Las Notis is a daily news column that gets you up to speed on the political, media + other going ons in Latin America and the diaspora—all in one quick digest.
- Here’s your glimpse at what’s going on today:
- Vaccine eligibility is slowly expanding in states across the country. In Alaska, anyone 16 or older living in the state became eligible on Tuesday (March 9), while New Yorkers aged 60 and up became eligible on Wednesday (March 10). Texans will also allow people 50 and up to receive the vaccine next week. [NYT]
- According to new data taken from real-world evidence and published this week, the Pfizer-BioNtech’s coronavirus vaccine offers more protection than previously thought. The effectiveness in preventing severe and critical disease and death from COVID-19 is now thought to be at least 97%. [CBS News]
- Puerto Rico has reopened some schools this week, despite concerns from parents on the island. About 95 of the U.S. territory’s 858 public schools were given the green light to reopen because they were located in municipalities with low COVID cases and met requirements issued by Puerto Rico’s Health Department. [AP]
- Brazil is still suffering from high COVID-19 rates and this week exceeded 2,000 COVID-related deaths in a single day for the first time. Brazil has the second-highest death toll behind the U.S. and transmission has been exacerbated by several more contagious variants. President Jair Bolsonaro has dismissed the health crisis and told people earlier this week to “stop whining.” [BBC]
- Mexico is one step closer to legalizing recreational marijuana. The government’s lower house approved a bill to allow the recreational use of cannabis and it will now go to the Senate for a final vote. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s party is confident the bill will pass, which would make Mexico among the largest regulated markets for cannabis in the world. [BBC]
- Mexican publication El Universal announced that Yalitza Aparicio will star in Presences, a horror movie directed by Luis Mandokithat follows a man who decides to move to a cabin in the woods after his wife dies. The film marks one of Aparicio’s major roles since Roma. [AV Club]
- Shakira tweeted a photo on Wednesday (March 10) that shows her singing in a recording studio and captioned it, “Cooking something.” Fans instantly got excited that the photo means she’s started working on her 12th studio album, which would follow her 2017 effort El Dorado. [Billboard Latin]