Rally to demand government action on climate crisis is first worldwide since start of pandemic
Hundreds of thousands of people in 99 countries have taken part in a coordinated global climate strike demanding urgent action to tackle the ecological crisis.
The strike on Friday, the first worldwide climate action since the coronavirus pandemic hit, is taking place weeks before the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow, UK.
Continue reading...Masks will no longer be required outdoors as government says country could be at ‘end of pandemic’
Masks will no longer be required outdoors in Argentina as the country’s government announced the lifting of almost all Covid restrictions following a dramatic fall in Covid cases and deaths in recent months.
“If the numbers of coronavirus infections continue like this, we could say we are experiencing the end of the pandemic,” said presidential cabinet chief Juan Manzur amid a flurry of measures including the return of football matches with stadiums at 50% capacity starting next month – just in time for the 3 October classic super-match between Argentina’s two longtime rivals Boca and River Plate teams.
“Today for us the Covid pandemic ends to a large extent,” government Covid adviser Luis Camera said in a radio interview. “The pandemic ends but the virus continues,” he said.
The announcements were met with cautious optimism by doctors on the frontline. “We’re at a very good place: at the hospital where I work we have not admitted a single Covid patient to intensive care for three weeks now – but I would not dare say the pandemic is over,” said intensive care doctor Arnaldo Dubin, a researcher and professor at La Plata University.
Related: ‘People die in less than a week’: Covid wave catches Argentina off-guard
Continue reading...Campaigners fear ban emboldens anti-choice governments as more aggressive opposition, better organised and funded, spreads from US
The new anti-abortion law in Texas is a “terrifying” reminder of the fragility of hard-won rights, pro-choice activists have said, as they warn of a “more aggressive, much better organised [and] better funded” global opposition movement.
Pro-choice campaigners have seen several victories in recent years, including in Ireland, Argentina and, most recently, Mexico, where the supreme court ruled last week that criminalising abortion was unconstitutional. Another is hoped for later this month when the tiny enclave of San Marino, landlocked within Italy, holds a highly charged referendum.
Continue reading...Brazil’s World Cup qualifier with Argentina in São Paulo was suspended after just seven minutes as health authorities entered the field of play amid farcical scenes at Neo Química Arena. Three Premier League players - the Aston Villa goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez and Tottenham’s Cristian Romero and Giovani Lo Celso - were on the pitch while a fourth, Aston Villa’s Emiliano Buendía, was in the stands. The quartet had apparently violated Brazilian regulations stating that travellers who have been in the UK, South Africa or India during the previous 14 days are forbidden from entering the country. The bizarre scenes saw officials, accompanied by police officers, march on to the pitch and bring proceedings to a halt.
A World Cup qualifier between Argentina and Brazil was abandoned amid farcical, confused scenes after four Premier League players apparently violated Brazilian regulations designed to contain a Covid outbreak that has killed more than 580,000 Brazilians.
The Aston Villa goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez and Tottenham’s Cristian Romero and Giovani Lo Celso were all on the pitch at São Paulo’s Neo Química Arena on Sunday afternoon when federal police and officials from Brazil’s health agency, Anvisa, took to the field to halt play after just seven minutes.
Continue reading...A rare encounter was caught on video at Puerto Madryn, Argentina when a southern rIght whale seemingly plays with a woman on a paddleboard and pushes the board gently forward, observing its movement as it swims directly beneath it.
"They are rare moments, it is something that is prohibited," said Oscar Comes, a local water-sports tourism operator. "It isn't like you can go in a kayak, standup board, a boat, or whatever, to look for the animal."
Continue reading...Satellite images confirm snow decrease spurred by climate crisis as glaciers recede and communities reliant on mountain water face shortages
The Andes mountain range is facing historically low snowfall this year during a decade-long drought that scientists link to global heating.
Scant rain and snowfall are leaving many of the majestic mountains between Ecuador and Argentina with patchy snow cover or no snow at all as dry, brown earth lies exposed.
Continue reading...This is the moment a house fell into the sea in the resort town of Mar del Tuyú in Argentina. The footage, captured by a neighbour on 28 July, shows waves crashing against the property as part of it breaks away and falls into the water. The owners of the property were not at home when the incident occurred
Continue reading...Moscow owes 18.5m doses, leaving Argentina in a ‘very critical situation’ with only 12% fully vaccinated, leaked letter reveals
Argentina’s gamble on Sputnik V vaccine has left it in a “very critical situation” because of Russia’s failure to fulfill delivery commitments, according to an official letter to Moscow leaked on Thursday.
Russia owes Argentina 18.5m doses of its Sputnik V jab, over two-thirds of them vital second-component doses.
Only 12% of Argentinians are fully vaccinated so far, partly due to failed Sputnik deliveries of its second component. Another 37% have received only a single dose.
This compares disastrously with double-dose vaccination rates of over 60% in neighbouring Chile and Uruguay, countries that did not bet so heavily on the Russian vaccine.
Its low two-dose vaccination rate leaves Argentina particularly exposed to the arrival of the Delta variant. Neighbouring Uruguay, meanwhile, has already approved moving to a three-dose regimen.
A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Turkey to Colombia
Continue reading...The dance that depends on what Covid prevents – close physical intimacy – is not only a cultural passion but also now a threatened source of income for many workers. Photographer Anita Pouchard Serra, with support from the National Geographic Society, has been documenting how dancers are surviving the crisis
In a pretty little plaza next to a railway track, there is proof that not even a pandemic can keep us apart.
Five couples lean in, cheek to cheek, marking steps that mirror the circuitous route of life. If there is a map, it rises out of a portable speaker, and the melancholic poetry of a tango.
Continue reading...Clarisa Navas’s film is a confident, visually engaging romance conjuring a world of teenage waiting and wanting
This is an LGBT urban pastoral from film-maker Clarisa Navas, set in a tough barrio in Corrientes province, north-eastern Argentina. Sofia Cabrera plays Iris, a teenage girl who appears to have been excluded from school – although that doesn’t make her lifestyle any more obviously aimless than all the people she’s hanging out with. Iris is obsessed with basketball and spends most of her days loafing around, shooting hoops, talking with her brother and cousins, and chatting with the neighbourhood kids, gay and straight. Then she chances across a charismatic older woman called Renata (Ana Carolina García), who has an elegantly wasted image; Renata has mysteriously been abroad for a while and apparently dances at a local club called Traumatic, where she appears to be on the fringe of sex work. Some are saying that she has HIV – although this may simply be spite. Iris and Renata are drawn to each other and soon they are in love.
Continue reading...Strained and underfunded health systems, economics and misinformation have all led to a surge in deaths
The cold, tired and desperate relatives camped outside the Barrio Obrero general hospital in Asunción don’t need charts or datasets to confirm what they can see with their own eyes.
As Paraguay records the world’s highest daily proportion of Covid deaths, the huddled families wait for news of their loved ones – and for the sudden requests for medicine and supplies that the country’s chronically underfunded health system cannot provide.
Continue reading...The son of the footballing legend is carrying on his father’s quest to trace the children taken from parents murdered by the junta
Diego Armando Maradona Jr, son of the late Argentine football legend, is urging Italians to submit DNA to help the Argentinian government trace hundreds of children who were stolen and their parents murdered by the military junta that controlled the country four decades ago.
Maradona Jr is doing radio interviews in Italy and using his 400,000-strong social media following to broaden the search, which has already seen DNA testing programmes rolled out in Madrid and Rome.
Continue reading...Misjudged comments to prime minister of Spain sought to play up the South American country’s ties with Europe
Argentina’s president, Alberto Fernández, has triggered a Twitter storm and a regional race debate with misjudged comments to visiting Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain that sought to play up the South American country’s ties with Europe.
“The Mexicans came from the Indians, the Brazilians came from the jungle, but we Argentines came from the ships. And they were ships that came from Europe,” Fernández said, referring to the many European migrants who arrived in the country. He later apologized for the comments and said his country’s diversity was something to be proud of.
Continue reading...Vessels primarily from China switch off their tracking beacons to evade detection while they engage in possible illegal fishing
Giant distant-water fishing fleets, primarily from China, are switching off their tracking beacons to evade detection while they engage in a possibly illegal hunt for squid and other lucrative species on the very edge of Argentina’s extensive fishing grounds, according to a new study by Oceana, an international NGO dedicated to ocean conservation.
Every year, vessels crowd together along the limits of Argentina’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) to take advantage of the lucrative fishing grounds.
Related: Cat and mouse on the high seas: on the trail of China's vast squid fleet
Continue reading...The South American Football Confederation (Conmebol) has announced Brazil as the new hosts of this summer’s Copa América, with Argentina replaced just 13 days before the tournament is due to begin.
“The Copa América 2021 will be played in Brazil,” an official Conmebol statement said. “Tournament start and end dates are confirmed. The venues and the fixtures will be announced by Conmebol in the next few hours.”
Continue reading...Newsreader confuses Bill Shakespeare, 81, ‘the first man to get the coronavirus vaccine’ with ‘one of the most important writers in the English language’
In what can only be described as a comedy of errors, an Argentinian TV news channel delivered a stunning, if slightly flawed, scoop on Thursday night when it reported that William Shakespeare, “one of the most important writers in the English language” had died five months after receiving the Covid vaccine.
The gaffe of, well, Shakespearean proportions happened after Noelia Novillo, a newsreader on Canal 26, mixed up the Bard with William “Bill” Shakespeare, an 81-year-old Warwickshire man who became the second person in the world to get the Pfizer vaccine.
Continue reading...Move is part of groundbreaking effort to name 30,000 murdered by regime after 1976 coup
The Argentinian government has sent hundreds of DNA testing kits to its consulates around the world in a groundbreaking effort to put names to unidentified victims murdered in the “Dirty War” waged by the brutal military dictatorship four decades ago.
Last month, the Argentinian authorities, in collaboration with the National Commission for the Right to Identity, the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo movement and investigators from the Argentinian Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF), launched its international Right to Identity campaign, committed to putting a name to every woman, man and child killed by the military junta in Argentina in the 1970s and early 80s.
Continue reading...Data reveals Nepal, Iran and South Africa among 19 countries most at risk of running out as surging Covid cases push supplies to limit
Dozens of countries are facing severe oxygen shortages because of surging Covid-19 cases, threatening the “total collapse” of health systems.
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism analysed data provided by the Every Breath Counts Coalition, the NGO Path and the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) to find the countries most at risk of running out of oxygen. It also studied data on global vaccination rates.
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