Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Luke Denman is shown on Venezuelan TV after being arrested. Denman was one of two American mercenaries apprehended after a failed attempt to topple Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro.
Denman claimed he was on a mission to seize control of Venezuela’s main airport in order to abduct its authoritarian leader – and he alleged that he was acting under the command of Donald Trump.
Luke Denman was one of two US citizens seized this week after what appears to have been a bungled bid to overthrow Maduro
An American mercenary captured after a bungled attempt to topple Nicolás Maduro has claimed he was on a mission to seize control of Venezuela’s main airport in order to abduct its leader – and he alleged that was acting under the command of Donald Trump.
Luke Denman was one of two US citizens seized by Venezuelan security forces this week after what appears to have been a catastrophically conceived bid to overthrow Maduro by sneaking into the South American country in a fleet of battered fishing boats.
Fears Jair Bolsonaro’s ‘land grabbers decree’ may be pushed forwards after new rule allows land-grabbing on indigenous reserves
As the coronavirus pandemic eats its way into the Amazon, raising fears of a genocide of its vulnerable indigenous tribes, the government of the far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, and its supporters are dismantling rules shielding protected reserves. Key environment officials have been sacked, and environmentalists and indigenous leaders fear the pandemic is being used as a smokescreen for a new assault on the rainforest.
They say a presidential decree awaiting congressional approval and new rules at the indigenous agency Funai effectively legalise land grabbing in protected forests and indigenous reserves.
President says it’s time to reopen businesses as US deaths top 70,000; number of Russian cases rises by more than 10,000 for fourth consecutive day; Spain set to extend state of emergency for two more weeks
Pope Francis has urged employers to respect the dignity of workers, particularly migrants, in the face of economic difficulties brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Speaking at the end of his general audience, held from the papal library instead of St Peter’s Square because of Italy’s lockdown, he said:
It’s true that the crisis is affecting everyone but the dignity of people must always be respected.”
Taiwan has been relatively successful at controlling the virus, with 439 cases to date and six deaths, and 100 active infections, thanks to early prevention and detection efforts. The island has never gone into total lockdown, though the government has promoted social distancing and face masks.
Two US ‘mercenaries’ held after Caribbean coast attack foiled
Donald Trump has denied any involvement by the US government in what Venezuelan officials have called a failed armed incursion in the South American country that led to the capture of two American “mercenaries”.
The president made the comment to reporters at the White House after Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, announced that authorities there had detained two US citizens working with a US military veteran who has claimed responsibility for the foiled operation.
Now, with parts of the capital on coronavirus lockdown, wind rasps through an empty Plaza Italia as a handful of shoppers hurry past security forces enforcing the stay-at-home order.
Millions of domestic workers have been told to keep working or been laid off without pay. Now their families are fighting back against a ‘structurally racist’ system
For as long as Juliana França can remember, on weekdays her mother, Caterina, has made the four-hour round bus trip from the working-class area of Baixada Fluminense, outside Rio de Janeiro, to the city’s affluent South Zone to work as a maid.
But when Covid-19 arrived in Brazil, França begged her to stay at home.
Austria says easing lockdown has not led to spike in infections; Macron says major foreign travel will be limited this summer; global deaths pass 250,000
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported 19,138 new confirmed cases; taking the total to at least 1,171,510. The number of deaths has risen by 823 to 68,279, it added.
The figures do not necessarily reflect those reported by individual states.
A regional capital in Brazil has become the country’s first city to declare a total lockdown – in direct opposition to the president Jair Bolsonaro, who has railed against social isolation and dismissed a soaring death-toll.
The lockdown in São Luís, capital of the north-estern state of Maranhão, and three neighbouring towns, was ordered by a judge after intensive care beds in state government hospitals filled up. States such as Rio de Janeiro are watching closely. But the move came as looser social isolation measures introduced by state governors crumble across Brazil and cases soar.
Jordan Goudreau, who was linked to plot to topple Maduro, said his troops are still in action as government said it foiled ‘invasion’
A former US special forces soldier linked to a murky and apparently bungled attempt to topple Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, has insisted his troops are still in action after launching “a daring amphibious raid” into the country.
In a video released late on Sunday – hours after Maduro’s government claimed it had foiled a United States-backed sea “invasion” near Venezuela’s main international airport – Jordan Goudreau claimed the battle was not over.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is taking the lead in pressing a hard line against Beijing over the coronavirus pandemic, AFP reports.
Pompeo, in an interview Sunday on ABC, said there was “enormous evidence” that the new coronavirus came out of a Wuhan lab - not a wet market, as most scientists suggest.
Brazil’s leaders must take immediate action to save the country’s indigenous peoples from a Covid-19 “genocide”,a global coalition of artists, celebrities, scientists and intellectuals has said.
In an open letter to the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, figures including Madonna, Oprah Winfrey, Brad Pitt, David Hockney and Paul McCartney warned the pandemic meant indigenous communities in the Amazon faced “an extreme threat to their very survival”.
The violence at Llanos penitentiary started when prisoners demanded relatives be allowed to deliver food
A riot erupted at a prison in central Venezuela, leaving at least 40 people dead and 50 more injured, including a national guard officer who was wounded by an explosion and the warden, who suffered a knife wound, authorities said.
The upheaval at the Llanos penitentiary on Friday started with an inmate protest demanding that their relatives be allowed to deliver them food. An armed confrontation then broke out between inmates and guards, lawmaker María Beatriz Martínez said.
Search and rescue mission that began after Wednesday’s crash is called off with one body and additional remains found
Five missing crew members of a Canadian navy helicopter that crashed during a Nato operation this week into the Mediterranean Sea are presumed dead.
A search and rescue mission that began on Wednesday when the aircraft with six crew on board went missing has been turned into a recovery effort, the Canadian defence ministry said in a statement on Friday.
Move comes after murder of 22 people in worst mass shooting in Canada’s history
Canada has banned assault-style weapons following the murder of 22 people in the worst mass shooting in the country’s history, Justin Trudeau announced on Friday.
“These weapons were designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to kill the largest number of people in the shortest amount of time. There is no use and no place for such weapons in Canada,” said the prime minister. “Effective immediately, it is no longer permitted to buy, sell, transport, import or use military-grade assault weapons in this country.”
President calls for resumption of football despite crisis
Brazil has more than 5,900 deaths due to the coronavirus
Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro wants to see football competitions restart soon despite the country’s high number of coronavirus cases, arguing that players are less likely to die from Covid-19 because of their physical fitness.
Bolsonaro is one of the few world leaders that still downplays the risks brought by the coronavirus, which he has likened to “a little flu”.
Emergency measures pile pain on to mourning families as coronavirus tears through the ill-prepared jungle-flanked city
Day and night, the dead are delivered into the tawny Amazonian earth – the latest victims of a devastating pandemic now reaching deep into the heart of the Brazilian rainforest.
On Sunday 140 bodies were laid to rest in Manaus, the jungle-flanked capital of Amazonas state. On Saturday, 98. Normally the figure would be closer to 30 – but these are no longer normal times.
More than 5,000 Brazilians have lost their lives to the coronavirus – even more people than in China, if its official statistics are to be believed.
But on Tuesday night Brazil’s president shrugged off the news. “So what?” Jair Bolsonaro told reporters when asked about the record 474 deaths that day. “I’m sorry. What do you want me to do?”
Another 31 people have died in Ireland and 376 more cases have been diagnosed, the country’s chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan has said.
One of the deaths reported on Wednesday involved a person in the 15-24 age group, the second in this category. Dr Holohan warned the number in intensive care units was too high as the prospect of a rapid easing of movement restrictions dwindles.
That is simply too high and we need to get that down further not only because it is about protecting occupancy but the lower the figure is it is a reflection of better protection of the public and lower levels of spread of the infection.
Bolivia will extend its lockdown against the pandemic until 10 May, the government has announced, though it is planning to relax rules in less affected parts of the country from the following day.
The president Jeanine Áñez has said Bolivia will move to a “dynamic” or “less rigid” quarantine on 11 May, allowing some people to return to work.
Opening the quarantine a little or closing it completely will depend on how the pandemic is being controlled in each region. The Ministry of Health will evaluate every seven days how the pandemic evolves in each region. On that basis, decisions will be taken to relax or harden the quarantine.
Canada PM blames unilingual labelling on ‘extreme situation’
Francophones decry ‘dangerous’ and ‘disrespectful’ move
French has become a collateral victim of the coronavirus pandemic in Canada, forcing the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, to defend failures to uphold laws requiring labels and services in both official languages.
Canada is officially bilingual, but the government has allowed the sale of imported disinfectants labelled only in English because of “the extreme situation in which we find ourselves”, Trudeau said on Tuesday.