International
WHO reports record number of COVID-19 infections per day
Yesterday, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that on Saturday, daily COVID-19 infections reached a record high. According to the organization, 660,905 infections were registered that day.
The WHO said that the number of daily infections surpassed the previous record by over 15,000. This was registered on Friday. They add that it surpasses the previous record set on November 7th by over 45 thousand. The organization also stressed that for the first time, over 9,500 deaths were reported daily for three consecutive days. A record reached on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
WHO said that since the beginning of the pandemic, over 53.7 million confirmed cases of the virus have been detected. Since then, over 1.3 million have lost their lives to the disease.
According to WHO figures, over 53.7 million confirmed cases of the virus have been detected and over 1.3 million people have lost their lives since the beginning of the pandemic. Last week, Tedros Ghebreyesus, director general of the WHO, said there is a long way to go before the virus is contained.
International
Trump signs a decree to ban the teaching of race and gender theories in schools
US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday that prohibits the use of federal funds in schools that teach what he considers “critical race theory” and other content related to race and gender identity.
Those educational centers that do not comply with this measure could lose their federal funding.
The order, aimed at schools for students between 5 and 18 years old, states that federal funds cannot be allocated to the “indoctrination” of children with “anti-American ideologies”, such as “radical gender ideology and critical theory of race”.
“Imposing anti-American, subversive, harmful and false ideologies on the children of our nation not only violates in many cases the civil rights laws against discrimination, but also usurps the basic authority of the parents,” says the document signed by Trump.
The term “critical race theory” has been used by conservative sectors of the US to encompass a wide variety of educational content that they reject. However, in the academic field, this theory studies how racism is rooted in American laws and institutions.
In addition, the order instructs the future Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, and other senior government officials to develop, within 90 days, a strategy to “eliminate indoctrination” in schools.
McMahon, an executive of the wrestling company World Wrestling Entertainment, has yet to receive Senate approval to assume the position of Secretary of Education.
During his campaign for the November elections, Trump promised that as soon as he arrived at the White House he would sign an executive order, like the one signed today, to cut federal funding for schools that promote the critical theory of race or content that he considers inappropriate.
The federal government, however, has limited power in the day-to-day life of schools in the United States, which receive the most funding from state and local sources.
Trump signed an executive order to identify foreign students and faculty who participated in pro-Palestinian university protests in order to deport them.
The document instructs the Secretaries of State, Education and Homeland Security to request U.S. universities to monitor and report on activities of foreign students and professors who may be considered anti-Semitic, in order to take action in accordance with the law and, if appropriate, act to expel them from the country.
The order establishes several provisions on anti-Semitism, but focuses especially on the protests that broke out in April 2024 on campuses throughout the United States against the war in Gaza and Washington’s support for Israel, which lasted for about three months and left a balance of about 3,100 detainees.
In the text, Trump emphasizes that he decided to sign this executive order on anti-Semitism after returning to the White House on January 20, noting that “Jewish students, in particular, faced anti-Semitic harassment in schools and university campuses.”
Although the document assumes that the demonstrators committed anti-Semitic acts, they have denied that their protests had that intention or that they supported Hamas in any way, and maintain that they demonstrated against the Israeli military offensive in Gaza, which has left more than 47,000 dead.
The Islamic-American Relations Council (CAIR), one of the country’s main organizations in defense of the rights of Muslims, warned that if the order is implemented it will be challenged in court.
International
Canada’s Foreign Minister expresses her optimism after meeting with Marco Rubio
Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly said on Wednesday that she was “moderately optimistic” that Canada would avoid Donald Trump’s tariffs after meeting in Washington with Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Joly, who described the meeting as “very positive,” said in a press conference with Canadian media from Washington that the confusion of whether the US will impose tariffs on Canada on February 1 “is the reality of dealing with the Trump Administration.”
“But I also think that what we are establishing right now are clear lines of contact, we are being able to present what we are doing to respond to their concerns and I am moderately optimistic,” he explained.
Joly explained that Rubio “is someone with great knowledge, highly respected in Washington by his former colleagues in the Senate, but also by the president.” He added that the Secretary of State considered “positive” the measures taken by Canada in recent weeks to strengthen the border, as Trump had demanded.
The Canadian minister stressed that she will remain in Washington until Friday, one day before the Trump Administration theoretically begins to impose 25% tariffs on Canada, to continue insisting to the country’s political leaders that the liens will start a trade war in which the United States will also suffer.
“While I do this work, we are also ready to retaliate if they decide to impose unfair tariffs against Canadians,” he said, stressing that “everything is on the table” in reference to the fact that Canada could seifse oil exports to the United States.
The US State Department said that the meeting addressed how the two countries can collaborate on “shared global challenges, such as safe borders and energy security.”
Both reaffirmed cooperation to improve security and, according to that note, Rubio praised Canada for facing “China’s coercive and unfair economic practices.”
Joly also met this Wednesday in Washington with Republican Senator Kevin Cramer, co-chair of the Senate’s Committee on Economy and Security between the US and Canada.
In addition to Joly, Canada’s Minister of Public Security, David McGuinty, is also expected to travel to Washington in the coming days to hold meetings with Trump’s Executive, including the border “tsar”, Tom Homan.
International
Higher contributions and social security: the keys to Chile’s new pension reform
The Chilean Parliament gave the green light this Wednesday by a large majority to a pension reform promoted by the Government of Gabriel Boric that seeks to improve low pensions and proposes the most significant changes to the model created more than four decades ago by the dictatorship.
“It’s a tremendous achievement for Chile. It is an act of justice, of deep affection and respect for our people, which responds to what is one of the biggest debts that our country drags,” the president said in a public statement from the La Moneda palace.
Here are the keys to a reform that for some is “decaffeinated” and for others is an “achiemement” of a very polarized political class, which has not agreed for years on the great structural changes that Chile requires:
Established in 1981, in the middle of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), the Chilean system was a pioneer in the region in installing individual capitalization and forcing each formal worker to contribute 10% of his monthly salary to a personal account that he can dispose of when he retires, managed by the controversial private pension administrators (AFP).
Its defenders argue that the model has contributed to the development of the national capital market, while its detractors consider that it is an abusive and unfair system and that it only works if you have a stable job and a high income, something unthinkable for the vast majority of Chileans.
“This system has not worked because of the way pensions are calculated. People who contributed between 35 and 40 years and retired in 2023 had a replacement rate of 32.6%, this is a third of their average 10-year salary,” María José Azócar, of the Sol Foundation, told EFE.
Pensions have been leading the polls on major citizen concerns for years and citizens had lost confidence in the ability of politics to improve them.
The refoundation of the system was also one of the main demands of the 2019 protests.
None of the reforms proposed by the Governments of Michelle Bachelet and Sebastián Piñera came to the surface and only partial achievements were obtained such as the creation of a public pension for the most vulnerable in 2008 and its expansion in 2022.
The reform, which has undergone substantial modifications since it was presented by the left-wing Administration in 2022, seeks to benefit 2.8 million retirees, with increases in their pensions of between 14% and 35%.
It also increases the universal basic pension to 250,000 ($253); gradually raises the contribution to 17%, at the expense of the employer; creates social insurance; incorporates intra- and intergenerational solidarity mechanisms and tightens industry regulation to make it more competitive.
“It is a reform that changes the face of what the dictatorship did to this country,” said the Minister of Labor and Social Security, Jeannette Jara, after the approval.
The economist of the University of Chile Guillermo Larraín explained to EFE that “the most advanced countries have mixed systems, but these are more dominated by the State, while in Chile the path has been the other way around, because it is moving from a very private system to a slightly more public one.”
It was negotiated with the traditional right-wing coalition Chile Vamos and, although it is far from what the Government aspired to, it is a breath of air for Boric, since it was one of his great campaign promises, along with the tax pact that he still does not manage to move forward.
The most radical part of the coalition that makes up the Government (Communist Party and Broad Front) voted in favor, despite believing that too many concessions were made during the parliamentary debate and that they gave up eliminating the AFPs and creating a system with greater state weight.
“This reform is valid and perfects the system of the AFPs. In the long term, 6 more points will go to individual capitalization, when in the original Government project those 6 points went to social insurance so that Chile could catch up on the international stage and not continue to be an extreme case,” said Azócar.
Skepticism also reigns in the street: according to the latest Data Influye survey, 64% of those over 55 believe that the reform will not “definitely” solve the problem of pensions, compared to 33% who believe that it will only solve it “in part” and 1% who are very satisfied.
The only ones who voted against were some of them from Chile Vamos and the deputies of the different far-right parties in Parliament, opposed to any distribution system.
The leader of the far-right Republican Party, José Antonio Kast, who lost to Boric in the 2021 elections, charged against the reform in X for “taking away from workers one of their most precious assets, the right to property over their savings” and warned that he will repeal it if he manages to come to power in the elections at the end of the year.
Trump signs a decree to ban the teaching of race and gender theories in schools
Canada’s Foreign Minister expresses her optimism after meeting with Marco Rubio
Higher contributions and social security: the keys to Chile’s new pension reform
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