Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Latin America has become the new centre of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic but two small countries, Uruguay and Paraguay, have bucked the regional trend and can claim a near total victory against the virus.
Though they are strangely dissimilar – Uruguay is a progressive enclave with the lowest poverty index in Latin America, while Paraguay has poverty estimates of 30-50% and is rife with corruption – both nations have kept their coronavirus death rates surprisingly low.
As the coronavirus spreads, soaring demand for oxygen is bringing out a stark global truth: even the right to breathe depends on money. In much of the world, oxygen is expensive and hard to get a basic marker of inequality both between and within countries.
In wealthy Europe and North America, hospitals treat oxygen as a fundamental need, much like water or electricity. It is delivered in liquid form by tanker truck and piped directly to the beds of coronavirus patients. Running short is all but unthinkable for a resource that literally can be pulled from the air.
In Spain, as coronavirus deaths climbed, engineers laid 7 km (4 miles) of tubing in less than a week to give 1,500 beds in an impromptu hospital a direct supply of pure oxygen. Oxygen is also plentiful and brings the most profits in industrial use such as mining, aerospace, electronics and construction.
But in poor countries, from Peru to Bangladesh, it is in lethally short supply.
In Guinea, a west-coastal country in West Africa, oxygen is a costly challenge for government-funded medical facilities such as the Donka public hospital in the capital, Conakry.
A haunted house in Japan has developed a drive-through format amid the Coronavirus pandemic.
Inside a car, guests can scream as loudly as they like, with no mask required. And according to producer Kenta Iwana, 25, the new format might even be scarier than a traditional haunted house.
Those who knew and loved him say Leandro Maduro Costa was born a clown, lived his life as a clown – and had hoped to die as one.
“He always said to me: ‘Felipe, if I die first, bury me as ‘Potato’,” said Felipe Alves Guimarães, a friend and fellow entertainer known by audiences as Tambourine.
Novak Djokovic, the men’s world No 1 tennis player, has tested positive for Covid-19, the Serbian said in a statement on Tuesday.
Croatia’s Borna Ćorić, Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria and Viktor Troicki have previously tested positive after playing in Djokovic’s Adria Tour exhibition tournament in the Balkan region.
Italy has seen a surge in bicycle sales since the government ended its coronavirus lockdown as people steer clear of public transport and respond to government incentives to help the environment.
Some 540,000 bikes have been sold nationwide since shops across the country reopened in early May, according to sector lobby Ancma, a 60% increase in the first month compared to the same period in 2019.
Coronavirus has swept through tribes, killing elders – and inflicting irreparable damage on tribal history, culture and medicine
When Bep Karoti Xikrin fell ill with Covid-19, he refused to go to a hospital.
The 64-year-old chief of a Xikrin indigenous village in Brazil’s Amazon was plagued by headaches and fatigue and struggled for breath. But according to his daughter Bekuoi Raquel, he was afraid that if he were admitted to hospital he might never return.
A national campaign may be needed to teach people in England to wear face masks correctly, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies’ (Sage) subgroup has said.
Professor Susan Michie said that many people using public transport in England are not wearing their face masks in the right way, and “training” may be needed to ensure they are used effectively.
Tokyo has confirmed 35 new cases of coronavirus.
According to the Johns Hopkins University tracker, Japan has had 17,725 cases of the virus, and 955 deaths.
Iran reports more than 100 deaths for third day in a row; UK death toll rises by 43; Chile deaths rise to more than 7,000. This blog is now closed. Follow our new blog below
That’s all from me for today – I’ll hand over to my colleague Helen Sullivan to guide you all through the next bit. As always, thanks for following along.
Donald Trump told thousands of supporters on Saturday that he had asked US officials to slow down testing for Covid-19 because case numbers in the country were rising so rapidly.
Speaking at a campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the US president used racist language, referring to Covid-19 as “kung flu”, and described testing for the virus as a “double-edged sword” because it led to the identification of more cases.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday hailed “hero” doctors who died during the coronavirus epidemic, comparing them to battlefield medics from past wars.
Putin, who spoke ahead of next month’s controversial vote that is expected to extend his hold on power until 2036, also promised awards and more bonuses for health personnel.
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said on Saturday that Turkey had lost some ground in its battle with the coronavirus but a focus on hygiene, masks and social distancing will protect people and help the economy rebound in the second half of the year.
This month, Ankara opened restaurants and cafes and lifted weekend stay-at-home orders and most intercity travel bans. But since 1 June, new Covid-19 cases have doubled to nearly 1,600 per day, raising concerns of a re-emergence.
Fredson de Silva, mayor of Pau d’Arco, issued decree locking down only indigenous people
Local authorities in the Brazilian Amazon have been accused of racism after locking down a string of indigenous villages and banning indigenous people from entering a local town because of a coronavirus outbreak.
Federal prosecutors on Friday called for the mayor of Pau D’Arco in the Amazon state of Pará – population 6,000 – to revoke the decree, which he said had been issued to protect public health.
The hospitalisation of Honduras president with Covid-19 and pneumonia Wednesday has drawn attention to another country struggling under the pandemics strain as cases rise sharply in the capital, AP reports.
President Juan Orlando Hernández announced late Tuesday that he and his wife had tested positive for the virus. Just hours later he was hospitalised after doctors determined he had pneumonia.
From March to 7 June, Honduras confirmed 6,327 coronavirus infections. In the 10 days since, it added 3,329 more, a surge that has come after the government began a gradual reactivation of the economy.
The full story on Australia’s unemployment rate now:
Australia lost a further 227,000 jobs between April and May, resulting in a total loss of 835,000 jobs in seasonally adjusted terms since March and a 0.7% jump in unemployment to 7.1%.
China reimposes partial lockdown in capital to tackle new cluster; US authorities revoke emergency use of hydroxychloroquine; two imported cases in NZ. Follow the latest updates
Germany has launched their coronavirus tracing app today, which officials say is so secure even government ministers can use it.
Smartphone apps have been touted as a high-tech tool in the effort to track down potential Covid-19 infections. Experts say finding new cases quickly is key to clamping down on fresh clusters, especially as countries slowly emerge from lockdowns and try to avoid a second wave of infections and deaths.
Russia has reported 8,248 new coronavirus cases today, bringing its nationwide infection tally to 545,458. The authorities said 193 people had died of the virus in the last day, raising the official death toll to 7,284.
Partial quarantine remains in Beijing; European countries continue to open borders to neighbours
China detected its highest number of daily coronavirus cases in months on Sunday, locking down parts of Beijing in a warning of the difficulties of avoiding a resurgence of the pandemic as Europe prepared to open more borders and loosen restrictions this week.
A wholesale food market in the Chinese capital, where traces of the virus were detected, was closed at the weekend. Nearby housing estates were also placed under quarantine after authorities detected 36 new coronavirus cases in the city and another 19 across the country.
A century after the 1918 pandemic, South America’s largest country has passed Britain to claim the world’s second-highest death toll
As a child growing up in 1940s São Paulo, Drauzio Varella remembers his grandmother’s tales of how the Spanish flu ravaged the blue-collar immigrant community they called home.
“So many people died that families would leave people outside on the pavements, and early each morning the carts would come by to collect them and take them off to burial in mass graves,” remembered Varella, who would go on to become Brazil’s best-known doctor.
São Paulo to dig up cemeteries to clear spaces for coronavirus deaths; new rise of infections in Darfur, Sudan; New Zealand goes 22 days with a new case
A cluster of dozens of new coronavirus cases in Beijing has prompted authorities to lock down parts of the city again after nearly two months without any new local infections.
The outbreak has affected dozens of people, most of whom are asymptomatic, and raises concerns about how the virus might re-emerge, even in places where it appeared to be under control.
Miguel Otávio Santana da Silva fell nine storeys after being left alone by his mother’s employer, one of many richer white Brazilians employing black domestic workers
Mirtes Santana weeps when she remembers finding her son dying on the pavement outside the luxury seaside apartment block where she worked in north-eastern Brazil.
“I can’t bear it,” said the 33-year-old domestic worker. “It breaks my heart.”
A manvandalized a mock cemetery of 100 graves and crosses representing people who have died from Covid-19
A supporter of Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, has desecrated a beachside memorial to Covid-19 victims as the country’s coronavirus death toll rose above 40,000.
Activists from civil society group Rio de Paz dug 100 symbolic shallow graves on Copacabana beach before dawn on Thursday to represent the Brazilian lives lost.
Almost 10,000 new cases in India on Thursday as WHO warns situation outside Europe deteriorating
India reported almost 10,000 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, with hospitals swamped in the worst-hit cities of Mumbai, New Delhi and Chennai, and predictions that the infection rate will not peak before the end of next month.
The country of 1.3bn people now has the fifth highest number of confirmed cases in the world, at 286,579. Over the last 24 hours 357 people have died from the virus, bringing the official toll to 8,102.
From protecting fishing communities to regrowing coral reefs, Guardian readers and environmentalists share how they’re working to defend the ocean
World Oceans Day, which took place on Monday, is marked by hundreds of beach cleans and events globally. Despite Covid-19 restrictions, environmentalists and readers from around the world shared how they are continuing to work to protect the ocean, and told us about the local marine issues that matter to them.
A Brazilian supreme court judge has ordered Jair Bolsonaro’s administration to resume publishing complete Covid-19 statistics after moves to suppress such information prompted accusations of authoritarian skulduggery designed to cover up the crisis.