
Time Magazine readers have voted Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro as Personality of the Year 2021, it was announced Tuesday. However, the publication has the final say on who gets the traditional award, granted to whoever has had the greatest influence “for better or worse.”

Australia will not be sending government officials to attend the Winter Olympics Games in China, joining the United States diplomatic boycott. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said that Beijing had not addressed concerns raised by Canberra on several fronts, particularly human rights abuses.

Brazil's Beach Monitoring Project, PMP, reports that more than 6,700 penguins have arrived mainly on Santa Catarina and Parana states coast during the migration season this year, which represents a 20% per cent increase in the number of marine birds coming over last year.

German citizens who refuse to get vaccinated against COVID-19 or put up to harsh mobility restrictions have fled their country and sought shelter in a community within Paraguay, it was reported.

A former Colombian Armed Revolutionary Forces (FARC) combatant who took part in the 2016 peace negotiations with the Government of then-President Juan Manuel Santos has been killed in Venezuela, it was reported.

Chile's Congress Tuesday passed the bill making it the eighth Latin American country where same-sex marriage is legal, after Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Uruguay, Ecuador, Costa Rica, and in several states of Mexico.

Health ministers of all Argentine jurisdictions gathered under the Federal Council known as COFESA, Monday announced the guidelines for a nationwide Health Pass had been agreed upon and that its final details were to be specified shortly.

Uruguay's Tourism Minister Tabaré Viera said over the weekend that his country's “land, air and sea borders must be open” for visitors.

World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala urged delegation heads to redouble their efforts to bridge differences on the ongoing discussions on curbing harmful fisheries subsidies by the end of February 2022. Discussions were suspended because of the Covid-19 Omicron variant

By Gwynne Dyer – The new Omicron variant of the Covid-19 virus was discovered last week by scientists in South Africa and Botswana, the only countries in southern Africa that have the skills and resources to detect a new variant.