Category Archives: Brazil

Global report: Fauci warns of ‘needless death’ as WHO urges vigilance in lifting lockdowns

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Health body says coronavirus restrictions must be eased carefully; Iran to reopens mosques; China reports one new case

The World Health Organization has called on countries to show “extreme vigilance” when loosening Covid-19 restrictions as the top US infectious diseases expert, Anthony Fauci, warned that prematurely reopening the American economy would cause “needless suffering and death”.

The WHO’s emergencies chief, Michael Ryan, has hailed the gradual lifting of coronavirus lockdowns in some countries whose death and infection rates were dropping, as a sign of “hope”, but he cautioned that “extreme vigilance is required”.

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Brazilian court lifts restrictions on gay and bisexual men giving blood

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Supreme court decision hailed as victory for LGBT community

Brazil’s supreme court has overturned rules that limit gay and bisexual men from donating blood in a decision considered a human rights victory for LGBT+ people in the country.

The move came as more nations review restrictions on blood donations imposed during the 1980s HIV/Aids crisis, with some countries applying blanket bans, some have waiting periods after gay sex, and others – like Italy – having no limitations.

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Brazil’s President Bolsonaro must ‘drastically change course’ on Covid-19, says The Lancet

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British medical journal’s editorial says the Brazilian president’s disregard for lockdown measures is damaging

The biggest threat to Brazil’s ability to successfully combat the spread of the coronavirus and tackle the unfolding public health crisis is the country’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, according to the British medical journal The Lancet.

In an editorial, The Lancet said his disregard for and flouting of lockdown measures was sowing confusion across Brazil, which reported a record number of Covid-19 deaths on Friday, and is fast emerging as one of the world’s coronavirus hot spots.

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Brazil using coronavirus to cover up assaults on Amazon, warn activists

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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.

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Greta Thunberg and children’s group hit back at attempt to throw out climate case

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Brazil, France and Germany say UN can’t hear complaint against five countries of flouting child rights to clean air

Greta Thunberg and a group of other children have pushed forward their legal complaint at the UN against countries they accuse of endangering children’s wellbeing through the climate crisis, despite attempts to have it thrown out.

The 16 children, including the Swedish environmental activist, lodged a legal case with the UN committee on the rights of the child against Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany and Turkey last September.

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‘For the lives of our mothers’: Covid-19 sparks fight for maids’ rights in Brazil

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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.

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‘We are on the eve of a genocide’: Brazil urged to save Amazon tribes from Covid-19

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Open letter by photojournalist Sebastião Salgado and global figures warns disease could decimate indigenous peoples

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”.

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Jair Bolsonaro wants football to start up again despite Covid-19 deaths in Brazil

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  • 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”.

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Germany and Spain ease lockdown as Eurozone slumps 3.8% – as it happened

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This blog is now closed.

We’ve launched a brand new blog at the link below. Follow me there for the latest coronavirus news from around the world, live:

Related: Coronavirus live news: Trump claims to have evidence virus started in Wuhan lab as UK is 'past the peak'

Hello, Helen Sullivan with you now. I’ll have the blog for the next few hours, so please do get in touch on Twitter @helenrsullivan.

Here are the key developments from the last few hours:

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‘Utter disaster’: Manaus fills mass graves as Covid-19 hits the Amazon

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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.

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‘This moment is leaving a mark on me’: framing Rio under Covid-19’s shadow

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Nicoló Lanfranchi arrived in Brazil to make a film about traditional medicine and ended up charting a tragedy that acquired a deeply personal dimension

Photographing a funeral is never easy, no matter how professional the photographer, and even more so amid a pandemic. But for Nicoló Lanfranchi, capturing the burial of Covid-19 victim Elizabeth Baez, 82, which took place this month at the São João Batista cemetery in Rio de Janeiro, was especially difficult.

As he photographed the gravediggers in protective clothing with Elizabeth’s son Henrique, 49, the only mourner allowed, watching on from behind a mask, Lanfranchi thought of his own father, Piero. At 72, Piero was in intensive care with Covid-19 in a hospital in Voghera, in Lombardy, northern Italy – one of the worst-affected places on Earth.

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‘So what?’: Bolsonaro shrugs off Brazil’s rising coronavirus death toll

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Outrage at president’s response to news that more than 5,000 people have lost their lives

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?”

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Jair Bolsonaro faces inquiry into claims of meddling with police

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Brazil’s top court approves investigation into explosive allegations against president

The political whirlwind convulsing Brazilian politics has intensified with the supreme court approving an investigation into explosive allegations that the president, Jair Bolsonaro, illegally attempted to interfere in the federal police.

“The president of the republic … is also subject to the laws, just like any other of the country’s citizens,” the supreme court judge Celso de Mello noted in his decision on Monday night.

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Brazilians take part in pot-banging protests against Bolsonaro’s coronavirus response – video

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People protest against the Brazilian president after the resignation of popular minister Sérgio Moro. There were calls for Bolsonaro’s impeachment and an investigation into claims he had improperly interfered in the country’s federal police.

Bolsonaro denied claims from his outgoing justice minister that he had sought to appoint a new federal police chief in order to gain access to secret intelligence reports


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Rio’s favelas count the cost as deadly spread of Covid-19 hits city’s poor

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The coronavirus was probably brought to Brazil by rich returning holidaymakers but it is threatening to explode in marginal communities

In many ways, Washington Castro was a typical resident of Rocinha, the immense redbrick favela that towers over Rio de Janeiro’s Atlantic coast.

Industrious, God-fearing and the offspring of migrants from Brazil’s parched and impoverished north-east, he supported two young children by working two separate jobs and wore a suit and tie when attending his local church.

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Coronavirus live news: Brazil’s health system on verge of collapse, medics warn

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Leader of US group peddling bleach as ‘miracle’ cure wrote to Trump before remarks; Australia and New Zealand mark Anzac Day from driveways

I’ll hand over to my colleagues in London shortly. In the meantime catch up with the most recent developments with our ‘Coronavirus: at a glance’ here.

Related: Coronavirus latest: at a glance

Thailand reported 53 new coronavirus cases and the death of a 48-year-old Thai man who was infected with the virus along with four other family members.

Of the new cases, three were linked to previous cases, one had no known links, and 42 are migrant workers who have been under quarantine at an immigration detention centre in the southern province of Songkhla.

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Brazilian government in turmoil after justice minister resigns

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President Jair Bolsonaro denies he sought to influence federal police inquiries

Brazil’s government has been plunged into turmoil after the resignation of one of Jair Bolsonaro’s most powerful ministers sparked protests, calls for the president’s impeachment and an investigation into claims he had improperly interfered in the country’s federal police.

In a rambling televised address late on Friday, Brazil’s embattled president denied claims from his outgoing justice minister Sérgio Moro that he had sought to appoint a new federal police chief in order to gain access to secret intelligence reports – for reasons that remain murky.

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Bolsonaro won’t help with coronavirus, so Brazil’s favelas are helping themselves – video

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Brazil’s President Bolsonaro has described coronavirus as a “little flu” and resisted lockdown measures even as the death toll rises. But in Rio’s poorest favelas, where people live in overcrowded conditions and lack proper sanitation, they are bracing for the worst. Buba Aguiar is an activist in Acari who is taking matters into her own hands, soliciting online donations to buy food parcels and basic coronavirus kit - soap, masks - for her neighbours who cannot afford to stop working and stay at home. As Acari records its first coronavirus death, we follow Buba through a typical day fighting to help her community in the face of government inaction.

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Lockdowns leave poor Latin Americans with impossible choice: stay home or feed families

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Families struggle to maintain coronavirus restrictions as they seek to stay afloat: ‘My fear is my children going hungry’

Leaders across Latin America have ordered their citizens indoors as they struggle to tame the coronavirus.

But for Liliana Pérez, an Argentinian single mother of six, staying at home is a pipe dream.

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Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro denounced for joining pro-dictatorship rally

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Far-right president deemed ‘deplorable’ for flouting social distancing rules again – while coughing repeatedly – to bolster protests amid coronavirus

Former presidents, politicians and newspaper editorial boards have lined up to denounce the “moronic” and “anti-democratic” behaviour of Brazil’s far-right leader after he hit the streets to egg on protesters demanding a return to military dictatorship.

As the number of deaths caused by Covid-19 rose to nearly 2,500 on Sunday, Jair Bolsonaro left his presidential palace in Brazil’s capital, Brasília, to fraternize with flag-waving radicals.

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