Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
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.
With the widespread closures of cinemas as part of measures to stem the spread of Covid-19, drive-in movie theatres around the world, where social distancing is guaranteed, have been enjoying new-found popularity
Civil society has outperformed the state in helping to feed India’s poorest. It should be seen as ally not enemy
The highways connecting India’s overcrowded cities to the villages had not seen anything like it since the time of partition 73 years ago. Hundreds of thousands of workers were on the move, walking back to their villages with their possessions bundled on their heads.
On 24 March, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered a nationwide 21-day lockdown to contain the coronavirus pandemic. States sealed their borders, and transport came to a halt. With no trains or buses to take them home, India’s rural-to-urban migrant population, estimated at a staggering 120 million, took to the roads. On 5 April a statement from the home ministry said 1.25 million people moving between states had been put up in camps and shelters.
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.
The Australian government has passed legislation for a $1,500 per fortnight wage subsidy for eligible employers amid the coronavirus. Check your eligibility, how much you’ll get, when it will be paid and how it works with the jobseeker payments
That’s all for today, thanks for following along. A recap of the day:
Senator Elizabeth Warren said today she believed Joe Biden’s comments on the sexual assault allegation were “credible and convincing”.
“I saw the reports of what Ms [Tara] Reade said, I saw an interview with vice-president Biden. I appreciate that the vice-president took a lot of questions, tough questions. And he answered them directly and respectfully. The vice-president’s answers were credible and convincing,” the senator and former presidential candidate said, according to a CNN reporter.
As Donald Trump proclaimed success in America’s fight against the coronavirus and continued to push for the US economy to reopen, it was reported on Monday that internal projections show the administration is expecting 3,000 deaths a day by 1 June.
Workers may refuse to turn up or stage walk-outs unless the government helps guarantee their safety, trade unions have warned amid anger over guidance designed to ease the lockdown.
As ministers prepare to urge the country back to return to work, Labour joined a string of trade unions in criticising draft guidelines for being vague, inadequate and putting staff at risk because employers can choose how closely to follow them.
Italians were allowed out as the toughest quarantine measures were lifted throughout the country after almost two months on 4 May.
Around 4 million people returned to work as the prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, appealed to the public in a Facebook post on Sunday night to 'act responsibly'.
Tim Bray’s departure comes as company faces increased scrutiny and employee activism around its Covid-19 response
Tim Bray, a top engineer and vice-president at Amazon, announced on Monday he is resigning “in dismay” over the company’s firing of employee activists who criticized working conditions amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Bray’s resignation comes as Amazon faces increased scrutiny and employee activism surrounding its internal response to coronavirus. Amazon workers on Friday participated in a nationwide sick-out to, claiming the company has failed to provide enough face masks for workers, did not implement regular temperature checks it promised at warehouses, and has refused to give workers paid sick leave protest working conditions and inadequate safety protections.
Liz Truss has claimed bolstering transatlantic trade could help the economy bounce back from the Covid-19 crisis, as negotiations with Washington over a free trade deal begin by video link.
Despite the government’s negotiating objectives for the deal pointing to a modest economic gain of 0.16% of GDP over 15 years, the international trade secretary said she was keen to “make it even easier to do business with our friends across the pond”.
Something called the coronavirus had become a pandemic, a minister told MPs
Just as Matt Hancock was explaining at the Downing Street press conference how he hoped his test, track and trace app might work to ease the lockdown, parliament was finally getting the opportunity to debate the coronavirus regulations the government had put in place back in March. Though debate might be putting it a little strongly. The tech in the new virtual Commons isn’t up to allowing any interventions, so what we actually got was each MP making an uninterrupted five-minute speech.
The junior health minister Edward Argar appeared slightly bewildered by the need for even an ersatz debate. And you could rather see his point. The real key date here is this Thursday, when the government is obliged to say whether it plans to maintain the emergency powers or introduce some form of relaxation, so being asked to justify the current regime that had been in place for six weeks and might change in a few days’ time felt a wee bit pointless.
World leaders raised almost €7.4bn (£6.5bn) to research Covid-19 vaccines and therapies at a virtual summit convened by EU commission president Ursula von der Leyen. The leaders – a notable exception was Donald Trump – undertook a two-hour pledging session promising to distribute any vaccine to poorer countries.
Along with the US president, the event was not addressed by India and Russia. China was represented by its ambassador to the EU
Carnival Cruise Line has announced plans to resume operations at the beginning of August despite dozens of deaths on cruise ships during the Covid-19 pandemic and investigations into the industry’s possible role in spreading the disease around the planet.
In a statement on Monday, the operator said eight cruise ships would resume operations from 1 August, sailing from Galveston, Texas, and Miami and Port Canaveral in Florida, once a no-sail order from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had expired.
Man found to have had virus a month before government confirmed first cases
A French hospital that retested old samples from pneumonia patients has discovered that it treated a man with the coronavirus as early as 27 December, nearly a month before the French government confirmed its first cases.
Dr Yves Cohen, head of resuscitation at the Avicenne and Jean Verdier hospitals in the northern suburbs of Paris, told BFM TV that scientists had retested samples from 24 patients treated in December and January who tested negative for flu.
A street artist called Msale has taken it upon himself to create giant murals bringing public health messages directly to the overcrowded Mathare slum in Nairobi. With half a million people living in such 'a squeezed area' social distancing is quite impossible to achieve, says Msale, so he is providing information for people on how to keep safe in the 'simplest, clearest' way he knows
I am about to go through an invasive therapy for my cervical cancer. The process has brought me closer to my seven-year-old self
In a large black planner that I keep next to my bed, I mark off each round of chemotherapy and radiation. And after each one, I feel a growing sense of dread.
That’s because every mark means I’m one step closer to brachytherapy, a process that involves doctors sticking radioactive materials into my cervix – or what’s left of it anyway. It’s a way for them to aim high doses of radiation at my tumor, without risking the other nearby organs.
The Ugandan government has launched an investigation into the activities of a megachurch in Kampala after seven members of its internationally renowned children’s choir were diagnosed with Covid-19 following an overseas tour.
The country’s child affairs minister, Florence Nakiwala Kiyingi, told the Guardian the Internal Security Organisation was investigating Watoto church for allegedly breaching child labour laws, taking the children out of the country without permission and putting them at risk by not cancelling the tour as coronavirus cases escalated and countries closed their borders.
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.
Paloma Pérez, a smoker who has dealt with pancreatitis and cancer, has more reason than many to fear the coronavirus as she waits out the lockdown in her house in the mountains outside Madrid.
To limit her exposure, the 74-year-old has told the home help who used to pop in twice a week to stop coming, and her main meal of the day – usually fish or meat, but with a decent variety of sides – is left outside her closed front door by the Catholic charity Cáritas.