A sweeping blackout hit Chile on Tuesday, stranding commuters, knocking out traffic lights, paralyzing countless businesses and leaving millions of people across the South American nation without power. The National Electrical Coordinator, Chile’s grid operator, said a disruption had occurred in a high-voltage transmission line that carries power from the Atacama Desert of northern Chile to the capital of Santiago in the country’s central valley. It did not say what actually caused the disruption that pushed much of the country’s power grid into shutdown, from the northernmost Chilean port of Arica to the southern Los Lagos agricultural region. Chile’s national...

South Korea’s fertility rate rose in 2024 for the first time in nine years, supported by an increase in marriages, preliminary data showed Wednesday, in a sign that the country’s demographic crisis might have turned a corner. The country’s fertility rate, the average number of babies a woman is expected to have during her reproductive life, stood at 0.75 in 2024, according to Statistics Korea. In 2023, the birth rate fell for the eighth consecutive year to 0.72, the lowest in the world, from 1.24 in 2015, raising concerns over the economic shock to society from such a rapid pace. Since 2018, South Korea has been the only member of the Organisation...

More than 50 people have died in recent weeks in two clusters of illness cases with the unknown cause being investigated in northwest Democratic Republic of Congo, the World Health Organization said Tuesday. As of Feb. 16, there have been 431 cases and 53 deaths in two outbreaks in remote villages in separate health zones in Equateur province, the WHO said in a bulletin. The country is roughly the size of Western Europe. “The outbreaks, which have seen cases rise rapidly within days, pose a significant public health threat. The exact cause remains unknown,” WHO spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic told a briefing Tuesday. The villages have limited surveillance capacity and health...

Germany’s mainstream conservatives led by Friedrich Merz won the country’s national election, ensuring that Ukraine has an even stronger supporter in the European Union’s largest country and creating hopes for renewal in an economic powerhouse that has been badly battered in recent years. The far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) surged to become the second-largest political force, gaining from a backlash against the high numbers of migrants and refugees the nation has absorbed over the past decade and a string of extremist attacks that has shaken its sense of security. Merz, who is promising to unite Europe in the face of challenges from both Russia and the United States, is expected...