Politics

Chileans on Sunday rejected a new constitution that would have pulled the country to the right, likely ending a turbulent four-year process to replace their national charter with little to show for it.Nearly 56 percent of voters rejected the proposed text, with all of the votes counted.It is the second time in 16 months that Chile, the South American nation of 19 million, has rebuffed a proposed constitution — the other was written by the left — showing how deeply divided the nation remains over a set of rules and principles to govern it even after four years of debate.That debate began in 2019 after enormous protests prompted a national referendum in which four out of five Chileans voted to scrap their constitution, a heavily amended version of the 1980 text adopted under the bloody milit...

More than 60 migrants drowned in a shipwreck off Libya, an international migrant agency said on Saturday, another chapter in the unrelenting toll in the Mediterranean Sea as people in Africa flee famine, conflict and other upheavals for distant shores.The International Organization for Migration in Libya said in a post on the social platform X that women and children were among the 61 migrants who died. The Libyan government did not immediately comment on the agency’s report.The boat had set off from the Libyan city of Zwara with about 86 people, the agency said, citing survivors of the shipwreck. It was unclear exactly when it began its voyage. The I.O.M. said “the central Mediterranean continues to be one of the world’s most dangerous migration routes.”Earlier this year, at least 73 migr...

Brazilian officials served up an array of plans and figures at the recent COP28 climate summit in Dubai, presenting itself as a world leader, on track to protect its forests and the people who live there.But on Thursday, Brazil’s Congress approved a law that threatens Indigenous people’s rights to most of the land they inhabit or claim, potentially opening vast territories to deforestation, farming and mining.The new law requires that Indigenous people must provide concrete evidence that they occupied the land they claim on Oct. 5, 1988, when the country’s current Constitution was enacted — a requirement that many of them have little or no hope of meeting.Under the new rule, not only can Indigenous land claims currently going through the legal process be thrown out for lacking such documen...

The main reason Israel’s heavy bombardment of Gaza for nine weeks has not pushed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into Egypt is that country’s heavily fortified border and Cairo’s ironclad determination to keep it closed.But pressure is building. Israel has been pushing Gaza’s 2.2 million residents relentlessly south as its forces seek to destroy Hamas’s military wing and its infrastructure, and about 85 percent of the population has been displaced. Hundreds of thousands of displaced people are now living in squalid, cramped conditions in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost region, right along the border with Egypt.The bleak conditions have increased fears that the border with Egypt could be breached, allowing large number of Palestinian refugees to enter Egypt, potentially destabilizing an Ar...