Category Archives: Brazil

Coronavirus live news: South America is now pandemic’s epicentre, says WHO

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Madrid and Barcelona to ease lockdown as Spain’s death toll stays under 100 again; 660,000 people forced to flee homes during crisis despite UN global ceasefire call

Peru has extended its state of emergency until the end of June with only a very partial lifting of its lockdown as infections continue to climb despite more than two months of confinement.

Peru is the second-worst affected Latin American country, with more than 111,000 cases and a death toll of 3,148, according to official figures.

It’s not just an extension ... there is a strategy to combat the virus. This disease will not beaten in a short time. It’s not a 100m sprint, it’s a marathon.

Over the course of the last 60 days we have made great efforts but we have to make another qualitative jump in the health sector.

France regrets a British decision to impose a quarantine on people arriving from mainland Europe and stands ready to impose reciprocal measures, the Agence France-Presse news agency has quoted the country’s interior ministry as saying.

The UK’s home secretary Priti Patel announced earlier on Friday that travellers arriving in the UK from 8 June will have to tell the authorities where they will be staying and face spot checks to ensure they quarantine themselves for 14 days.

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‘If I don’t have sex I’ll die of hunger’: Covid-19 crisis for Rio’s trans sex workers

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Brazil is one of the world’s most dangerous countries for transgender people. For trans sex workers, the pandemic has intensified the risk

  • All photographs by Ian Cheibub

Social distancing is keeping people off the streets of central Rio de Janeiro. And that has created serious challenges for its trans sex workers, who have seen their clientele, and their income, melt away.

“You can see what it’s like: empty streets, shops closed, the fallen economy ” says Elba Tavares, 44, from Paraíba state in north-east Brazil. “I am no longer in that rush of prostitution but yes, I sell my body.” But, she says: “There are very few customers.”

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Bolsonaro greets anti-lockdown protesters as coronavirus cases rise in Brazil – video

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The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, greeted coronavirus lockdown protesters after his country's total number of Covid-19 cases surpassed 230,000. Bolsonaro, a rightwing populist leader, has been critical of physical distancing and lockdown measures implemented by Brazil's state governments. 'Unemployment, hunger and misery will be the future of those who support the tyranny of total isolation,' Bolsonaro tweeted


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‘Instead of doctors, they send police to kill us’: locked-down Rio faces deadly raids

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Covid-19 quarantine has not stopped police from storming favelas, with 13 killed in the latest operation

Maria Diva do Nascimento was worried as she set off for her job at one of Rio de Janeiro’s biggest hospitals wearing a face mask she hoped would keep her alive.

It had been two days since she had heard from her son Allyson, a 20-year-old drug trafficker whose job made social isolation impossible.

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Covid-19 cases in Brazil surpass Italy as virus surges in Latin America

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Mexico and Peru struggle to contain outbreaks while deaths in Spain fall to two-month low

Confirmed Covid-19 cases in Brazil have surpassed the total in Italy and are surging in Mexico and Peru as Latin America struggles to contain its fast-growing coronavirus outbreak.

Spain announced that 87 people had died there in the 24 hours to Sunday morning, the first time the figure has been below 100 in more than two months and a sign the virus is being contained in western Europe as it continues to spread aggressively in Russia, India and parts of Africa.

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Trump, Putin and Bolsonaro have been complacent. Now the pandemic has made them all vulnerable

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The world’s strongmen may well end up paying a political price for their cynicism and incompetence

If Boris Johnson is mishandling the pandemic, he is not alone. Falsely claiming everything is under control, dodging responsibility, hiding from public view, exploiting the crisis for political gain, mounting artificial distractions and blaming the media: these are common behaviour patterns exhibited by some of the world’s most powerful – and shifty – leaders.

Will they pay a price for their lethal incompetence and cynicism? It’s possible some will, though it may take a while. The pandemic is changing political calculations around the globe. Leaders who looked invulnerable suddenly appear less so. That in turn could shift the strategic calculus and alter the balance of power between countries in ways both unexpected and permanent.

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‘Hubs of infection’: how Covid-19 spread through Latin America’s markets

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Authorities have struggled to enforce social distancing at the trading centres. At one Lima market, 79% of vendors had coronavirus

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.

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‘The ship is sinking’: Bolsonaro battles to block foul-mouthed cabinet video

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A partial transcript of the meeting in Brasília offers a glimpse of the paranoia and ideological obsessions of Brazil’s president

The coronavirus pandemic has halted production of Brazil’s steamy telenovela soap operas – but one small-screen blockbuster is on everyone’s lips.

A two-hour video of a heated and expletive-ridden cabinet meeting chaired by President Jair Bolsonaro last month has become the subject of an extraordinary political arm-wrestle, exposing the intrigues and eccentricities at the centre of Brazilian power.

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Global report: Trump threat to cut trade ties over Covid-19 branded ‘lunacy’ by Chinese media

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President says he doesn’t want to speak to counterpart Xi; Brazil passes 200,000 infections; Baltic travel ‘bubble’ begins

An escalation of rhetoric between Donald Trump and China over the coronavirus pandemic has sparked concerns that a trade deal between the nations is in peril, as Chinese state media dismissed as “lunacy” a suggestion by the US president that he could “cut off relations” with Beijing.

The US president said he was very disappointed with China’s failure to contain Covid-19 in an interview with Fox Business news. Trump said the pandemic had cast a pall over his January trade deal with Beijing and that he had no interest in speaking to President Xi Jinping at the moment.

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‘We wrap services around women’: Brazil’s innovative domestic violence centre

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With violence against women endemic in the country, new initiatives are desperately needed but slow to arrive

Lucas da Silva* sits in a cell while he waits to hear from the court what will happen to him.

The 33-year-old is not in a prison, but at Casa da Mulher Brasileira (“house of the Brazilian woman”), a centre for survivors of violence in Campo Grande, central Brazil, that is open 24/7.

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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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