Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Coronavirus cases in Colombia, which is nearly a month into a national reopening after a long quarantine, have passed 800,000, while in Argentina infections passed 700,000, as the pandemic continues to grip the Americas.
Colombia has 806,038 confirmed cases of the virus, the health ministry said on Saturday, with 25,296 reported deaths. Active cases numbered 78,956.
More than 130 journalists – including at least three US reporters – surveilled in a country where media has long been targeted
María Alejandra Villamizar has had a front row seat of Colombia’s civil conflict. Over a 25-year career, she has reported from rebel-held jungles to territories controlled by violent drug cartels. She also worked as an adviser to several presidents during successive attempts to make peace.
But she recently discovered that her work had put her in the crosshairs of the military.
The region has seen some of the longest lockdowns in the world but experts are urging countries not to reopen too soon
The scene in Rio de Janeiro was as though much of 2020 had never happened.
The beaches at Ipanema and Copacabana heaved with visitors, the white sand obscured by bronzed bodies, sun loungers and parasols, as locals enjoyed the blistering 38C heat.
China has locked down a city on its border with Myanmar and launched a campaign to test the city’s entire population of more than 200,000 people.
Officials in Ruili in Yunnan province said the city had entered a state of “wartime” defences against Covid-19 after two new cases emerged among travellers from Myanmar. Residents have been ordered to stay at home and authorities have set up checkpoints to prevent anyone entering or leaving Ruili and restricting access to border areas nearby. Most businesses have been closed.
Unrest sparked by police killing of lawyer in Bogotá
Disturbances spread to Medellín, Cali and Manizales
At least 10 people have been left dead in cities across Colombia after a second night of protests against police brutality.
The unrest was sparked by the killing on Tuesday night in Bogotá of an unarmed lawyer, Javier Ordóñez, by police who pinned him down and repeatedly shocked him with a Taser for over two minutes as he begged “please, no more”.
Here’s a quick recap of the latest coronavirus developments from the last few hours.
Next year’s GCSE and A-level exams could be pushed back to give pupils more time to study the syllabus, the England’s education secretary has said.
Gavin Williamson said England’s exams regulator, Ofqual, was working with the education sector to decide whether there should be a “short delay” to the exam timetable in 2021.
I know there’s some concern about next year’s exams, and that’s why we’ve been working with Ofqual on changes we can make to help pupils when they take GCSEs and A-levels next year.
Ofqual will continue to work with the education sector and other stakeholders on whether there should be a short delay to the GCSE, A and AS-level exam timetable in 2021, with the aim of creating more teaching time.
Ministers had warning after warning about problems with this year’s exam results, but allowed it to descend into a fiasco.
This is too important for Boris Johnson to leave until the last minute. Pupils heading back to school need clarity and certainty about the year ahead.
Labour’s suggestion of a delay to help with ‘catch-up’ is worthy of serious consideration.
A delay is not without its problems, a consequential delay to the publication of results will put pressure on higher education providers such as universities and colleges as well as employers. All this will need to be dealt with.
At least 39 people have been killed in the recent spate of unrest and the country has seen 46 massacres so far this year
A wave of massacres in which dozens of people have been killed across Colombia has prompted fears that the South American nation remains unable to turn the page on its decades-long civil war.
In the latest incident, the bodies of three young men were found late on Tuesday near a road outside Ocaña, a city near the country’s eastern border with Venezuela.
Women attempting to flee the country’s economic collapse are in desperate straits, stranded at borders and forced into sex work, say NGOs
The family had nothing at home, says mother of six Luisa Hernández, 30, from Zulia state, Venezuela. “To see your children grow up without food, without anything, is unbearable.
“Eating from rubbish bins to survive was no life, so we left. But, now with the pandemic, we are in limbo, we are stuck in Colombia, and hungry again. We have gone from one crisis to another.”
Global Witness campaigners warn of risk of further killings during Covid-19 lockdowns
A record number of people were killed last year for defending their land and environment, according to research that highlights the routine murder of activists who oppose extractive industries driving the climate crisis and the destruction of nature.
More than four defenders were killed every week in 2019, according to an annual death toll compiled by the independent watchdog Global Witness, amid growing evidence of opportunistic killings during the Covid-19 lockdown in which activists were left as “sitting ducks” in their own homes.
Doubts over claim that Mario Paciolla, 33, killed himself
Mayor of Naples joins calls for truth and justice
The mayor of Naples has joined human rights groups in calling for “truth and justice” following the death of an Italian United Nations volunteer who had been on a peace mission in Colombia.
Mario Paciolla, 33, from Naples, was found dead on 15 July at his home in San Vicente de Caguán, a town in Colombia’s southern jungle long used as a strategic rearguard for rebel groups and drug traffickers.
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).
Rosa Vera, a 40-year-old from a small town in crisis-ridden Venezuela, thought moving to Colombia would give her the chance to find work. Five months ago, she left her family and began the arduous journey to Bogotá, the Colombian capital, to look for a job.
Instead, as coronavirus shut down economic life in the city, Vera and more than 400 Venezuelans had no choice but to camp out for a month, waiting for help to get them home.
Allegation comes as nation reels from similarly horrific crime and prompted protests in Bogotá
Colombian soldiers have been accused of raping a 15-year-old indigenous girl, in the second such case to emerge in a week.
Troops in the southern Guaviare region were accused in September of kidnapping, torturing and repeatedly raping a 15-year-old girl from the Nukak Makú tribe, but the case was not widely reported until this week.
Seven soldiers confessed to raping child from the Emberà tribe
Outrage has been sparked in Colombia after a 13-year-old girl was gang-raped by seven soldiers from the country’s army last weekend.
On Thursday, seven soldiers confessed to raping the child from the indigenous Emberá tribe, who went missing from her rural reserve in northern Colombia on Sunday. She was found the next day at a nearby school. News of the horrific crime shocked much of the South American nation, which has long reckoned with violence against indigenous women and girls.
Authorities are forcing people from homes they say were unlawfully built during a nationwide quarantine
Don Pacho has been running from the rival factions of Colombia’s civil war his whole life. Now, he’s running from the police, as authorities in the country’s capital push on with a wave of evictions despite a strict coronavirus lockdown.
Hundreds of Bogotá’s poorest residents are caught between two brutal forces: a nationwide quarantine that makes working impossible and authorities forcing people from homes they say were unlawfully built.
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”.
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.
Caracas has accused Colombia and US of plotting to overthrow president Maduro; says military found abandoned vessels in Orinoco river
Venezuela’s military says it has seized three abandoned Colombian light combat vessels that soldiers found while patrolling the Orinoco river on Saturday, several days after the government accused its neighbour of aiding a failed invasion plot.
In a statement, the defence ministry said the boats were equipped with machine guns and ammunition, but had no crew, adding they were discovered as part of a nationwide operation to guarantee Venezuela’s “freedom and sovereignty”.
A policy of making men and women leave their homes on alternate days during lockdown in Bogotá is fuelling violence towards the transgender community by the police and the public, activists say.
The mayor of the Colombian capital, Claudia López, announced last month that women were permitted to go outdoors for essential tasks on even-numbered days and men on odd-numbered days, in an effort to limit numbers on the streets.
Men fled country while on bail after their arrest in 2001 and a highly-publicised trial
Three alleged IRA members accused of training Colombian rebels in bomb-making techniques have been granted amnesty nearly two decades after they were arrested, as part of the South American nation’s ongoing peace process.
Niall Connolly, James Monaghan and Martin McCauley, who became known as the Colombia Three, were arrested at Bogotá’s El Dorado airport in 2001. They were charged with travelling on false documents and teaching members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (or Farc) how to build improvised mortar bombs.