Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Prime minister condemns Beijing for linking its 2018 detention of two Canadians with arrest of Huawei executive
Beijing’s linking of its detention of two Canadians in China to the arrest of a Chinese executive in Vancouver shows it does not understand the meaning of an independent judiciary, Justin Trudeau said on Thursday.
Father ‘Jorge 40’ terrorised civilians along Caribbean coast
The son of a notorious death squad leader has been appointed to run the Colombian government’s programmes for victims of the country’s long civil war, prompting fury among survivors.
Jorge Rodrigo Tovar was this week put in charge of a scheme for compensating victims of the conflict – many of whom were terrorised by his father, Rodrigo Tovar, better known in Colombia as “Jorge 40”.
Brazil is one of the world’s most dangerous countries for transgender people. For trans sex workers, the pandemic has intensified the risk
All photographs by Ian Cheibub
Social distancing is keeping people off the streets of central Rio de Janeiro. And that has created serious challenges for its trans sex workers, who have seen their clientele, and their income, melt away.
“You can see what it’s like: empty streets, shops closed, the fallen economy ” says Elba Tavares, 44, from Paraíba state in north-east Brazil. “I am no longer in that rush of prostitution but yes, I sell my body.” But, she says: “There are very few customers.”
Peru was one of the first Latin America countries to go into lockdown – but the jump in new cases is undeniable, and experts say it’s due to people’s behaviour
Here is more on US president Donald Trump calling for an in-person G7 meeting.
Donald Trump has said he may seek to revive a face-to-face meeting of Group of Seven leaders near Washington, after earlier canceling the gathering due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Authorities say they have evidence tying Toronto attack in which a woman was murdered and two others injured to ‘incel’ movement
Police in Canada are treating a machete attack in which a woman was murdered and two others injured as an act of terrorism, after discovering evidence suggesting that it was motivated by violent misogyny.
The move is thought to be the first time that terrorism charges have been brought in a case connected to the so-called “incel” ideology.
Twenty one more people have died from Covid-19 in the Netherlands, the lowest number reported on a Tuesday since March, taking the total death toll in the country to 5,715.
According to the latest update from the Dutch national institute for public health and the environment (RIVM), a further 108 people tested positive for the virus, the lowest number of new daily infections recorded since 10 March. So far, 44,249 confirmed cases have been reported.
The number of people who have fallen ill due to the novel coronavirus in the Netherlands has been decreasing since the end of March. This is apparent from the decrease in the number of newly reported patients, hospital admissions, ICU admissions and deaths per day.
The number of people who visit their GP because of symptoms that are consistent with the coronavirus is still decreasing. This is evident from figures provided by the Netherlands Institute for Health Services Research (Nivel).
The number of confirmed cases of coronavirus across Africa has passed 86,000, the regional office of the World Health Organization has said.
Unlike in Europe, a widespread outbreak seems yet to happen in Africa, a continent of 1.3 billion people. There had been fears that its comparatively limited healthcare infrastructure would be overrun by patients with Covid-19.
Over 86,000 confirmed #COVID19 cases on the African continent - with more than 33,000 recoveries & 2,700 deaths. View country figures & more with the WHO African Region COVID-19 Dashboard: https://t.co/V0fkK8dYTgpic.twitter.com/t8kU48MI7R
The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, greeted coronavirus lockdown protesters after his country's total number of Covid-19 cases surpassed 230,000. Bolsonaro, a rightwing populist leader, has been critical of physical distancing and lockdown measures implemented by Brazil's state governments. 'Unemployment, hunger and misery will be the future of those who support the tyranny of total isolation,' Bolsonaro tweeted
Daily death tolls fall in UK, Spain and Italy; South Africa reports highest daily increase; global infections pass 4.7 million. Follow the latest updates
Despite strong efforts, Taiwan did not get invited to this week’s meeting of a key World Health Organization body due to Chinese pressure, its foreign minister has said, adding they had agreed to put the issue off until later this year.
Non-WHO member Taiwan had been lobbying to take part in the World Health Assembly, which opens later on Monday.
Despite all our efforts and an unprecedented level of international support, Taiwan has not received an invitation to take part.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs expresses deep regret and strong dissatisfaction that the World Health Organization Secretariat has yielded to pressure from the Chinese government and continues to disregard the right to health of the 23 million people of Taiwan.
Understandably, countries want to use the limited time available to concentrate on ways of containing the pandemic.
For this reason, like-minded nations and diplomatic allies have suggested that the proposal be taken up later this year when meetings will be conducted normally, to make sure there will be full and open discussion.
Hungary’s government will submit a proposal to parliament on 26 May to end its special coronavirus emergency powers, hirtv.hu quoted prime minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff as saying late on Sunday.
Gergely Gulyas said parliament would take a few days to pass the bill, which will end the much-criticised emergency powers by early June.
Covid-19 quarantine has not stopped police from storming favelas, with 13 killed in the latest operation
Maria Diva do Nascimento was worried as she set off for her job at one of Rio de Janeiro’s biggest hospitals wearing a face mask she hoped would keep her alive.
It had been two days since she had heard from her son Allyson, a 20-year-old drug trafficker whose job made social isolation impossible.
Military aerobatics display over Kamloops was intended to boost public morale during coronavirus pandemic
A Canadian aerobatics jet has crashed into a British Columbia neighbourhood during a flyover intended to boost morale during the Covid-19 pandemic, killing one crew member, seriously injuring another and setting a house on fire.
Video appeared to show the crew of the Snowbirds’ plane ejecting during the crash on Sunday.
Confirmed Covid-19 cases in Brazil have surpassed the total in Italy and are surging in Mexico and Peru as Latin America struggles to contain its fast-growing coronavirus outbreak.
Spain announced that 87 people had died there in the 24 hours to Sunday morning, the first time the figure has been below 100 in more than two months and a sign the virus is being contained in western Europe as it continues to spread aggressively in Russia, India and parts of Africa.
Four out of five merchants at a major fruit market in Peru have tested positive for coronavirus, revealing shocking levels of infection – and prompting fears that Latin America’s traditional trading centres may have helped spread Covid-19 across the region.
Seventy-nine per cent of stall-holders in Lima’s wholesale fruit market tested positive for Covid-19, while spot tests at five other large fresh food markets in the city revealed at least half were carrying the virus.
Tens of thousands of impoverished migrant workers are on the move across India, walking on highways and railway tracks or riding in trucks, buses and crowded trains in blazing heat, Associated Press reports.
Some are accompanied by pregnant wives and young children, braving threats from the coronavirus pandemic. They say they have been forced to leave cities and towns where they had toiled for years building homes and roads after they were abandoned by their employers casualties of a nationwide lockdown to stop the virus from spreading.
On Saturday, at least 23 laborers died in northern India when a truck they were traveling in smashed into a stationary truck on a highway. Last week, a train crashed into a group of tired workers who fell asleep on the tracks while walking back home in western Maharashtra state, killing 16.
The government and charities have tried to set up shelters for them, but their numbers are simply overwhelming, leaving them little choice but to head on a perilous journey home.
A two-hour video of a heated and expletive-ridden cabinet meeting chaired by President Jair Bolsonaro last month has become the subject of an extraordinary political arm-wrestle, exposing the intrigues and eccentricities at the centre of Brazilian power.
Methanol believed to involved in incidents across country
Sale of liquor banned during Covid-19 pandemic
More than 100 Mexicans have died from drinking adulterated alcohol over the past month in a string of mass poisonings which followed a ban on the sale of liquor during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Deaths from unsafe alcohol have been reported in at least four states. On Thursday, health officials in the central state of Puebla said the death toll there had reached 51 after a batch of moonshine was tainted with methanol – a wood alcohol which can cause blindness and kidney damage.
New York will join the nearby states of New Jersey, Connecticut and Delaware in partially reopening beaches for the Memorial Day weekend, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Friday.
Reuters reports that Cuomo’s announcement comes one day after New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said he was opening the beaches for the traditional May 23-25 start of summer.
US-Canadian couple were kidnapped in Afghanistan in 2012
After release Boyle was cleared of abusing Caitlan in Canada
The FBI has offered a $1m reward for the arrest and prosecution for those responsible for the kidnapping of US citizen Caitlan Coleman and her Canadian husband Joshua Boyle, eight years ago in Afghanistan.
The offer of a reward for their captors is the latest twist in the protracted saga of Coleman and Boyle, who were the subject of intense media scrutiny following their dramatic rescue in 2017 – and a subsequent trial over allegations of abuse by Boyle.
The Calgary zoo will be returning two giant pandas on loan from China because a scarcity of flights due to Covid-19 has caused problems with getting enough bamboo to feed them.
Er Shun and Da Mao arrived in Calgary in 2018 after spending five years at the Toronto zoo and were to remain in the Alberta city until 2023.