a reference to God in its preamble and its second article guarantees government support for the Catholic Church.”The Catholic Church in Argentina has great sway. There’s a very strong Catholic culture in the political world,” sociologist Fortunato Mallimaci, who wrote a book on what he says is the myth of Argentine secularism, told AFP.”Religious groups look for state support and the state, when it feels weak, looks for support from religious groups. Today the Catholic Church wields more political than religious clout,” he said.Catholicism is a strong force in Argentina, the homeland of Pope Francis.The state pays a salary to archbishops and subsidizes Catholic schooling, which accounts for 36% of education in Argentina, according to Mallimaci.Francis stays silentHowever, Catholicism has been losing influence as evangelical Christianity gains ground.According to a 2019 poll by a government agency, 62% of Argentines identify as Catholic, 18.9% as non-religious and 15.3% as evangelical.The Catholic Church’s sway can be seen in Argentina’s delay compared to other countries in adopting a number of laws: divorce was legalized only in 1987, sex education introduced in 2006, gay marriage approved in 2010 and a gender identity law passed in 2012.Abortion is currently only allowed in two cases: rape and a danger to the mother’s life.”There is an opposition and huge rejection from the Catholic Church, which weighs heavily” on the chances of the law passing, constitutional lawyer Alfonso Santiago told AFP.However, Santiago believes the relationship between the government of President Alberto Fernandez, who sponsored the abortion bill, and the Catholic Church will remain strong regardless of which way the vote goes.”I don’t think there will be a break in collaboration on other issues. It didn’t happen before” when, for example, same-sex marriage was approved, he said.While Francis has in the past likened abortion to hiring an assassin, he’s remained silent over the current debate.Protest strength”The problem for the Catholic Church if abortion is legalized is that it will be up to it, and not the state, to ensure that its faithful comply with a prohibition that will be only religious,” Mallimaci said.A 2020 government poll found that 22.3% of Catholics in Argentina believe that a woman should have the right to an abortion if she wants one.Meanwhile 55.7% said it should be permitted only in certain situations while just 17.2% supported a blanket ban.Since 2018, evangelicals have come to the fore in protesting legalization.”They have the momentum of the reborn,” said Mallimaci, pointing to the light blue handkerchiefs brandished by evangelicals at their protests, as a counterweight to the green ones sported by abortion rights activists. “Catholics don’t mobilize in that way.”Despite their constant growth, evangelical churches in Argentina “don’t have the same political weight as in other countries, such as Brazil where they can count on a parliamentary bloc.”Their strength, however, lies is in street protests and they will be out in force Tuesday in front of Congress, face-to-face with abortion rights demonstrators.
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Mexico became the first Latin American country Thursday to launch a COVID-19 vaccination initiative, offering hope to a nation that has lost some 120,000 people to the pandemic. Maria Irene Ramirez, the 59-year-old head nurse at the intensive care unit at Mexico City’s Ruben Lenero hospital, was the first to get the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, in keeping with the country’s strategy to focus first on health care workers. “This is the best gift that I could have received in 2020,” Ramirez said after being inoculated in a ceremony broadcast by national media. Chile will immediately start inoculations of health care workers after receiving the first 10,000 doses of a 10-million dose order of the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine on Thursday, officials said. Also on Thursday, Costa Rica was preparing to vaccinate two senior citizens in a home near San Jose with the vaccine, while Argentina received about 300,000 doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine. The first batch of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine arrives at the Juan Santamaria International Airport, as the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak continues, in Alajuela, Costa Rica, Dec. 23, 2020.In the USThe United States is about to complete its second week of vaccinations with about 1 million inoculations, mainly among health care workers and elderly residents of nursing homes. The numbers, however, are far short of the goal set by Operation Warp Speed, the federal government’s effort to mass produce millions of doses of vaccines, to inoculate 20 million Americans by the end of the year.   U.S. Operation Warp Speed chief adviser Dr. Moncef Slaoui has warned that it would take longer to administer the doses.  “The commitment that we can make is to make vaccine doses available,” Slaoui said during a press call. “How fast the ramp-up of immunizations, the shots in arms, is happening is slower than we thought it would be.” The Trump administration has reached a deal worth $2 billion to secure an additional 100 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which would boost the nation’s supply to 200 million doses by mid-July 2021. With surges throughout the U.S. leading to 327,000 COVID-19 deaths and 18.5 million coronavirus infections, according to Johns Hopkins University, the speed with which immunizations can be administered becomes increasingly important.Intensive Care Unit Nurse Merlin Pambuan, 66, is cheered by hospital staff as she walks out of the hospital where she spent eight months with COVID-19, at Dignity Health – St. Mary Medical Center, in Long Beach, California, Dec. 21, 2020. California became the first U.S. state Thursday to record 2 million coronavirus cases. The grim Christmas Eve milestone was reached as the state was under a strict stay-at-home order and hospitals were overwhelmed with the largest number of infections since the pandemic began more than nine months ago. The coronavirus causes the COVID-19 disease. Sinovac vaccineBrazilian researchers said Wednesday the coronavirus vaccine developed by Chinese drug maker Sinovac Biotech was found to be more than 50% effective in a late-stage clinical trial.   But officials at the state-run research institute Butantan say they are withholding the results of the trial at Sinovac’s request, raising issues once again about the lack of transparency involving the vaccine’s development.   Tests of the Sinovac vaccine, dubbed CoronaVac, were halted last month after an “adverse, serious event” involving a volunteer participant in late October.   Sinovac is one of many drug makers around the world that have been racing to develop a safe and effective vaccine against COVID-19, which has killed more than 1.7 million people out of more than 79 million confirmed infections, according to the Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center.   New variantChina on Thursday became the latest country to suspend all travel with Britain after the discovery of a new and more contagious strain of the novel coronavirus. The new variant has swept through southern Britain in recent weeks, prompting British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to impose more restrictive lockdown measures in some parts of the country ahead of Christmas Day.   
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Latin America received its first doses of COVID-19 vaccine on Wednesday, with a shipment landing in Mexico City.Mexico’s Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard was on hand when the flight carrying the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine landed from Belgium.”Today is the beginning of the end of that pandemic,” Ebrard said.Mexico is scheduled to receive 1.4 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Officials on Wednesday did not say how large the shipment was, however, but said they planned to begin vaccinating health workers in Mexico City and Saltillo, in Mexico’s north, on Thursday.Other Latin American countries are expecting vaccine shipments or, as Argentina did on Wednesday, approving vaccines for use in their countries.Also Wednesday, researchers found that people who had contracted COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, were much less likely to test positive again. Those people who developed antibodies were “at much lower risk” to get the disease again, and could remain virus free for up to six months or longer, the two studies found.Dr. Ned Sharpless, director of the U.S. National Cancer Institute, which conducted one of the studies, told the Associated Press that people who develop antibodies from natural infections develop “the same kind of protection you’d get from an effective vaccine. … It’s very, very rare” to get reinfected.The National Cancer Institute study involved more than 3 million people who had antibody tests. The NCI study found that only 0.3% of those who had antibodies later tested positive for the coronavirus, compared with 3% who lacked such antibodies, the AP reported.The second study, published Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine, involved a much smaller group. It followed 12,500 health workers, 1,265 of whom had coronavirus antibodies at the start. The study found that only two health workers tested positive in the following six months, and neither person developed symptoms, AP reported.U.S. Army General Gustave Perna, Operation Warp Speed chief operating officer, said Wednesday that the U.S. government would distribute nearly 4.7 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines next week.By the end of the first week of January, Perna said, about 20 million vaccine doses will have been delivered throughout the United States.U.S. Operation Warp Speed chief adviser Dr. Moncef Slaoui warned, however, that it would take longer to administer the doses.”The commitment that we can make is to make vaccine doses available,” Slaoui said during a press call. “How fast the ramp-up of immunizations, the shots in arms, is happening is slower than we thought it would be.”Public data show that health care workers in the United States have received about 1 million shots so far, a small fraction of the total shipped. U.S. officials said there was a lag in vaccination data of several days, however.Chile’s Santiago international airport is employing sniffer dogs in detecting travelers with COVID-19.A team of golden retrievers and Labradors wear green “biodector” jackets adorned with red crosses.Passengers will be required to wipe their necks and wrists with gauze pads. Once placed in glass containers, the dogs, who have been trained to detect the coronavirus, will give a sniff.Dogs are being used in airports in the United Arab Emirates and Finland. A recent study found dogs can identify individuals who have COVID-19 with 85% to 100% accuracy.Chile’s Carabinero police trained the dogs.
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Haiti’s ambassador to the United States, Bocchit Edmond, is outraged about a statement issued Tuesday by three Democratic U.S. congressmen calling for a “Haitian-led transition back to democratic order.”“It is really disturbing,” Edmond told VOA on Wednesday in an exclusive interview. “It saddens us to see democratic officials call for a transitional government. We don’t think that going through a transition again will help Haiti.”Haiti has had eight provisional governments since the departure of Jean Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier in 1986.The joint statement issued by Representatives Andy Levin, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee; Gregory Meeks, incoming chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee; and Albio Sires, chair of the Western Hemisphere civilian security and trade subcommittee, says they are watching events unfold in Haiti with “growing concern.”“Haitian President Jovenel Moïse is pursuing an increasingly authoritarian course of action, issuing a series of recent decrees that include creating an extraconstitutional domestic ‘intelligence’ force,” the statement said. “His latest actions are reminiscent of past anti-democratic abuses the Haitian people have endured, including the run-up to the Duvalier dictatorship. We will not stand idly by while Haiti devolves into chaos.”’Limit the decrees’Jon Piechowski, U.S. deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, echoed that concern in an exclusive interview with VOA Creole earlier this week.“We are asking the government of Haiti to limit the decrees and only issue them to prepare the legislative elections or address issues pertaining to the well-being, health, security [of the Haitian people] until a new Parliament is installed and can address constitutional matters,” Piechowski said.Moise has been ruling by decree since January 2020 because Parliament is out of session. The terms of two-thirds of the Chamber of Deputies and Senate expired months before the pandemic hit the Caribbean nation in March.In their statement, Levin, Meeks and Sires said they would work with the incoming Biden administration and international partners to develop a multilateral strategy to address those concerns and hold accountable Haitian officials who violate the people’s human rights.The lawmakers said they would develop a U.S. policy that “prioritizes the rights and aspirations of the Haitian people and supports a credible, Haitian-led transition back to democratic order.”Meeting expectedEdmond told VOA he immediately reached out to the congressmen and intends to meet with them in the new year.“I am looking forward to talking with them in January,” he said.Haiti has faced increased pressure from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the Organization of American States and the United Nations to hold elections as soon as technically possible.Pompeo Calls on Haiti to Hold ‘Overdue’ Legislative ElectionsA newly created electoral council is charged with organizing elections, but it faces pushback from Haiti’s oppositionBut the ambassador said the January 2021 timeframe suggested by the U.S. was not feasible because the Moise government believes an overhaul of the current constitution is necessary first and plans to hold a referendum on that in early 2021.“I think we have already met them in the middle,” Edmond told VOA. “We have agreed to elections. President Moise has done his job in naming an electoral council. We are working on possible calendars to submit now.”Pressed on a precise date for elections, Edmond said the Moise administration did not want to give a date it could not realistically uphold. He said an election schedule was in the works and would be made public early next year.As for the Provisional Electoral Council, Edmond told VOA that members were working with Haiti’s international partners “to make sure the election is fair. We understand this is the path to go.”But Haiti’s opposition has criticized the Moise government for unilaterally naming members of the council without seeking its input and has vowed not to participate in any elections organized by the administration. The opposition urged Moise to step down February 7, 2021. He responded that his five-year term would end on February 7, 2022.Concern about human rightsWith regard to the human rights concerns expressed by both Republicans and Democrats, Edmond said the Moise government shared those concerns.“What is going on in those slums [La Saline, Village de Dieux] is gang battles for turf control,” Edmond said. “What happened in La Saline, the government condemned it several times. There is a legal process going on. An investigative judge was appointed on this issue — he is working on it. We need to be very patient and make sure that these victims receive justice, because we understand that these crimes cannot remain unpunished. But the executive [branch] cannot interfere in the judicial process.”During the La Saline massacre in November 2018, armed gangs killed at least 71 people, raped numerous women and destroyed the homes of hundreds of residents. U.S. lawmakers have repeatedly called on Haiti’s government to bring those responsible to justice.The ambassador said the Moise administration had also prioritized training for the national police force, which has been under fire for human rights violations.Reflecting on 2020 and his mission to reinforce bilateral relations, Edmond, who previously served as Haiti’s foreign minister, said that “it has been a pleasure to work with the Trump administration, and we are looking forward to working with the Biden administration.”But at the end of the day, “Haiti will always handle its foreign policy considering its [own] interests,” he said.
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Argentine soccer star Diego Maradona did not consume alcohol or illicit narcotics in the days before his death, an autopsy released on Wednesday said.Maradona, who died in November at age 60, had taken seven different medicines to treat depression, anxiety and other ailments but “there was no presence of [illegal] drugs,” a judicial official told Reuters.The autopsy, which was based on blood and urine samples and was released by the Buenos Aires Scientific Police, said Maradona had problems with his kidneys, heart and lungs.Investigators are looking into various facets of his death, which rocked Argentina and the wider footballing world, and they have not ruled out wrongful death.The more detailed autopsy confirmed the results of one carried out immediately after his death that said the former Boca Juniors and Napoli player died from “acute pulmonary edema secondary to exacerbated chronic heart failure with dilated cardiomyopathy.”In an angry broadside at her father’s critics, Maradona’s daughter Gianinna said the autopsy showed “a result compatible with cirrhosis of the liver.”The charismatic 1986 World Cup winner, regarded as one of the greatest soccer players of all time, had battled alcohol and drug addiction for much of his life.A judge last week ruled that Maradona’s body could not be exhumed or cremated in case DNA is needed at a later date for use in paternity or other cases.Maradona has five recognized children and six with filiation requests. They are part of a complex inheritance process under way in Argentina.
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A Pakistani human rights activist who had been missing for days has been found dead in Toronto.
 
Karima Baloch, 37, who had been living in exile in Canada for five years, campaigned for human rights in the troubled region of Balochistan.  
 
Baloch left Pakistan in 2015 after she was charged with terrorism, the BBC reported.  
 
Balochistan has long been home to insurgent separatist movements.
 
Before coming to Canada, she was the first female leader of the Baloch Students’ Organization, which is now banned, the BBC reported.  
 
Toronto police said she went missing on Sunday. No cause of death has been announced.
 
Baloch’s husband, Hammal Haider, told Britain’s The Guardian newspaper that she went on a walk on Toronto’s Center Island and never returned.
 
“I can’t believe that it’s an act of suicide,” he told the newspaper. “She was a strong lady and she left home in a good mood. We can’t rule out foul play as she has been under threats. She left Pakistan as her home was raided more than twice. Her uncle was killed. She was threatened to leave activism and political activities, but she did not and fled to Canada.”
 
Her friend, Lateef Johar Baloch, told the BBC Baloch had recently received anonymous threats that someone would “teach her a lesson.”
 
Baloch’s sister, Mahganj Baloch, called the death a “tragedy for the family” and for the Baloch national movement.  
 
The Balochistan National Movement announced a 40-day mourning period upon learning of Baloch’s death.
 
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A brief surge of coronavirus infections in Atlantic Canada – one of the least-affected places on Earth – has been tamped down just in time for residents to enjoy something resembling a normal Christmas. But most say they will continue to observe the social distancing and other measures that have helped to keep the pandemic at bay.“We are heading into the holiday season with very low active cases of COVID-19 in our province because Nova Scotians have worked hard to follow the protocols and slow the spread of the virus,” said Premier Stephen McNeil of Nova Scotia, the most populous of the region’s four provinces with a little under 1 million residents.“The people of our province will still be able to get together with family,” McNeil told VOA. “It will just have to be in a smaller group.”American media took note earlier this fall of the “Atlantic Bubble,” a large region just a few hundred kilometers from New York City where cases of the world-spanning viral disease were so low that new cases could be counted on the fingers of one hand.Free movement was permitted within the region comprising Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland, while outsiders – even from other parts of Canada – could not visit without submitting to a two-week quarantine.Within weeks of that wave of publicity, the tranquility was shattered by an outbreak of new cases that, while still small by global standards, set off alarms. The free travel zone was temporarily disbanded, and Nova Scotia – with fewer than 200 total cases – declared a limited lockdown with an end to indoor dining and gyms.The measures proved effective, and a week before Christmas, the total number of active cases in Nova Scotia is down to 50 with nobody hospitalized. The province reported just six new cases on Wednesday.In response, gyms and religious services have been allowed to reopen at partial capacity, although indoor dining and live music are still prohibited. More important for families hoping to celebrate the year-end holidays together, a strict limit on gatherings in Halifax, the region’s biggest city, has been raised from five people to 10.Even so, many residents say they will play it safe.Nova Scotia-based epidemiologist Devbani Raha says she is closely following the case numbers as she makes her holiday plans and is encouraged to see that the tally is not going up. Even so, she is inviting only a single family friend for Christmas dinner.Students go about their lives during the pandemic lockdown on the campus of the University of King’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia. (Jay Heisler/VOA)“I know that my guest follows guidelines in terms of only being outside her home to shop for necessities, and we have done the same,” Raha said. “I plan on contacting my guest the day before our dinner plans to ensure that she hasn’t been at other gatherings, and hasn’t been feeling sick, especially fever, cough or loss of smell or taste, and I’ll be monitoring my family’s symptoms too.”And if she notices a new spike in infections before Christmas, Raha said, “I would sadly cancel my plans, as I would not want to potentially add to the growing number of cases.”It is just this kind of personal discipline that has helped keep Atlantic Canada relatively safe from the pandemic as COVID-19 cases and deaths surge in other parts of the country. And even the recent surge is largely blamed on visitors from outside the bubble.In the province of New Brunswick – Nova Scotia’s western neighbor – a great deal of abuse has been heaped on a local entrepreneur named Cortland Cronk who appears to have become infected while traveling outside the bubble to what was deemed to be essential IT work.Some Twitter users charge that Cronk failed to self-isolate while waiting for his test results after showing COVID-19 symptoms. Cronk has responded on Twitter to many of his critics individually and has announced plans to move across the country to the Pacific Coast province of British Columbia.In Nova Scotia, the outbreak was largely blamed on young people mingling late into the evenings in bars, in defiance of pandemic regulations. For the most part, however, residents and businesses alike have followed the rules.“It’s been an interesting and challenging year for us,” said Krista Armstrong, owner of Halifax-based food market the Local Source. “We pivoted quickly in March, into an online platform, and it’s worked well.“During Nova Scotia’s lockdown in March, I was home with a 7-month-old, which added a level of complication,” she said, adding that she is giving her staff an unprecedented four-day break at Christmas to give them “time to rest.”“Personally, I’ll be home with our now toddler,” she said.
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U.S. President-elect Joe Biden and Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Saturday committed to work on a humane strategy to regional migration by addressing its root causes in Central America and southern Mexico.The two leaders in a phone call “discussed working together on a new approach to regional migration that offers alternatives to undertaking the dangerous journey to the United States,” a summary of the call provided by Biden’s team said.The two leaders said they shared a desire to address the reasons for migration in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and southern Mexico.Biden pledged to build “the regional and border infrastructure and capacity needed to facilitate a new orderly and humane approach to migration that will respect international norms regarding the treatment of asylum claims,” the statement from Biden’s team said.Earlier this week Lopez Obrador suggested the two neighbors under Biden’s new Democratic administration work together on the thorny issue of immigration.Republican President Donald Trump’s unprecedented demands that the Mexican government do more to reduce the flow of U.S.-bound migrants, including harboring migrants in Mexico while they wait for their U.S. court dates and paying for a border wall, caused friction in the relationship.Biden emphasized the need to reinvigorate U.S.-Mexico cooperation on migration as well as the COVID-19 pandemic, the economy and border security.”We reaffirmed our commitment to working together for the well-being of our peoples and nations,” Lopez Obrador said on Twitter.Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard tweeted: “There will be extensive bilateral cooperation and a very good relationship between the presidents of Mexico and the United States.”A Mexican government source told Reuters that Biden and Lopez Obrador also spoke about investment for development and respect for the Mexican community in the United States.The leaders of Latin America’s two biggest economies, Brazil and Mexico, congratulated Biden on Tuesday, the day after the U.S. Electoral College confirmed Biden’s Nov. 3 election win. The long delay ignited criticism they were running the risk of alienating Biden and his fellow Democrats.
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Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht announced Friday it has changed its name to Novonor, attempting to turn over a new leaf following years of high-profile and damaging corruption scandals across Latin America.”We’re not erasing the past. The past cannot be erased,” said Mauricio Odebrecht, who represents the majority shareholder, in a statement.”After all the changes and course corrections we’ve instituted, now we’re looking at what we want to be: a company inspired by the future. This is our new north.”Odebrecht was at the center of the Operation Car Wash corruption scandal that resulted in dozens of top Brazilian businessmen and politicians being sent to jail, including Marcelo Odebrecht, the former company president and grandson of the construction giant’s founder.At the height of its influence, before Operation Car Wash was launched six years ago, Odebrecht employed 180,000 people worldwide.Now Novonor “is born as the holding company of a business group with 25,000 employees and six companies” working in engineering, construction, urban mobility and roads, oil and gas, real estate, petrochemicals and the naval industry, the statement said.From its launch in 2014, the Operation Car Wash investigation uncovered a vast network of bribes paid by large construction companies to politicians to obtain major contracts with Brazil’s state oil company Petrobras.The case sparked political crises in several countries. In Peru, three former presidents are under investigation, and a fourth, Alan Garcia, committed suicide in 2019 when police arrived at his home to take him into custody.Odebrecht was ordered to pay many fines including one worth $2.6 billion to the governments of the United States, Brazil and Switzerland.Marcelo Odebrecht was arrested in June 2015 and sentenced to 19 years in jail. That was reduced to 10 years after he collaborated with investigators, and since December 2017 he has served his time under house arrest.
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In marking International Migrants Day, the United Nations says at least 3,174 migrants have died this year while seeking safety from persecution and violence or in hopes of bettering their impoverished lives.The International Organization for Migration says the number of recorded migrant deaths is likely to be highly underestimated. It says tens of thousands of people embark on dangerous journeys across deserts, jungles and seas. Many thousands do not survive but their deaths, it says, are not recorded.The IOM says the overall number of global migrant deaths recorded this year is lower than in previous years. However, it notes fatalities have increased significantly on some of the migratory routes. For example, IOM spokesman Paul Dillon says at least 593 deaths have been documented in 2020 on route to Spain’s Canary Islands, compared to 45 fatalities in 2018.“An increase in migrants’ deaths was also recorded in South America compared to previous years, with at least 104 lives lost—most of them Venezuelan migrants—compared to fewer than 40 in all previous years,” said Dillion. “This includes at least 23 people who drowned off the coast of Venezuela last weekend. Some 381 men, women and children also lost their lives on the U.S.-Mexican border.”Advocates Warn of More Immigrant Deaths without ICE Action More people will die of the coronavirus in US immigration custody unless the Trump administration rapidly improves conditions and releases more detainees, lawyers and advocates warn, following the first confirmed virus-related death of a detaineeThis year, migration within and on route to Europe claimed the largest number of lives, more than 1,700. Dillon says a significant number of the deaths were among migrants from sub-Saharan Africa.He says migrants are not just statistics. He says they are people who make significant contributions to their countries of migration, especially in this time of coronavirus.“What we see every day are the images of doctors and nurses and support staff in health care facilities and old age homes, many of whom are migrant workers contributing to the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, saving lives, putting in the long arduous hours on behalf of those who are stricken with the virus,” Dillion said. Dillon says migrants should be welcomed and appreciated for the services and beneficial roles they perform in their adopted societies instead of being vilified and subjected to discrimination.
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U.N. humanitarian agencies are calling for a stop to the deadly sea journeys on smugglers’ boats that are endangering the lives of Venezuelan refugees and migrants fleeing persecution and hardship there.
 
The appeal follows the latest loss of life in the waters near the Venezuelan coastal town of Guiria several days ago. Up to 25 refugees and migrants, among them four children whose boat had capsized offshore, were found floating in the sea.
 
The shipwrecked vessel reportedly set sail for Trinidad and Tobago on December 6. In the wake of the tragedy, U.N. agencies are calling for urgent efforts to stop smugglers and human traffickers sending refugees and migrants on dangerous sea journeys.
 
The U.N. human rights office is calling on authorities in Venezuela, and Trinidad and Tobago to launch an investigation into the incident. Marta Hurtado, spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, says the probes should be about accountability and sending a message.
 
“Both governments have to conduct investigations, thorough and transparent and share their outcomes and to cooperate between them, not only to start to understand what happened in this case and to prosecute whoever needs to be prosecuted. We want to hold people who are responsible for it [accountable], but to avoid this tragedy from happening again,” Hurtatdo said.  
 
The U.N. refugee agency and International Organization for Migration report more Venezuelans have been leaving their country in recent weeks as COVID-19 lockdown measures in the region have eased. However, they note land and maritime borders remain closed, forcing them to escape using informal, dangerous routes.
 
They say smugglers and human traffickers who exploit and abuse desperate people for profit are taking advantage of this situation. U.N. agencies say regular pathways must be available so refugees and migrants don’t have to risk their lives.   
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The Inter-American Development Bank pledged $1 billion Wednesday to help Central American and Caribbean nations fight the coronavirus pandemic.The IDB will devote the money to purchasing vaccines, strengthening national institutions distributing the shots and building immunization capacity.The pledge is in addition to $1.2 billion the bank already mobilized in the region to pay for testing and treatment.Wednesday’s announcement came as Latin America reported surges in COVID-19 cases and deaths. According to the Reuters news agency, roughly 33% of the world’s COVID-19 deaths were recorded in Latin America, though the region accounts for only 9% of the global population.Around the worldAbout a quarter of Mexico’s population has been exposed to the virus, officials said. Over 115,000 Mexicans have died of the virus, according to the Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center.A new set of tight restrictions took effect Wednesday in Germany to try to curb a rising number of coronavirus infections and deaths.The hard lockdown mandated the closing of all nonessential businesses and limiting private gatherings to no more than five people. The restrictions, which will remain in effect until January 10, were imposed by Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday after talks with Germany’s 16 regional governors.The Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s central disease control center, reported 952 coronavirus deaths on Wednesday, shattering the previous single-day record of 598 posted just last Friday.Germany’s seven-day incidence of new cases has also set a record, rising to nearly 180 per 100,000 people.Health Minister Jens Spahn called on the European Union’s regulatory agency late Tuesday to give final approval of the vaccine jointly developed by U.S. drugmaker Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech by Christmas. The vaccine is being administered to health care workers in Britain and the United States, after government regulators quickly approved its use after a thorough review process.Meanwhile, in the U.S., the White House announced Wednesday that Vice President Mike Pence would receive the vaccine on Friday.President-elect Joe Biden will be vaccinated next week, according to the transition team.Regulators with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced Tuesday that its preliminary analysis of a second vaccine developed by Moderna and the National Institutes of Health confirmed its safety and effectiveness.The report revealed that four volunteers in the late-stage clinical trial developed Bell’s palsy, a condition that involves temporary paralysis or weakness in facial muscles. Three of those participants had received the two-dose vaccine, while the other one was given a placebo.The approval process of the Moderna vaccine is now in the hands of the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, which meets Thursday. If the committee gives its approval, the FDA would the grant the vaccine an emergency use authorization.The FDA granted emergency approval Tuesday of an over-the-counter COVID-19 test developed by Ellume, an Australian-based health care technology company. The self-administered home kit returns test results within 15 to 20 minutes through a smartphone application. COVID-19 is the disease caused by the coronavirus.As the United States, Britain and other nations escalate efforts to vaccinate citizens against the virus that has sickened more than 73.5 million people worldwide, causing more than 1.6 million deaths, a new study says at least one-fifth of the world’s population may not have access to a vaccine until 2022, as wealthier nations buy more than half of next year’s potential doses.The study by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health came just days after U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned about the rise of “vaccine nationalism” among the world’s richest nations at the expense of much poorer countries.Separately, two of the world’s biggest annual New Year’s celebrations are either being curtailed or canceled because of the pandemic. New York City is banning visitors from the city’s historic Times Square to witness the iconic “ball drop” that counts down the final seconds of the year.In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, officials announced Tuesday that the city is calling off its annual New Year’s Eve beach party, which normally attracts hundreds of thousands of people with live music and a spectacular fireworks display.
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The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration said the capsizing of a boat carrying people from Venezuela to Trinidad and Tobago should be “a reminder of the extreme risks of sea journey, and other irregular-cross-border movements” taken by refugees and immigrants.The boat was carrying at least 25 people, including children, when it sank off the eastern coast of Venezuela near the coastal town of Guiria over the weekend. Eleven bodies were recovered on Saturday followed by a few others on Sunday.Venezuela has yet to provide an official death toll, but some reports suggest about 20 bodies were recovered from the sea.“Our thoughts are with the families of those who lost their lives,” said Eduardo Stein, Joint Special Representative of UNHCR and IOM for Venezuelan Refugees and Migrants in a statement.“We need to join forces to prevent this from happening again,” Stein said in the statement. The statement added, humanitarian organizations are on hand to support Venezuela to rescue those who may still be missing at sea.Many Venezuelans are escaping the economic hardships in the Latin American country that have been compounded by lockdown measures because of the coronavirus.Lockdown measures resulting in the closure of land and maritime borders is forcing refugees and immigrants to use unapproved routes to escape worsening economic conditions, the statement said.Last year, three boats were reported missing between Venezuela and the Caribbean islands of Trinidad and Curacao, with the loss of at least 80 lives, according to the statement.Stein noted that “urgent efforts are needed to stop smugglers and traffickers from sending people on these perilous journeys.”
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Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador congratulated U.S. President-elect Joe Biden on his election victory, after U.S. state electors voted Monday to make Biden’s election official.  Speaking at his daily news conference in Mexico City on Tuesday, López Obrador told reporters he intentionally waited until after the Electoral College vote before writing Biden. The Mexican leader read the letter as it was displayed behind him, in which he called for good bilateral relations with the United States and the Biden administration “based on collaboration, friendship and respect for our sovereignty.” López Obrador said he was certain that with Biden as president it will be possible to continue to apply “basic principles of foreign policy established in our Constitution; especially that of non-intervention and self-determination of the peoples.” The comment appeared to be a warning about U.S. involvement in Mexico’s internal affairs. The Mexican government has reacted angrily to perceived slights and U.S. intervention in the country’s drug corruption problem. The letter praised Biden’s pro-immigration stance, which López Obrador said he hoped would allow the two nations to “continue with the plan to promote the development and well-being of the communities of southeast Mexico and the countries of Central America.” López Obrador said he hoped the two countries could work together “to build the definitive solution to migratory flows from and through Mexico to the United States.” The Mexican president noted that he and Biden met about nine years ago when Biden was vice president and expressed hope that the two would be able to speak in the future. Outgoing President Donald Trump met with López Obrador at the White House in July for talks on trade, the economy and immigration. The talks came days after a new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) trade deal went into effect. Trump previously had made derogatory remarks about Mexican immigrants and threatened trade tariffs. He called the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico “outstanding.” 
 
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A narrow 96-kilometer-wide corridor from the Pacific Coast in Chile across the Andes mountain range and into Argentina in South America was treated Monday to views of the final total solar eclipse of 2020. A total solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between the Earth and the sun, casting a shadow that momentarily extinguishes daylight on Earth. Magdalena Nahuelpan, a Mapuche Indigenous girl, looks at a total solar eclipse using special glasses in Carahue, La Araucania, Chile, Dec. 14, 2020.Despite COVID-19 restrictions on travel and movement, thousands of tourists and residents gathered in Chile’s south-central Araucania region, about 800 kilometers south of the capital, Santiago. While heavy rain and clouds obscured the sun itself, the region was nonetheless plunged into darkness for about two minutes and eight seconds.  The Chilean health ministry issued protective eyewear for safe viewing of the eclipse, along with face masks and sanitizer to keep people safe from COVID-19. The weather was better in Argentina, though the path of the eclipse there went through sparsely populated areas of the Patagonia Desert.  The next total solar eclipse will occur over Antarctica on December 4, 2021.  
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Before dawn on December 1, Leonardo de Carvalho Leal prepared to leave his family behind in the Brazilian city of Ponta Grossa, in Parana state. His mother overwhelmed him with goodbyes and gave him a bracelet she said had brought her luck. He fiddled with it on his wrist the entire ride to the airport, unsure when he might see her again.“Maybe I was blaming myself a bit, for leaving so many people vulnerable,” he said in a video interview with The Associated Press, with tears welling as he recalled his departure. “But what I did was right.”Leal and his girlfriend of six years, Mayara Stelle — both 22-year-old law students — this year created a Twitter account with its stated mission to call out Brazilian websites for spreading “hate speech and Fake News” and torpedoing those sites’ advertising revenue. They garnered 410,000 followers, more than the number of residents in their midsize city.
 
They also mustered a legion of enemies. Vitriol poured in, directed toward their account, Sleeping Giants Brazil. Believing their identities are soon to be revealed after a ruling against Twitter, they expect they will be personally targeted, for lawsuits or worse.Fear their families would be caught in the barrage because they had often accessed the account at their parents’ homes, they say, is why they left their lives behind and are choosing to make their identities known to The Associated Press and Folha de S.Paulo, Brazil’s biggest newspaper. The AP observed them accessing and using the Sleeping Giants Brazil account and checked the names they provided against their government-issued identification cards.“Those threats that say, ‘I’m going to kill you,’ or, ‘I’m offering 100,000 reais ($20,000) for the head of the profile’s owner,’ will now be directed at Mayara and Leo,” Stelle said from a city outside Sao Paulo referring to herself and her boyfriend. “This is a decision to protect our families and control exposure to show we’re common people, like anyone else who can have an idea. And that idea can be brilliant, can change things.”This year, Brazil has been awash in misinformation about the pandemic, egged on by dubious claims from President Jair Bolsonaro. It marks the continuation of a digital battle in Latin America’s biggest country, with each side in the polarized nation seeking to portray itself as “owner of the truth,” as an expression in Portuguese goes.Pursuit of Sleeping Giants Brazil is part of a growing trend over the last several years to instrumentalize the judiciary against those who train fire on conservative media outlets, interest groups and Bolsonaro’s administration, according to Taís Gasparian, a law partner who has worked with media and free speech for decades. Often the alleged offenses may be covered by rights of free speech or press freedom. This year, that has included a writer, a cartoonist and a beach volleyball player.
 
Sleeping Giants Brazil followed the playbook of its U.S. predecessor, which after Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential victory alerted companies to the fact their ads were appearing on websites including Breitbart News, a platform that critics have repeatedly accused of running racist, xenophobic and sexist content. Companies’ ads were often automatically placed through Google, and they decamped en masse upon learning of the risk to their brands. Video that surfaced in mid-2019 showed Breitbart’s former executive chairman Steve Bannon saying Sleeping Giants had cost the organization 90% of its ad revenue.The number of Sleeping Giants Brazil’s followers surpassed that of the U.S. handle as it toppled one ad after another. A top target was Jornal da Cidade Online, a conservative website based in southern Brazil. The site’s content has repeatedly been debunked by fact-checking organizations, and a preliminary technical report shows “it is one of the big disseminators of false news in our country,” said lawmaker Lídice da Mata, the rapporteur of Congress’ ongoing investigation into misinformation, in a written response to AP questions.Scores of advertisers in Brazil — among them Dell, McDonald’s, Facebook and Domino’s Pizza — have responded publicly to alerts from Sleeping Giants Brazil and likeminded Twitter users about their ads appearing on Jornal da Cidade, saying that they would remove them because of the site’s content or already had. State-run Bank of Brazil did the same, prompting a swift rebuke from Bolsonaro’s son and his communications secretary, who said on Twitter that independent journalism is important.Jornal da Cidade claimed reputational and financial damages and sued Twitter, demanding the platform turn over data associated with the Sleeping Giants Brazil account that could identify its users. Twitter last week provided the court with the account’s I.P. addresses, according to a person with knowledge of the case, who isn’t authorized to speak publicly. Twitter said in an emailed statement that it “vigorously fought this case through several different appeals” and will continue to defend free speech and privacy rights.Jornal da Cidade’s editor José Tolentino declined an interview request and referred the AP to the law office representing him. His lawyer Simone Custódio declined an interview request, didn’t answer questions sent by email about the case, instead saying they will await the right time to comment publicly in observance of their client’s best interests.“The cowardly attacks against Jornal da Cidade Online hide people, businesses and entities that certainly act in their desired attempt to install left-wing radicalism in Brazil or other even more sordid interests,” read an editorial it published on Dec. 4. The site has repeatedly denied spreading misinformation.Danilo Doneda, a lawyer who specializes in data protection, told the AP that Brazilians are guaranteed freedom of expression, but the constitution has the peculiarity of prohibiting anonymity. Doneda, a member of the government’s newly formed data protection council, likens Sleeping Giants Brazil to the pen name of an author known to his or her publisher.“Twitter can gather the elements, technically, to reach these people, so it’s a pseudonym, not anonymity,” Doneda said.Others have faced legal repercussions using their names.Writer J.P. Cuenca has been hit with more than 140 lawsuits in 21 Brazilian states since he composed a tweet in June, according to his lawyer, Fernando Hideo. The tweet, which appeared to call for violence against Bolsonaro and evangelical pastors, was a Brazilian spin on a historical quotation.Federal police interrogated cartoonist Renato Aroeira in July after depicting Bolsonaro as transforming a red cross representing hospitals into a swastika; the president had recently called on his social media followers to enter hospitals and film whether they were in fact overburdened with COVID-19 patients. And beach volleyball player Carol Solberg shouted “Out, Bolsonaro!” during an on-court interview on Sept. 20 in Rio de Janeiro state; a sports court warned her she could face a fine of up to $20,000 and a six-game suspension if she spoke out again.Polarization has taken root since Brazil’s sprawling Car Wash investigation that kicked off in 2014 and exposed rampant corruption, followed by President Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment. The reason was violation of Brazil’s budget laws, but her Workers’ Party ascribed removal to political motives.Into that political divide strode Bolsonaro, a fringe lawmaker claiming he would restore law and order to the beleaguered nation, put God and country above all else, loosen gun controls and banish left-wing politics.His 2018 campaign was turbocharged by social media and messaging app WhatsApp. Media reported that executives had bankrolled blast messages on WhatsApp — much of which contained content deemed false by fact-checkers — and in doing so potentially broke campaign finance laws. It spurred Congress to launch its investigation into misinformation spread before the election.One of the businessmen named in a story was Luciano Hang, a Bolsonaro booster and department store tycoon with a penchant for wearing bright green suits with yellow ties — the colors of Brazil’s flag. He denied the assertions and sued the story author Patrícia Campos Mello, one of the nation’s more prominent journalists, and Folha de S.Paulo. A judge this month ruled in his favor and ordered payment of 100,000 reais. The paper and Campos Mello will appeal to a higher court, according to Gasparian, the lawyer representing them.Throughout, Bolsonaro has denigrated mainstream media, often calling them “fake news.” In February, he repeated a debunked, sexually charged allegation about Campos Mello, who last year won the International Press Freedom Award after coverage of his campaign.Sympathetic conservative websites have consistently cheered him on. One is Jornal da Cidade, which the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) characterized as a pro-Bolsonaro site. Its editorial stance is explicit in its suit against Twitter, saying editor Tolentino has sought “to highlight the current federal administration’s fight to govern the country, despite the groundless accusations it is suffering publicly.”When Leal and Stelle successfully petitioned Dell to remove its ads from Jornal da Cidade, Tolentino published a text saying Sleeping Giants’ followers were “all frustrated, spiteful, criminal and envious leftists,” and that his site receives more than one million visits daily. It has 1.5 million followers on Facebook, where its posts about COVID-19 significantly outperformed those from traditional media outlets, particularly ones politicizing the health crisis, according to a DFRLab report in May.Sleeping Giants Brazil targeted Jornal da Cidade early on, Stelle said, because of its coronavirus-related content. That has included touting chloroquine to fight COVID-19, an anti-malarial drug that Bolsonaro trumpeted despite a growing body of evidence that it is ineffective against the disease. In April, Congress extended its probe to investigate misinformation about the pandemic.The site published a story with the headline: “A catastrophic analysis about the vaccines against the Chinese virus: ‘They interfere directly in genetic material.’” It was debunked by two separate fact-checking groups, Agencia Lupa and Comprova, but not before racking up 191,000 interactions on Facebook. Jornal da Cidade replaced the story with a correction, which has garnered less than 3% as many interactions.And ahead of this year’s municipal elections, Jornal da Cidade hosted six of the ten most-shared links on Facebook that encouraged Brazilians to believe in ballot fraud and election manipulation, according to a study published Nov. 10 by the department of public policy analysis at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a university.Cristina Tardáguila, associate director of the International Fact-Checking Network and founder of Agencia Lupa, said Sleeping Giants Brazil was naive in not providing transparency and focusing efforts on one side of the political spectrum, which hurt credibility and handed ammunition to opponents.“There was a certain naivete in thinking they’d be carried on the shoulders of the people, but Brazilians are ultra-polarized,” Tardáguila said. “Half the people wanted to do that, but half wanted to kill them, destroy them.”She added she worried that the judiciary didn’t take into account the very real physical risk that the account’s administrators could face. The AP reviewed more than 10 physical threats made publicly on Twitter. Jornal da Cidade hasn’t incited any violence against them.Leal and Stelle aren’t sticking around to see if threats are mere bluster from keyboard warriors. They’re moving to their new home — the location of which they declined to disclose — where they intend to keep working.Da Mata, rapporteur for Congress’ investigation, called Sleeping Giants Brazil “truly important work, an initiative that helps combat disinformation as a whole.”Jornal da Cidade is just one of the sites Sleeping Giants Brazil went after. Congresswoman Carla Zambelli, a close ally of Bolsonaro’s, in August called on everyone who was targeted to sue for civil and criminal charges.Leal and Stelle say they know their struggle is only beginning.“We tried to prepare as much as possible for this. We’re betting everything on this project,” Leal said. “Demonetization of fake news means dealing with the worst of the internet: racists, xenophobes, and so on. From the moment you take the money away from these people, they never forget.” 
 
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