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The victors were a group of parties of a new-left coalition, Apruebo Dignidad (I Approve Dignity), which elected 28 representatives, and numerous independent candidates who had been active in the ongoing protests calling for reforms in education, health and pensions, and an end to the neoliberal economic model that has dominated Chile for almost half a century

The independent, left and center-left candidates secured a combined 101 seats, more than two-thirds of the Constitutional Convention. They would have enough power to propose broad economic reforms to land and water rights, the pensions system and the exploitation of natural resources. Chile is one of the most unequal countries among advanced economies.

All signs indicate that the foundational document they will draft will enshrine principles of civic participation, justice, gender equality and Indigenous rights that have long eluded this South American nation.

Ms. Vallejo, like many of her fellow student leaders, is an avowed communist. But while she has publicly commended other regional leftists like Presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia and Rafael Correa of Ecuador, she and her generation have little in common with the older left of Fidel Castro or Hugo Chávez. They are less ideological purists than change-seeking pragmatists, even if that means working within the existing political order.

As the protests increasingly devolve into rock and tear-gas exchanges between students and the police, it’s becoming clear that more than education policy is at stake: a nonviolent social revolution in which disaffected, politically savvy youth are trying to overthrow the mores of an older generation, one they feel is still tainted by the legacy of Pinochet. It is not just about policy reform, but also about changing the underlying timbers of Chilean society.

Chile is perhaps Latin America’s greatest success story. After decades of authoritarian rule, it has spent the last 20 years building a thriving economy with a renewed democratic culture and a booming, educated middle class. But it is also confronting a dangerous imbalance: While the liberalization of higher education has led to improvements in access, tuition has consistently outpaced inflation and now represents 40 percent of the average household’s income.

SANTIAGO, Chile — The Chilean courts have long been after Ray E. Davis, a former American Navy captain, accusing him of being involved in the murder of two Americans decades ago that inspired the award-winning 1982 film “Missing.”

But it turns out Mr. Davis may have been right under their noses all along, living in a nursing home in an upscale part of the Chilean capital. Any attempts to haul him into court may now be too late; documents show that he recently died here as well.

The death of Mr. Davis, former commander of the United States Military Group at the embassy in Santiago, would leave many unanswered questions about the possible roles played by United States officials in the killings of the Americans Charles Horman, 31, and Frank Teruggi, 24, while in military custody shortly after the 1973 military coup led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet. It was the Horman case that is depicted in the film “Missing” by the director Costa-Gavras.

Chile has created a new law protecting the waters along its 6,400km (4,000 mile) coastline.

The new legislation will increase the area of sea under Chilean state protection from 4.3% to 42.4 %, and protect marine life in around 1.4 million square kilometres of sea.

In September last year, Chile opened a huge marine park around Easter Island, which is home to species only found there.

Until the late 1800s, carménère had been one of the prime grapes blended in Bordeaux. But it was thought to have mostly died off in the late 19th century, during the great epidemic of phylloxera (a devastating, sap-sucking insect) that killed off so many vineyards in Fra

in Chile in the early 1990s, winemakers got a hunch that much of their merlot might actually be carménère, and that eventually was verified through DNA testing by French viticulturalist Jean-Michel Boursiquot. How carménère got from France to Chile, and thrived, no one knows for sure

He emphasized that businesses in Spain could now easily hire foreign nationals, bring in employees from overseas and train clients in Spain. “It’s a radical change,” he said.

about 3,800 foreigners, including investors, professionals and their family members, have received residency via the new immigration rules, according to the Economy Ministry, and more than €280 million has been invested, primarily in real estate. An additional €265 million has been pledged for business projects.

“The law is on the right track but needs measures that would make it a little more revolutionary,” he said, noting that the Chilean government’s popular Start-Up Chile program grants $34,000, along with one-year residency, to founders who relocate to that nation.

Archbishop Charles Scicluna, one of the Vatican's top prosecutors for sex abuse, and Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu will carry out investigations in Osorno over abuse by Chilean priest Father Fernando Karadima and his followers.

In the statement Thursday, the Vatican said the Pope will send a personally-written letter to the Chilean church, addressing the issue, and will also meet with Chilean abuse victims in Rome over the weekend. Francis said one of the church's "main faults and omissions" was in "not knowing how to listen to victims," according to the Catholic News Agency.

Allegations of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church stretch across multiple countries with large Catholic populations, including Austria, Brazil, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and perhaps most famously, the United States, where children accused more than 4,000 priests of sexual abuse between 1950 and 2002, according to a report compiled by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Protesters defied an emergency decree and confronted police in Chile's capital Monday, continuing violent clashes, arson and looting that have left at least 11 dead and led the president to say the country is "at war."

The unrest was triggered by a relatively minor increase in subway fares of less than 4% — but analysts have said the protests are fed by frustration from a long-building sense among many Chileans

Officials said it could take weeks or months to fully restore service.

From 1969 to 1977, Mr. Kissinger established himself as one of the most powerful functionaries in history. For a portion of that time, he was the only person ever to serve concurrently as national security adviser and secretary of state, two very different jobs that simultaneously made him responsible for shaping and carrying out American foreign policy.

the ease with which he wielded power made him a natural avatar for an American national security state that grew and gained momentum through the 20th century, like an organism that survives by enlarging itself.

In the White House, you’re atop an establishment that includes the world’s most powerful military and economy while holding the rights to a radical story: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

After around two decades of government support, China now boasts the world's largest market for e-buses, making up more than 95% of global stock. At the end of 2022, China's Ministry of Transport announced that more than three-quarters (77% or 542,600) of all urban buses in the country were "new energy vehicles", a term used by the Chinese government to include pure electric, plug-in hybrids, and fuel cell vehicles powered by alternative fuels such as hydrogen and methanol. In 2022, around 84% of the new energy bus fleet was pure electric.

. In 2015, 78% of Chinese urban buses still used diesel or gas, according to the World Resources Institute (WRI). The NGO now estimates that if China follows through on its stated decarbonisation policies, its road transport emissions will peak before 2030.

China is also home to some of the world's biggest electric bus manufacturers, such as Yutong, which has been raking up orders across China, Europe and Latin America.

The Idealist. The author’s revisionist thesis is that Kissinger was not in fact a realist, as he is so frequently portrayed

The ideals and deepest hopes of mankind? Kissinger and Nixon bombed Cambodia to pieces in a secret four-year campaign that annihilated some 100,000 civilians. “Anything that flies, on anything that moves,” were the parameters Kissinger gave to Alexander Haig. He countered African liberation movements by embracing the white supremacists of Rhodesia and South Africa, a policy known as the “Tar Baby option.” Kissinger facilitated the overthrow of the governments of Chile and Argentina by right-wing generals, and then worked tirelessly to deflect criticism of the new governments’ torture and murder. A declassified memorandum of his meeting with Augusto Pinochet in 1976 shows Kissinger in a particularly unflattering light: “We welcomed the overthrow of the Communist-inclined government here. We are not out to weaken your position.” In 1975 Kissinger and President Ford met with Indonesian strongman Suharto and authorized him to invade East Timor, which he promptly did the following day; another 100,000 lost their lives. “It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly,” Kissinger advised.

[A]rguments that focus on loss of life in strategically marginal countries—and there is no other way of describing Argentina, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Chile, Cyprus, and East Timor—must be tested against this question: how, in each case, would an alternative decision have affected U.S. relations with strategically important countries like the Soviet Union, China, and the major Western European powers?

Llamas and his colleagues figured out when the initial American settlers left Siberia via the land bridge over what is now the Bering strait. Their answer: roughly 23,000 years ago.

From there, it seemed that a group of about 2,000 child-bearing women (suggesting a population of some 10,000 people total) spent the next 6,000 years in genetic isolation — meaning that they weren’t intermarrying with other groups or branching off into separate ones. They just hunkered down together, and lived as their ancestors did.

That matches most scientists’s understanding of the early colonization of the Americas. In 20,000 BC, Alaska and pretty much all of Canada would have been encased in a vast ice sheet. Traversing it was impossible — nothing could survive the 3,000 mile trek across a barren glacier, let alone a motley crew of prehistoric humans.

Roma is based partly on memories of Cuarón’s Mexican barrio of yesteryear. Viewed from Chile, it comes across as an indictment of the hypocrisy and blindness of the elites that today govern this country and so many other countries of the region, including the United States.

The film reminds us of all the Cleos who dream of going to the US, fleeing from the sort of violence and exploitation subtly alluded to by Cuarón

Once they manage to make it across the US border, millions of avatars of Cleo – as invisible and neglected as in Chile – keep the nation safe and affluent and healthy. They clean and cook and care for the sick and the elderly and, of course, for the children. They do so with love; what other word is there to use?

"Like most women here, I was caught trafficking drugs," says Estefanía while folding paper into white paper doves.She is one of 4,000 women currently in jail in Chile. Estefanía (who prefers not to give her surname) has been in prison for two years and has three more left.

On Tuesday Pope Francis will meet some of the inmates as part of visit to Chile. It will be the first time he is going to a female penitentiary.

News of the Pope's visit have the lifted spirits among the 620 women serving time in San Joaquín."There is a lot of jealousy and petty fighting in the prison amongst the inmates," says Luisa, another prisoner. "We need an event where we can all get together and be at peace with one another and the Pope's visit will give us that," she says.

The United States is one of the richest, most technologically advanced nations in the history of humanity. And yet it accepts — proudly defends, even — a degree of social dysfunction that would be intolerable in any other rich society.

My first column pondered why Americans didn’t care more about the nation’s income gap, so much starker than that of any other advanced democracy. I suggested that my compatriots might come to a consensus that inequality is harmful when they realized how vast inequities could gum up the cogs of economic and social mobility

You can bet it has gone higher, given the bull run in the stock market since then. And Republicans just passed another round of tax cuts to offer a helping hand to the upper crust.

In Lebanon they are against a tax on WhatsApp and endemic corruption. In Chile, a hike in the metro fare and rampant inequality. In Hong Kong, an extradition bill and creeping authoritarianism. In Algeria, a fifth term for an ageing president and decades of military rule.

The protests raging today and in the past months on the streets of cities around the world have varying triggers. But the fuel is familiar: stagnating middle classes, stifled democracy and the bone-deep conviction that things can be different – even if the alternative is not always clear.

“The data shows that the amount of protests is increasing and is as high as the roaring 60s, and has been since about 2009,” says Jacquelien van Stekelenburg, a professor who studies social change and conflict at Vrije University in Amsterdam.

Bolivia is one of the poorest countries in South America, yet it has a single-digit homicide rate that is closer to those of the continent’s more developed countries, like Chile and Argentina. But the rate appears to be rising. Bolivia had 8.9 homicides per 100,000 people in 2010, up from 6.5 in 2005, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Still, the country is far safer than neighbors like Brazil, with 21 murders per 100,000, or Venezuela, with 45, according to the United Nations figures.

Donald Trump has begun carrying out his campaign pledges to undo America's trade ties -- starting Monday with executive action to pull the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

"Great thing for the American worker, what we just did," Trump told reporters

Trans-Pacific Partnership -- a 12-nation deal that had been negotiated under former President Barack Obama.