News
Hard Numbers: Chinese jabs for Mexico, EU drops fugitive Catalans’ immunity, US protects Venezuelans, Philippine red-tagging
Gabriella Turrisi
36 million: Mexico, with the world's third highest COVID death toll, has ordered a total of 36 million doses of Chinese-made vaccines — a third of which are from the still-unapproved Sinopharm shot — amid growing uncertainty over the efficacy of all jabs from China. The country's lackluster vaccine rollout has been heavily criticized, and the US recently turned down a request from the Mexican president to send vaccines to its southern neighbor for the time being.
400: The European Parliament has voted to lift the immunity of Carles Puigdemont, the former president of the Spanish autonomous region of Catalonia, and two other former Catalan MEPs accused by Spain of sedition for unilaterally declaring Catalan independence in October 2017. The move to strip Puigdemont's immunity, which strengthens Spain's legal case to extradite all three fugitive Catalan politicians from Belgium, was supported by EU 400 lawmakers and rejected by 248, with 45 abstentions.
320,000: The Biden administration has granted temporary protected status to around 320,000 undocumented Venezuelans in the US. It's yet another reversal of former president Trump's immigration policies, and follows Colombia's recent decision to regularize a whopping 1.7 million Venezuelan migrants that fled the country's political, economic and humanitarian crisis.
9: Philippine police killed nine suspected communist insurgents over the weekend as part of hardline President Rodrigo Duterte's fresh crackdown on the rebel New People's Army. Duterte — who recently encouraged cops to shoot to kill armed guerrillas — has denied claims by human rights groups that he is "red-tagging" political opponents as terrorists to justify extrajudicial executions.South Sudan is accusing neighboring Sudan of launching a drone strike that killed at least 73 people at a market in Abyei, a disputed, oil-rich region of roughly 4,000 square miles claimed by both countries.
In this Quick Take, Ian Bremmer says President Donald Trump's approach to the war in Ukraine is putting more pressure on President Volodymyr Zelensky and raising concerns among European allies about the future of NATO.
Ongoing student protests in France descended into looting and riots over the weekend as more than half a million people took to the streets across the country.
After his father was killed in a plane crash in 2023, Pavel was tapped to lead Wagner.