Mexico's supreme court on Tuesday declared that it is unconstitutional to penalize abortion, with magistrates voting unanimously to decriminalize the procedure in the country.
Why it matters: Mexico — now the fifth Latin American country to decriminalize abortion — is now the most populous country in the region to allow the practice, the Washington Post reports. The country has the world's second-largest Catholic population, after Brazil.
A UN atomic watchdog said Tuesday that Iran continues to bolster its stockpile of highly enriched uranium despite exceeding the cap set under a 2015 accord meant to restrict the government's nuclear arsenal, Reuters reports.
The pope, ecumenical patriarch and archbishop of Canterbury appealed to world leaders to address the "current climate crisis" to preserve the planet for future generations in an unprecedented joint statement on Tuesday.
Why it matters: The call to action comes ahead of the United Nations climate talks scheduled for November in Glasgow, Scotland. Pope Francis is expected to attend the talks, according to John Kerry, the U.S. special presidential envoy for climate change.
El Salvador’s law making bitcoin legal tender goes into effect today, despite skepticism that the decentralized digital coin can actually work as a country’s currency.
Why it matters: The Central American nation is the first to establish bitcoin as a formal currency.
A Vietnamese man on Monday was jailed for five years for breaking the country's COVID-19 quarantine rules and spreading the virus, Reuters reports.
Driving the news: Le Van Tri, 28, who was convicted of "spreading dangerous infectious diseases," breached the 21-day quarantine regulations after traveling back to Ca Mau from Ho Chi Minh City, the state-run Vietnam News Agency reported, per Reuters.
The Taliban announced the first members of a caretaker Afghan government on Tuesday, naming Mullah Muhammad Hassan Akhund as acting prime minister and Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar as acting deputy prime minister.
Why it matters: Many have been waiting to learn the makeup and policies of the new Islamist government before deciding whether to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan.
Green groups say a critical UN climate summit hosted by the U.K. in Scotland this fall should be delayed because COVID restrictions and costs will hinder poor and vulnerable nations' participation.
Driving the news: The Climate Action Network, an umbrella group of climate NGOs, cited lack of vaccine access, rising travel and hotel costs and other factors.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday denied reports that the Taliban is preventing Americans from flying out of Afghanistan from the Mazar-e-Sharif airport, according to Reuters.
Why it matters: The Taliban has been preventing the departure of at least four chartered evacuation flights from the airport for multiple days for unknown reasons.
President Biden is struggling with a Gordian knot on immigration that there's little he can do to untangle: The nation's broken system is making it harder than it should be to manage the Afghan refugee crisis — and the Afghan refugee crisis is making it harder to fix the system.
By the numbers: If the military’s task of adding 50,000 spots to bases by mid-September to temporarily house Afghan refugees sounds like a lot, consider that there have been more than 1.2 million undocumented border crossings since last October.
The goal of the COVID-19 vaccines was always to reduce death and severe illness. Even with the Delta variant, the vaccines are still doing that. But that message is getting lost, infectious disease and vaccine experts tell Axios.
The big picture: Two-thirds of the world isn't fully vaccinated. To return to some semblance of "normal," health authorities need to emphasize how the vaccines aren't failing and drastically increase global vaccine production.
El Salvador bought its first 400 bitcoins on Monday, and President Nayib Bukele pledged to buy "a lot more" ahead of adopting the cryptocurrency as legal tender.
Why it matters: El Salvador will become on Tuesday the first country to formally adopt bitcoin — marking the "biggest test" the digital currency has faced in its 12-year history, per Bloomberg.
U.S. officials helped an American citizen and family members escape Afghanistan via an "overland route" to a nearby country, AP first reported Monday.
Why it matters: This is the first report of an evacuation of a U.S. citizen across a land border since the full U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan on Aug. 31.
