The Guardian’s picture editors select photo highlights from around the world
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‘Stark contrast’: how Covid pass is helping Denmark open up
The ‘coronapas’ has enabled places such as bars, restaurants and museums to welcome people back
Outside Forum, a concert venue turned coronavirus test centre in Copenhagen’s university district, the queue was starting to build up before a sunny Labour Day weekend.
As he waited, Casper Beckers, 25, was monitoring the WhatsApp group where the night’s festivities were being planned, starting with a board game bar, then cocktails.
Continue reading...Seven killed as security forces open fire on protesters in Myanmar
Protests against military rule were some of the biggest in days after a spell of dwindling crowds
Security forces in Myanmar have opened fire on some of the biggest protests against military rule in days, killing seven people, media reported.
The protests, after a spell of dwindling crowds and what appeared to be more restraint by the security forces, were coordinated with demonstrations in Burmese communities around the world to mark what organisers called “the global Myanmar spring revolution”.
Continue reading...‘They knew we weren’t giving oxygen’: a Delhi doctor’s week of horror
Dr Chahat Verma saw five patients die in a day as India’s Covid crisis overwhelms hospitals
During the past week, when oxygen was periodically running out at Ganga Ram hospital, one thing Dr Chahat Verma found unbearable was the look on the faces of patients when the oxygen saturation levels of another patient in the ward plunged.
“They’d lie there, watching the patient gasping, unable to breathe, and they knew we weren’t giving oxygen because there wasn’t any. The look in their eyes was one of pure terror. They knew it could be their turn next,” she said.
Continue reading...The dancehall divas who set the pace in Egypt’s roaring 20s
Midnight in Cairo tells how the city’s vibrant nightlife was driven by female cabaret entertainers and club entrepreneurs
The birth of the women’s movement in Egypt is not usually associated with music hall singers, dancers and actresses. But it was on the stages of theatres and nightclubs in Cairo, in the roaring 20s, that early feminists first asserted themselves, a new book will argue.
The capital’s biggest stars were independent, transgressive Arabic-speaking women who, in the 1920s, were seeking to redefine their place in the world, according to Raphael Cormack, the author of Midnight in Cairo, out on 6 May.
Continue reading...Mitt Romney booed while speaking at Utah Republican convention – video
Mitt Romney was loudly booed at the Utah Republican party convention on Saturday, and called a 'traitor' and a 'communist' as he tried to speak. 'Aren’t you embarrassed?' the Utah senator asked the crowd of 2,100 delegates at the Maverik Center in West Valley City. 'I’m a man who says what he means, and you know I was not a fan of our last president’s character issues.'
Continue reading...Israel holds day of mourning for 45 crush disaster victims
Questions raised about accountability for deaths at Jewish religious festival at mystic’s tomb
Israel observed a day of mourning on Sunday for 45 people crushed to death at a Jewish religious festival, with flags lowered to half-mast and questions raised about accountability for one of the country’s worst civilian disasters.
In accordance with Jewish tradition, funerals were held with as little delay as possible. More than 20 of the victims of Friday’s disaster on Mount Meron were buried overnight after official identification was completed.
Continue reading...‘We’re all Ayuso’: lockdown sceptic poised for victory in Madrid election
Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s mix of bluntness, defiance and appeals to far-right voters appears set to pay off
The late lunchers who linger over coffee and wine on the terraces of Calle Ponzano, Madrid, sit beneath banners bemoaning the neighbourhood’s noise levels and among posters bearing the capital’s most ubiquitous face.
From the windows of many of the bars and restaurants that line the bustling street – and from the walls of metro stations across they city – stare the eyes of Isabel Díaz Ayuso, regional president of Madrid, scourge of Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist-led coalition government, and unofficial patron saint of a hefty proportion of the region’s hospitality industry. Her campaign posters and letters feature little more than her image and the single word libertad. Freedom.
Continue reading...SpaceX returns four astronauts to Earth in darkness
Capsule parachutes into Gulf of Mexico at 3am, the first night-time US crew splashdown since 1968
SpaceX safely returned four astronauts from the International Space Station on Sunday, making the first US crew splashdown in darkness since the Apollo 8 moonshot.
The Dragon capsule parachuted into the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Panama City, Florida, just before 3am, ending the second astronaut flight for Elon Musk’s company. It was an express trip home, lasting just six and a half hours.
Continue reading...Political chaos and poverty leave South America at virus’s mercy
President Jair Bolsonaro’s prediction that the crisis was nearing an end was misguided in Brazil and many of its neighbours
South America produced some of the most horrific episodes of the pandemic last year, with mass graves dug in the Brazilian Amazon and bodies dumped on pavements in the Ecuadorian city of Guayaquil. But at the end of 2020 there was some hope that with the onset of vaccination the worst might have passed. Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, even claimed the crisis had reached its “tail-end” in December.
Such predictions have proved grotesquely misguided. Brazil’s death toll has since more than doubled to more than 400,000, after an explosion of infections caused a catastrophic healthcare collapse. At least 100,000 Brazilians have died in the last 36 days and 100,000 more are expected to lose their lives before July.
Continue reading...Act now to prevent oxygen shortage in Covid-hit countries, say campaigners
Focus on vaccines and tests has been obscuring the need for oxygen in low- and middle-income countries
The scenes in India of families desperately searching for oxygen for critically ill Covid patients will be repeated in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and other countries in Africa and around the world unless a significant international effort is made to ensure all countries have good oxygen supplies, campaigners have said.
The focus on vaccines and tests, while important, has been obscuring the need for oxygen, which is cheap and readily available in high-income countries but in short supply elsewhere, they say. Before India, there was similarly shocking footage from Manaus in Brazil where distressed relatives pleaded for oxygen to keep a family member alive.
Continue reading...Biden and Xi talk of a clash of civilisations. But the real shared goal is dominance | Richard McGregor
The US president has challenged the idea that the ‘east is rising, the west declining’. Instead, he insists that America’s day is far from done
Finally, we have arrived, not at a clash of civilisations, but at the clash of civilisations. Or so President Joe Biden’s address to a joint session of Congress would have you believe. The US versus China. The west versus the east. Democracy versus autocracy. Biden’s speech last week was rich in laying down markers for Washington in the contest of the century.
“They’re going to write about this point in history,” Biden told a gathering of US television news anchors before his speech, in remarks later released by the White House. “Not about any of us in here, but about whether or not democracy can function in the 21st century.”
Continue reading...Glacial lakes threaten millions with flooding as planet heats up
More than 12,000 deaths have already been attributed to glacial lake outburst floods worldwide
An increasing number of people are being threatened by flooding caused by glacial lakes bursting, scientists have warned.
As the planet warms and glaciers recede, meltwater accumulates and forms lakes, often as a result of ice or moraine acting as a dam. Since 1990, the volume, area and number of these glacial lakes has increased by 50% globally. When these lakes become too full there is a risk that they may breach or overflow, releasing huge volumes of water and causing catastrophic flooding.
Continue reading...Decline in US Covid vaccinations presents new problem: how to shrink operations
With less than one-third of Americans fully vaccinated, health authorities switch from mass vaccination clinics to outreach campaigns
A decline in daily Covid-19 vaccination rates has left US public health authorities with a new problem – how to effectively shrink operations.
In the campaign to immunize all American adults against the coronavirus, most of the difficulties to date have involved overwhelming demand and restricted supply. Now, with less than one-third of Americans fully vaccinated, local public health authorities described a sense of whiplash as they pivot from mass vaccination clinics to outreach campaigns, all within a couple of weeks.
Continue reading...Thousands mark May Day with rallies in France, Spain and Germany
Police in Paris fire teargas as protesters in trade union-led march smash windows of bank branches
Thousands rallied on Saturday across France and Spain to hold May Day rallies in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic as police scuffled with protesters in Paris and fired teargas.
A police source told AFP that far-left “black bloc” protesters had repeatedly tried to block the trade union-led march in the French capital, with 34 people detained.
Continue reading...Colorado woman killed in rare black bear attack, authorities say
- Boyfriend of 39-year-old victim finds body near Durango
- Officials say sow and two cubs found and killed near scene
A 39-year-old Colorado woman died in an apparent black bear attack, just the fourth fatal mauling in the state since records began in 1960, authorities said on Saturday.
Related: Montana guide mauled to death in grizzly bear attack outside Yellowstone
Continue reading...Mexico expects US to send 5m more Covid vaccine doses, president says
- Mexican production of AstraZeneca jab suffers setbacks
- López Obrador: “it’s probable that they’ll help us with a loan’
Mexica’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said on Friday the US will probably send his country 5m more doses of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine, as the company admitted production in Central and South America had suffered multiple setbacks.
Related: US cites Indian variant in implementing travel ban from Tuesday
Continue reading...Two pandemics: as we ease up, virus sweeps the world’s poor
Latin America and Africa face new wave as politicians and scientists urge rescue packages
World leaders have been warned that unless they act with extreme urgency, the Covid-19 pandemic will overwhelm health services in many nations in South America, Asia, and Africa over the next few weeks.
Only billions of pounds of aid and massive exports of vaccines can halt a humanitarian catastrophe that is now unfolding rapidly across the planet, scientists and world health experts said.
Continue reading...Riot police break up illegal party in Brussels park using tear gas and water cannon – video
Clashes erupted as riot police in Belgium used tear gas and water cannon to disperse revellers at an illegal party in Brussels' Bois de la Cambre park.
The event, dubbed 'La Boum 2', was a sequel to the fake festival arranged as an April Fools' Day joke at the same park on 1 April – and was held in defiance of the government's Covid-19 restrictions. A collective called 'L'abîme Team', the organiser of the event on social media, unsuccessfully tried to seek permission for the gathering, local media reported.
On 23 April, Belgium pressed ahead with plans to allow restaurant and cafe terraces to reopen on 8 May despite warnings from health officials that hospital saturation was starting to resemble that of Italy at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. From 8 May, up to 50 people will be also allowed to attend an outdoor event. More than 23,000 people out of in Belgium's 11 million population have died of Covid-19, with about 3,500 daily infections
Continue reading...George Floyd: New Jersey teacher suspended over rant to pupils
- Profanity-laced comments to pupils aired by local TV
- Howard Zlotkin refers to Floyd as a ‘criminal’
A New Jersey high school teacher was suspended with pay for making profanity-laced comments to students about George Floyd.
Related: Teargas, flash-bangs: the devastating toll of police tactics on Minnesota children
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