Coronavirus live news: no sign of infection slowing across Americas; UK records 110 new deaths

Some central American nations seeing highest weekly increase in cases; official UK death toll now stands at 45,422

The Nobel Foundation, which manages the Nobel Prizes, on Tuesday cancelled its traditional December banquet because of the coronavirus pandemic and said the award ceremonies would be held in “new forms”, AFP reports.

This is the first time since 1956 that the lavish banquet has been cancelled, according to the foundation. The event traditionally marks the end of the so-called Nobel Week, when the year’s prize-winners are invited to Swedish capital Stockholm for talks and the award ceremony.

Joe Biden, in a scathing speech in his campaign to become the next US president, said Donald Trump had ‘quit’ on US citizens and did not care about America.

In a speech on his plan for the economy, in which he promised to expand access to preschool for working families, directly linking the need for affordable childcare to America’s economic recovery, Biden said Trump was not taking the public health crisis seriously:

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Coronavirus live news: EU agrees Covid-19 recovery plan, WHO warns over Africa spread

€750bn EU Covid-19 recovery plan agreed in early morning talks; Trump to resume daily briefings, backs face masks as ‘patriotic’; two Brazil ministers test positive. Follow latest updates

Passengers of China-bound flights must provide negative Covid-19 test results before boarding, China’s aviation authority has said.

The Chinese government has sought to reduce the risk of imported coronavirus cases as international travel resumes.

The €750bn deal is the “most important economic decision since the introduction of the euro,” according to the EU’s economy commissioner Paolo Gentiloni, who said the most difficult challenge for the commission starts now.

Il vertice infinito è finito con un’intesa. #NextGenerationEU è la più importante decisione economica dall’introduzione dell’euro. Per la Commissione, che ha proposto il piano, comincia la sfida più difficile. #21luglio L’Europa è più forte delle proprie divisioni.

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Coronavirus sheds light on Canada’s poor treatment of migrant workers

Covid-19 has surged on farms that employ foreign workers, aided by a lack of legal protections and shoddy oversight

Early this year, months before the coronavirus outbreak had been declared a pandemic, Erika Zavala, 35, and Jesus Molina, 36, arrived in Canada. With few opportunities in Mexico, the couple had found jobs under a federal program for seasonal farm workers, and planned to send money home to their family.

Related: Canada: three killed in glacier tour bus crash in Alberta

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Canada: three killed in glacier tour bus crash in Alberta

The bus was on the steep road to the famed Athabasca glacier when it lost control and rolled

A glacier tour bus rolled over in Canada’s southern province of Alberta, killing three people and injuring several, according to reports.

A sightseeing bus carrying 27 passengers overturned en route to the glacier near the Columbia Icefield in Alberta’s Jasper National Park, according to a report by CBC.

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Canada police investigate vandalism of monument to Nazi troops as hate crime

  • Anti-hate network chair: ‘I’m frankly dumbfounded’
  • Cenotaph commemorating Ukrainian SS division graffitied

Graffiti spray-painted on a monument to Nazi soldiers in a small Canadian city is being investigated by police as a hate crime – a move that has prompted disbelief among human rights advocates.

Around 21 June, the words “Nazi war monument” were spray-painted on to a cenotaph commemorating soldiers in the 14th SS Division in an Ontario cemetery, the Ottawa Citizen reported.

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Desperate Bolivians seek out toxic bleach falsely touted as Covid-19 cure

  • Hard-hit city of Cochabamba endorses chlorine dioxide
  • Health ministry warns against use as 10 people poisoned

Long lines form every morning in one of the Bolivian cities hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic as desperate people wait to buy small bottles of chlorine dioxide, a toxic bleaching agent that has been falsely touted as a cure for Covid-19 and myriad other diseases.

The rush in the city of Cochabamba to buy a disinfectant known to cause harm to those who ingest it comes even after the Bolivian health ministry warned of its dangers and said at least five people had been poisoned after taking chlorine dioxide in La Paz, the capital.

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Ex-officer accused of human rights crimes in Argentina found living in Berlin

Luis Esteban Kyburg, who allegedly oversaw deaths of at least 150 during dictatorship, escaped to Germany in 2013

A former naval officer, charged with human rights crimes during Argentina’s bloody 1976-83 dictatorship, has been discovered living in Berlin – despite being the subject of an international arrest warrant.

Luis Esteban Kyburg, the alleged commander of an elite navy unit believed responsible for the deaths of at least 150 people, was filmed by the Bild tabloidwalking down the streets of Berlin’s trendy Friedrichshain district .

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Paraguay: indigenous girl’s murder fires public outrage at child sexual abuse

The conservative South American country has high levels of sexual violence against minors and a shocking child pregnancy rate

Human rights activists in Paraguay have led a wave of fierce public indignation after a series of alarming cases in which sexual violence towards young girls has culminated in murder and child pregnancy.

The highly conservative South American country has long struggled with high levels of sexual violence towards children.

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Protests predicted to surge globally as Covid-19 drives unrest

New analysis finds economic shock of pandemic coupled with existing grievances makes widespread public uprisings ‘inevitable’

The economic impact of coronavirus is a “tinderbox” that will drive civil unrest and instability in developing countries in the second half of 2020, according to new analysis.

Highest risk countries facing a “perfect storm”, where protests driven by the pandemic’s economic fallout are likely to inflame existing grievances, include Nigeria, Iran, Bangladesh, Algeria and Ethiopia, the analysis said.

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Good Manners review – superbly strange nanny horror

São Paulo is transformed into a spooky fairytale landscape in this elegant, unsettling tale of a pregnant woman and her prospective employee

There’s an enjoyably inscrutable performance at the heart of this Brazilian fairytale for grownups. Clara (Isabél Zuaa), an unsmiling mystery women, arrives at the luxurious São Paulo apartment of pregnant Ana (Marjorie Estiano), to be interviewed for the position of nanny. But is that really the role on offer? And is Clara an entirely honest applicant?

The first third of this two-hour-plus film keeps us wondering. It’s clear that something is off between the women, but impossible to determine where the balance of power lies. Is this a Rosemary’s Baby-style horror about satanic foetus worship? A Parasite-like study of the subversive intimacy between domestic servant and employer? Or some unholy combination of the two? Then, with all the sprightly mischief of one of Ana’s country-music workout videos, the plot dances off again, in an entirely different direction.

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Inexorable spread of coronavirus snuffs out Mexico’s ‘municipalities of hope’

More than 300 towns free of Covid-19 were allowed to reopen in May to mitigate the pandemic’s economic cost. With cases surging, most have been forced to close

As the coronavirus pandemic advances across Mexico, leaving thousands dead in its wake, Tepango de Rodríguez has – so far – remained untouched.

The town of about 4,000 people sits high in the mountains of the Sierra Norte in Puebla state, and was quick to apply strict preventive measures, closing its food market and installing health checkpoints.

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Colombian cartels killing those who don’t obey their Covid-19 lockdowns

Human Rights Watch calls on government to do more to protect civilians after at least eight murdered by armed groups

Drug cartels and rebel groups are imposing their own bloody coronavirus lockdowns across Colombia – and killing those who do not obey, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch (HRW).

At least eight civilians have been murdered by the armed groups, some of them holdovers from Colombia’s half-century civil war, which are using Whatsapp chats and pamphlets to warn citizens of the lockdowns in the rural areas where they operate.

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Killing nearly 500 wolves in a year failed to protect endangered caribou – study

  • British Columbia performed cull as part of caribou recovery plan
  • Focus on wolves ignores complex web of factors, researchers say

With their ability to glide silently through snow drifts and vanish into forests, mountain caribou have been called the grey ghosts of western Canada’s alpine region.

But in recent years, a steep drop in their population has raised fears the knobby-kneed ungulates may disappear forever.

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Covid-19 restrictions are shattering Argentina’s short-lived political truce

Deep-seated rivalries resurfacing amid months of lockdowns

Until recently, Argentina’s protracted coronavirus lockdown was marked by an unusual degree of harmony, as the country’s perennially squabbling political factions came together to contain the spread of Covid-19.

But after nearly four months of consecutive lockdowns, rifts have begun to appear in that uneasy truce amid growing demands for a relaxation of quarantine measures.

With new cases spiralling out of control, the old political rivalries between followers and detractors of the late three-time president Juan Perón, and his wife Evita, has returned to the fore.

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Andean condor can fly for 100 miles without flapping wings

World’s largest soaring bird flaps wings only 1% of time in flight, study shows

A study sheds light on just how efficiently the world’s largest soaring bird rides air currents to stay aloft for hours without flapping its wings.

The Andean condor has a 3-metre (10ft) wingspan and weighs up to 15kg (33lbs), making it the world’s heaviest soaring bird.

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Trudeau apologizes over contract for charity with ties to his family

Canadian prime minister faces third conflict-of-interest investigation in just over three years

Justin Trudeau has apologized for taking part in a cabinet decision to use a charity he and his family have worked with to administer a C$900m (US$663m) student grant program.

The Canadian prime minister is facing a third investigation for conflict of interest in a little over three years after his government tapped WE Charity Canada on 25 June to manage the program. The charity backed out about a week after the contract was announced.

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The Guardian view on Covid-19 worldwide: on the march

Infections are accelerating in largely untouched countries and those which hoped they had come through the worst. But there is hope

“Most of the world sort of sat by and watched with almost a sense of detachment and bemusement,” said Helen Clark, appointed to investigate the World Health Organization’s handling of the pandemic. The former New Zealand prime minister was describing the early weeks of the outbreak, and the sense that coronavirus was a problem “over there”. The failure to recognise our interconnection created complacency even as the death toll rose.

It took three months for the first million people to fall sick – but only a week to record the last million of the nearly 13 million cases now reported worldwide. As England emerges from lockdown at an unwary pace, Covid-19 is accelerating globally. The WHO has reported a record surge of a quarter of a million cases in a single day. The death toll is over half a million people and rising fast.

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Trump claims US would be ‘inundated’ with Covid-19 were it not for border wall

President made remark hours after his Mexican counterpart thanked him for not bringing subject up in public

Donald Trump has claimed that the US would be “inundated” with coronavirus, were it not for new sections of the border wall – mere hours after his Mexican counterpart thanked him for avoiding the thorny subject during a summit meeting this week.

Related: Amlo unscathed after Trump meeting but snags cameo role in US election

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Justin Trudeau faces calls for criminal investigation into family’s charity links

WE Charity, which was awarded multimillion-dollar government contract, paid PM’s mother and wife for appearances at events

Political rivals of Justin Trudeau are calling for a criminal investigation after it emerged that members of his family were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by a charity to which his government recently awarded a substantial contract.

The multinational WE Charity confirmed on Thursday that Trudeau’s wife, mother and brother had been paid for appearances at charity events over the years. Margaret Trudeau, the prime minister’s mother and wife of the former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, has been paid nearly C$250,000 (US$182,000) since 2016 — far more than any other family member.

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Chile’s indigenous communities face new challenges amid pandemic

Country’s indigenous groups count for 12.8% of population but government response has been criticised as ‘monocultural’

Away from the grey tower blocks and sprawling suburbs of Chile’s capital, Santiago, the country’s indigenous communities are facing new challenges during the pandemic.

The country’s 10 indigenous groups account for 12.8% of the population, scattered from the southernmost tip of Patagonia to the dry plains of the Atacama Desert in the north, and remote Easter Island in the South Pacific.

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