Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Peru’s foreign minister has resigned amid uproar over government officials being secretly vaccinated against coronavirus before the country recently received 1m doses for health workers facing a resurgence in the pandemic.
The president, Francisco Sagasti, confirmed that Elizabeth Astete had stepped down and told a local television channel that Peruvians should feel “outraged and angry about this situation that jeopardises the enormous effort of many Peruvians working on the frontline against Covid”.
Menem delivered short-lived economic stability in the 1990s and was known for his tabloid personal life
The flamboyant Argentine ex-President Carlos Menem died on Sunday at age 90 after long-term health problems, the country’s current president, Alberto Fernandez, announced in a tweet.
Menem led a colourful personal life while he pushed Argentina to an economic boom, but his two-term 1989-1999 presidency crumbled under the weight of corruption scandals and he spent years plotting an unlikely comeback.
The press conference in Wellington, held in response to the discovery of three community cases in Auckland, has now finished. As of 11.59PM tonight Auckland will be placed under tougher restrictions, at level three, while the rest of the country will be moved to level two restrictions. (Details of the alert levels can be found online here).
Ardern said she was asking the public “to be strong and to be kind”:
I know we all feel the same way when this happens, we all get that sense of - not again. But remember we have been here before and that means we know how to get out of this again, and that is together. If you know someone in Auckland reach out, please check on them. If you are in Auckland please check on your neighburs and ensure they are looked after and supported.
Dr Ashley Bloomfield, New Zealand’s director-general of health, said officials were working under the assumption that the new Auckland cases were one of the new variants of Covid-19. “Regardless of where people have come from, these are the common variants and we do know they are more transmissible,” he said.
Ardern said that the decision to introduce tougher restrictions was “not taken lightly”. However, the cost to the economy would be far greater, she said, if the country was slow to react.
Exclusive: US chains Walmart, Costco and Kroger selling Brazilian beef produced by JBS linked to destruction of Brazilian rainforest
Three of the biggest US grocery chains sell Brazilian beef produced by a controversial meat company linked to the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, an investigation has revealed.
Food giants Walmart, Costco and Kroger – which together totalled net sales worth more than half a trillion dollars last year – are selling Brazilian beef products imported from JBS, the world’s largest meat company, which has been linked to deforestation.
Robert D Kaplan’s outstanding book makes a strong case for US engagement based on human rights and helping refugees
What adjective should describe “the American” active in foreign policy? Graham Greene chose “quiet”, as his character harmed a country he did not understand. Eugene Burdick and William Lederer used “ugly”.
Robert D Kaplan, one of America’s most thoughtful chroniclers of foreign affairs, proposes “good” to describe Bob Gersony, who in “a frugal monastic existence that has been both obscure and extraordinary” has devoted his life to using the power and treasure of the US to serve others through humanitarian action.
The new chief of defence staff has apologised after his message of ‘diversity, inclusion and culture change’ missed the mark
Institutions around the world are keenly aware that it is important not only to increase diversity and inclusion – but to do so in a transparent and public way.
The death of Keyla Martínez, 26, is being treated as a murder – she is one of 29 women killed in the country so far this year
Keyla Martínez screamed for help from inside the police cell, but no one came to save her.
Martínez, a 26-year-old trainee nurse from La Esperanza, western Honduras, died in police custody last weekend after being detained for breaching a coronavirus curfew.
A sleepy town in the Brazilian countryside has found itself at the centre of a coronavirus-fuelled real estate rush after plans to vaccinate its entire adult population were unveiled.
The research institute Butantan announced last weekend that it would vaccinate the entire adult population of Serrana, a little-known backwater 200 miles north of São Paulo, as part of a study into herd immunity.
Ontario’s special investigations unit concludes gunfire was cause of one-year-old’s death in Kawartha Lakes
Nearly three months after an armed confrontation in rural Canada, a police watchdog has concluded that a police bullet killed a one-year-old baby when officers opened fire on his father’s truck.
In its first public finding on Thursday, Ontario’s special investigations unit said that a review of evidence indicated police gunfire was the cause of the child’s death on 26 November.
Medical teams working to immunise Brazil’s remote indigenous villages against the coronavirus have encountered fierce resistance in some communities where evangelical missionaries are stoking fears of the vaccine, say tribal leaders and advocates.
On the São Francisco reservation in the state of Amazonas, Jamamadi villagers sent health workers packing with bows and arrows when they visited by helicopter this month, said Claudemir da Silva, an Apurinã leader representing indigenous communities on the Purus river, a tributary of the Xingú.
Two-thirds of those killed worked to protect environmental, land and indigenous peoples’ rights, while those providing Covid relief also faced reprisals
At least 331 human rights defenders promoting social, environmental, racial and gender justice in 25 countries were murdered in 2020, with scores more beaten, detained and criminalised because of their work, analysis has found.
Latin America, the most dangerous continent in the world in which to protect environmental, land and human rights, accounted for more than three-quarters of all the murders of human rights defenders in 2020. In Colombia, where activists are routinely targeted by armed groups despite a 2016 peace deal, 177 such deaths were recorded, more than half of the global total. The Philippines was the second deadliest country with 25 murders, followed by Honduras, Mexico, Afghanistan, Brazil and Guatemala.
Two men and a woman swam to Anguilla Cay after boat capsized
Unclear if Cubans were trying to reach United States
The US Coast Guard rescued three Cuban nationals stranded on a desert island for roughly five weeks, after officers saw the group waving a makeshift flag to gain their attention.
The group, including two men and a woman, had been living on an uninhabited Bahamian island, Anguilla Cay, for 33 days after their boat capsized.
Growing opposition to the lifting of mining protections in Alberta has forced the Canadian province to backtrack
To the east of the Bluebird Valley ranch, the grasslands of the Canadian prairies extend beyond the horizon. To the west, the fields rise, and then sharply erupt into the Rocky Mountains.
Cattle graze the 3,600 hectares (9,000 acres) of the Bluebird, an hour south-west of Calgary, and on hot summer days rancher Jolayne Gardner’s children jump into the chilly waters of a creek that threads the rolling hills.
Government faces accusations it is taking Covid-fighting supplies intended for developing countries
Justin Trudeau is facing growing pressure to speed up Canada’s sluggish distribution of the coronavirus vaccine, as the country fends off accusations that it is taking supplies of the drug meant for developing countries.
Ice accused of sending ‘defenseless babies into the burning house’ as deportations of 72 carried out in apparent breach of Biden order
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) deported at least 72 people to Haiti on Monday, including a two-month-old baby and 21 other children, in an apparent flagrant breach of the Biden administration’s orders only to remove suspected terrorists and potentially dangerous convicted felons.
The children were deported to Haiti on Monday on two flights chartered by Ice from Laredo, Texas to the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince. The removals sent vulnerable infants back to Haiti as it is being roiled by major political unrest.
Health ministry sends team to investigate ‘concerning’ virus cases in Yanomami territory near Venezuelan border
Ten Yanomami children died from Covid-19 in January, fueling fears over the disproportionate impact the coronavirus is having on vulnerable indigenous communities in the Brazilian Amazon.
“It is very concerning that so many kids died in less than one month,” said Júnior Hekurari Yanomami, the head of Condisi-YY, an indigenous health council.
Pace for vaccinations has slowed as government website to register crashes repeatedly and Covid death toll is third highest
Rodolfo spent hour after aggravating hour trying to register his elderly mother for a Covid-19 vaccination through a Mexican government website, only for the system to crash repeatedly.
“I spent three days fighting with the website,” he said. “My mom would have been unable to do it without me.”
Formosa has the country’s lowest Covid death rate – but critics say that has been achieved by ‘flagrant, grave’ rights violations
The Argentinian province with the lowest Covid death rate in the country has been accused by human rights groups of forcibly quarantining thousands of people under inhuman conditions to achieve that result.
A stone figure found on a beach was probably by a Lekwungen people artefact, the Royal British Columbia Museum said, but Ray Boudreau begged to differ
Early one morning last summer, walkers on a beach in western Canada spotted an oblong stone figure resting on the sand.
Weighing nearly 100kg, it bore a face with exaggerated features – a bulging eye, contorted nose and lips – and was covered in a thin layer of seaweed and algae.