Rieli Franciscato struck in chest as he approached indigenous group he was seeking to shield
A Brazilian government official and expert on isolated Amazon tribes was killed by an arrow as he approached an indigenous group he was seeking to shield.
Rieli Franciscato, 56, spent his career in the government’s indigenous affairs agency, Funai, working to set up reservations to protect uncontacted tribes.
Continue reading...Lula, who governed from 2003-2011, expected to run for president again at next election
Brazil’s former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has accused Jair Bolsonaro of turning the coronavirus pandemic into a “weapon of mass destruction” in a high-profile intervention some have seen as the start of an attempted political comeback.
In a wide-ranging video manifesto – which allies, adversaries and analysts took as a signal Lula would seek to challenge Brazil’s far-right leader in the next presidential election – the leftist condemned Bolsonaro’s handling of a crisis that has killed more than 127,000 Brazilians.
Continue reading...With 4.1m cases, south Asian nation is now second only to US in terms of number of infections
India has surpassed Brazil to become the country with the second highest number of coronavirus cases, as the virus continues to spread through the country of 1.3 billion at the fastest rate of anywhere in the world.
India recorded more than 90,000 cases overnight, bringing the number of infections in the country past 4.2 million and overtaking Brazil, which with 4.1 million cases had been the second worst-affected country for several months.
Continue reading...Seven French departments placed on high alert; UK sees 3,000 cases in one day, the highest figure since May
India has recorded a global one-day record of more than 90,000 positive coronavirus cases, taking the country past Brazil as the second most infected country in the world, with 4.2m confirmed cases.
On Sunday India recorded 90,802 new cases and 1,016 deaths. The worst affected state continues to be Maharashtra, home to the financial capital, Mumbai. It has had nearly a quarter of the country’s total infections, and on Sunday it reported a record 23,350 new cases.
Continue reading...US rejects global vaccine effort; cases rise in India, Russia and Hungary; Australia enters recession
Greece recorded has recorded the first coronavirus case in the overcrowded migrant camp of Moria on the island of Lesbos, two migration ministry officials said on Wednesday.
A 40-year old asylum seeker has tested positive for the virus and had been put in isolation, one of the officials told Reuters. Authorities were trying to trace the people he had been in contact with, the official said.
I am now handing over the blog to the very capable Amy Walker. Thank you for reading and please do keep us updated on all coronavirus-related tips and stories.
Continue reading...US president’s move challenged by Congress; Silvio Berlusconi has Covid-19; Brazil’s death toll appears to be easing. This blog is now closed
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Related: Coronavirus live news: Trump pushes to withdraw WHO funding immediately
Brazil’s Covid-19 death toll appears to be easing for the first time since May, data shows, a sign the Latin American country could be descending from a long infection plateau that has seen it suffer the world’s second-worst outbreak after the United States, Reuters reports.
With nearly 4 million confirmed cases, the virus has killed over 120,000 people in Brazil. But the level of average daily deaths dropped below 900 per day last week - the lowest in three and a half months and below the rate of both the United States and India, according to a Reuters tally.
Researchers at Imperial College London also calculate that the transmission rate in Brazil, at which each person infected with the coronavirus infects another person, is now below 1, the level required for new infections to slow.
The vast rainforest is experiencing a repeat of last year’s devastating blazes and critics say Bolsonaro bears ultimate responsibility
Jair Bolsonaro smiles down from a propaganda billboard at the entrance to this scruffy Amazon outpost, welcoming travelers to his “route to development”.
But 20 months into Bolsonaro’s presidency – and a year after a devastating outbreak of Amazon fires caused global outrage – the fires are back, and many fear Brazil’s leader is instead steering his country towards environmental ruin.
Continue reading...The vast rainforest is experiencing a repeat of last year’s devastating fires and critics say Bolsonaro bears ultimate responsibility
Jair Bolsonaro smiles down from a propaganda billboard at the entrance to this scruffy Amazon outpost, welcoming travelers to his “route to development”.
But 20 months into Bolsonaro’s presidency – and a year after a devastating outbreak of Amazon fires caused global outrage – the fires are back, and many fear Brazil’s leader is instead steering his country towards environmental ruin.
Continue reading...Visitors will have to show test results to enter Fernando de Noronha, which has so far suffered no coronavirus deaths
One of Brazil’s most celebrated tourist destinations, the paradisiacal archipelago of Fernando de Noronha, has announced it is reopening to outsiders – as long as they have had Covid-19.
Tourists have been banned from the Unesco World Heritage site, which Charles Darwin visited in 1832, since late March when the pandemic forced many parts of Brazil into partial shutdown.
Continue reading...Singer-turned politician known as Flordelis was alleged ringleader of lurid family plot to kill husband, including poisoning him
A gospel-singing Brazilian congresswoman has been accused of masterminding the “barbaric” murder of her preacher husband after at least six failed or aborted attempts to kill him with poison or in staged robberies.
Anderson do Carmo was 42 when he was shot dead in June 2019 as he returned to the home he shared with the church crooner-turned-politician Flordelis dos Santos de Souza.
Continue reading...Response came after Brazil’s president was asked a question about mystery payments to his wife
The Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has told a journalist he would like to “smash their face in” after being questioned over reports of a series of mystery payments into his wife’s bank account by a former police officer with alleged links to the Rio de Janeiro underworld.
Reports in the Brazilian media have claimed that between 2011 and 2017 at least 89,000 reais (about £12,000) were paid into the account of Brazil’s first lady, Michelle Bolsonaro.
Continue reading...South Korea records most cases since early March; South Africa infections pass 600,000; Brazil on ‘downward trend’
The world should be able to rein in the coronavirus pandemic in less than two years, the World Health Organization has said, as South Korea reported the most daily infections since early March and expanded social distancing measures across the country.
The WHO’s chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, struck a partly optimistic note when he drew comparisons between the Covid-19 pandemic and the with the 1918 flu pandemic, saying technology could help end the spread.
Continue reading...The Pantanal wetland – home to the hyacinth macaw – is suffering its worst blazes in decades, most probably started by humans
The world’s biggest refuge for endangered hyacinth macaws has been devastated by a historic fire in the Brazilian Pantanal.
The Pantanal, a vast tropical wetland straddling Brazil’s border with Bolivia and Paraguay, is currently suffering its worst fires in more than two decades, with nearly 12% of its vegetation reportedly already lost.
Continue reading...Spain sees more than 3,700 new cases as Italy records 642 new infections; Iran death toll exceeds 20,000; strict restrictions imposed on Greek island
The 25th edition of France’s Colmar Jazz Festival, scheduled for September, has been postponed until next year due to the coronavirus epidemic, the city said in a statement on Wednesday.
“Current progress in the health crisis does not allow us today, realistically, to consider staging concerts in September,” the statement says, adding that this edition of the festival will now take place in 2021.
American Indians and Alaska Natives have been hit harder by Covid-19 than the white US population and have been more likely to become infected by coronavirus at a younger age, a US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report showed on Wednesday.
The incidence of laboratory-confirmed Covid-19 cases among people identified as American Indians or Alaska Natives was 3.5 times that of non-Hispanic whites, making them one of the racial and ethnic minority groups at highest risk, according to the study based on data from 23 US states from 22 January to 3 July.
Continue reading...Luiz Henrique Mandetta accuses president of playing a ‘pivotal’ role in steering economy towards catastrophe
Historians will savage Jair Bolsonaro for leading Brazilians into a deadly “canyon” with his shambling, self-interested and anti-scientific response to Covid-19, according to his former health minister.
In an interview with the Guardian, Luiz Henrique Mandetta accused the Brazilian president of playing a “pivotal” role in steering Latin America’s largest economy towards a catastrophe. Bolsonaro played politics with citizens’ lives at a time of global crisis, he said, as Brazil’s death toll rose to more than 105,000. Only the US has suffered more deaths.
Continue reading...Over 10,000 blazes seen so far in August, with response of President Bolsonaro condemned as ineffective
The Amazon has seen the worst start to the fire season in a decade, with 10,136 fires spotted in the first 10 days of August, a 17% rise on last year.
Analysis of Brazilian government figures by Greenpeace showed fires increasing by 81% in federal reserves compared with the same period last year. Coming a year after soaring Amazon fires caused an international crisis, the new figures raised fears this year’s fire season could be even worse than last year’s.
Continue reading...Informed by baile funk, metal and more, Linn da Quebrada and Jup do Bairro – with producer Badsista – are dodging racism, transphobia and music industry resistance to tell their own stories
Jup do Bairro and Linn da Quebrada first met at a festival in São Paulo through mutual friends. It didn’t go well, Jup says while we wait for Linn to join our Zoom call. “I looked at her and joked: Is it Linn for linda?”, meaning beautiful in Portuguese. “I remember she rolled her eyes and I thought: Yikes, game over!”
But the two musicians kept running into each other. “Linn often performed at the same parties I was invited to and since we both lived far from the city centre, we’d always wait for the bus together,” Jup says. In the end, they became close friends and eventually musical partners.
Continue reading...US considers blocking infected citizens returning; Australian outbreak trends down; Singapore economy plunges 43%
Nearly five months to the day since the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic, Covid-19 infections have passed 20 million cases. In acknowledging the milestone, the health body’s chief warned against despair, saying if the virus could be suppressed effectively, “we can safely open up societies”.
Global cases reached one million at the start of April. By 22 May, there were 5 million cases. That figure had doubled to 10 million cases by the end of June, and, seven weeks later, it had doubled again to 20 million infections.
Continue reading...Indigenous leader Célia Xakriabá and Vagina Monologues author V discuss Brazil’s biodiversity crisis and why this is the century of the indigenous woman
Célia Xakriabá is the voice of a new generation of female indigenous leaders who are leading the fight against the destruction of Brazil’s forests both in the Amazon and the lesser known Cerrado, a savannah that covers a fifth of the country. V, formerly Eve Ensler, is the award-winning author of the Vagina Monologues, an activist and founder of V-Day, a global movement to end violence against all women and girls and the Earth. The two recently held a conversation in which V asked Xakriabá about what is happening to Brazil’s biodiversity and indigenous peoples, and why women are the key to change.
V: Many people, especially in the west, don’t really understand what’s happening to the Cerrado in Brazil. Can you tell us what’s happening to the forests?
C: It’s very tough at this moment. Every minute one person dies of Covid-19, but also every minute one tree is cut. And whenever a tree is cut, a part of us is cut, a part of us also dies, because the territory dies and with no territory there is no air, no good air for everyone in the world. People can’t breathe. So all this Covid contamination, it gets to the territory through the miners, the gold miners, the loggers and the rangers. And now that we are getting to August, we get even more worried about the fires, all the fires that burned the Amazon last year. It’s going to come back.
Cases in Britain rise over 1,000 a day for first time since June; one in every 65 Americans has tested positive; US health secretary praises Taiwan
Five months since the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus crisis a global pandemic, the number of Covid cases globally is nearing 20m, with almost 730,000 known deaths.
The current number of confirmed infections stands at 19,792,519, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, with total new cases daily averaging more than 250,000.
Continue reading...