Pamela Cruz. Peninsula 360 Press [P360P].
In historic session, Argentina legalizes abortion
With 38 votes in favor, 29 against and one abstention, Argentina's Senate took a historic step and passed a law to legalize abortion on Wednesday, after decades of struggle by women's movements seeking to guarantee this right in the country.
The law establishes that women and other persons with gender identities with gestational capacity have the right to access voluntary termination of pregnancy until the 14th week of the gestational process. After this period, abortion is only legal in cases of rape or risk to the pregnant woman.
President Alberto Fernandez said on Twitter that "safe, legal and free abortion is law. To this I committed myself, that it was in the days of election campaign. Today we are a better society that expands the rights of women and guarantees public health".
Thus, Argentina joins a list that includes nations and other regions of Latin America such as Uruguay, Cuba, Mexico City, the state of Oaxaca - also in Mexico - the West Indies and French Guiana, where abortion is not criminalized.
Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Costa Rica and Mexico begin vaccination against COVID-19
Countries such as Argentina, Mexico, Chile and Costa Rica began their mass vaccination programs against COVID-19 during the week, in a process that is expected to take all of next year, and even extend into early 2020.
Mexico received a first batch of 3,000 vaccines last Thursday, out of a total of 34 million, while Chile received its first 10,000 doses out of 10 million, and Costa Rica received almost 10,000 units, all from Pfizer-BioNTech. Argentina received 300,000 doses of the Sputnik V vaccine.
Cuba closes doors to U.S. and Mexican travelers because of COVID-19
The Cuban government announced new measures to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, including limiting entry to travelers from the United States, Mexico, Panama, the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas and Haiti, beginning January 1, 2021.
This measure is taken after the island recorded a peak in recent days, whose source of infection was mainly abroad, and although the number of infections is relatively low, with just over 11 thousand cases among the more than 11.2 million inhabitants.
Ecuador starts electoral process
Ecuador officially starts on December 31 its electoral process, where a record 16 candidates seek to succeed the current President LenÃn Moreno, during the general elections to be held on February 7, 2021.
In an environment hit by the AIDS-19 pandemic, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) estimates that the region's economies will shrink by an average of 7.7 percent by 2020 - the largest in 120 years - which will undoubtedly set the tone for elections in Latin America, where Peru and Chile will also elect presidents in 2021.
Mexico is the third most visited place in the world
Mexico ranked as the third most visited country in the world and the fourteenth in terms of foreign exchange earnings from tourism, according to preliminary data from the World Tourism Barometer of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), corresponding to December 2020.
The above, due to the falls that all countries in the world have presented as a result of the global crisis that has caused the pandemic by COVID-19, before which many countries had to close their borders -except Mexico-, hitting the sector.
