Trade adviser also claims without foundation that the virus ‘was a product of the Chinese Communist party’
White House adviser Peter Navarro claimed Donald Trump was being “tongue-in-cheek” when he claimed to have asked public health officials to slow down coronavirus testing.
Related: Donald Trump sows division and promises 'greatness' at Tulsa rally flop
Continue reading...Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, was under pressure on Sunday after claiming hundreds of thousands of people had applied for tickets to the president’s return to the campaign trail in Tulsa, only for the rally to attract a sparse crowd.
Related: Trump 'played' by K-pop fans and TikTok users who disrupted Tulsa rally
Continue reading...Pyotr Verzilov seized at his apartment by unidentified men who broke down his door
The Russian state news agency Tass has said that a prominent member of the protest group Pussy Riot has been detained by the police anti-extremism division.
The Mediazona website reported that Pyotr Verzilov was seized at his apartment by unidentified men who broke down the door on Sunday morning.
Continue reading...More than 20 people arrested after police injured and shops looted in late-night rampage
German authorities have expressed shock over a rampage of an “unprecedented scale” in the centre of Stuttgart, where hundreds of partygoers ran riot overnight and into Sunday, breaking shop windows, plundering and attacking police.
Two dozen people, half of them German nationals, were provisionally arrested and police reported 19 officers hurt. “They were unbelievable scenes that have left me speechless. In my 46 years of police service, I have never experienced this,” said the Stuttgart police chief, Franz Lutz.
Continue reading...Police in the German city of Stuttgart have said 20 people were arrested and four police officers injured after a drugs check in the city centre sparked attacks on officers and police vehicles and widespread vandalism of stores. The disturbance started as an apparent reaction to the police’s search for drugs, as groups of people partied in a central park late on Saturday night. According to German TV reports, people then attacked store fronts in a nearby shopping street, tearing up paving stones and smashing store windows
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...One factory owner tells how coronavirus cancellations by UK brands have seen him struggle to pay wages
As high streets across England opened this week and hundreds of people jostled through the doors of clothing shops, thousands of miles away in Chittagong, Bangladesh, Mostafiz Uddin is worrying about how to pay his workers’ wages.
At Denim Expert Ltd, the sustainable clothing company he founded in 2009 as a sustainable apparels clothing company, hundreds of boxes of jeans are crammed against walls and packed to the ceiling. These boxes contain 38,000 pairs of Burton jeans, worth more than £200,000 that were ready for shipment in early March. But as the UK went into lockdown that month, an email pinged into his inbox that tore his life apart.
Continue reading...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
We have now closed this blog, but you can stay up to date on all our live coverage of coronavirus on our new global blog below:
Related: Coronavirus live news: World Health Organization reports record daily global case increase
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.
Continue reading...Chile raises deaths to more than 7,000; six on Trump campaign test positive ahead of rally; Spain opens up for British tourists
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.
Continue reading...Omar Abdulaziz, who was close to murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi, told of threat posed by Saudi Arabia
A prominent Saudi dissident who is living in exile in Canada said he was recently warned by Canadian authorities that he was a “potential target” of Saudi Arabia and that he needed to take precautions to protect himself.
Omar Abdulaziz, a 29-year-old activist who had a close association with Jamal Khashoggi, the murdered Washington Post journalist, told the Guardian that he believed he was facing a threat to his safety and that the Canadians had credible information about a possible plan to harm him.
Continue reading...Pressure group claims disproportionate number of black people held for longer periods to ‘reduce black and brown migration to UK’
Black people are detained significantly longer than white people inside the UK’s immigration detention system, prompting fresh claims of “institutional racism”.
Although the Home Office does not record ethnicity data for detainees, analysis of nationalities of those recently held within the immigration detention estate found that citizens from countries with predominantly black and brown populations are held for substantially longer periods than those from predominantly white countries.
Continue reading...The ex-national security adviser is no hero or martyr and certainly no prose stylist either. What counts is how damaging his memoir will be
John Bolton’s near-600-page tome is the most damning written account by a Trump administration alumnus, the one that stands to haunt the president come November. In the author’s judgment, “I don’t think he’s fit for office. I don’t think he has the competence to carry out the job.” Joe Biden couldn’t say it better himself.
Related: John Bolton: judge declines to block tell-all Trump book
Continue reading...Testing a ‘double-edged sword’, says Trump; Chile death toll nearly doubles; Australian state ‘absolutely at risk’ of second peak
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.
Continue reading...Brazil passes 1 million infections; Australia struggles with new cases; Greta Thunberg says similar urgency needed for climate change as for Covid-19
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.
Continue reading...Failure to establish key scrutiny committee is also criticised as ‘unprecedented underhand behaviour’
The government’s apparent refusal to release a report into Russian infiltration in the UK and to delay establishing a key scrutiny committee has been condemned as unprecedented and “utterly reprehensible”.
The Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) has not met since before the general election in December – – its longest break since it was established in 1994 – and critics say the government has sat on the committee’s report into Russian interference for nine months.
Continue reading...Partial draft of legislation shows Beijing intends to set up national security agency in city
Beijing has released details of a controversial anti-sedition law under which China will set up a national security agency in Hong Kong and maintain jurisdiction in “certain circumstances”.
A partial draft of the legislation widely seen as a blow to the city’s autonomy was released on Saturday, paving the way for the central government to ram the law through despite opposition within Hong Kong and international condemnation.
Continue reading...
It has been seven weeks since Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis took a coronavirus “victory lap”, pressing ahead with a swift reopening program while berating the media for a “doom and gloom” approach he said bore little relation to reality.
“We haven’t seen an explosion of new cases,” DeSantis insisted during a 29 April news conference, a day on which the state’s Covid-19 tally increased by 347.
Robert Mueller and his investigators thought it possible Donald Trump lied to them about conversations with Roger Stone, according to previously redacted sections of the special counsel’s report which were were released on Friday night.
The release, part of litigation over portions of Mueller’s findings which remain secret, was largely overshadowed by US attorney general William Barr’s announcement of the resignation of the attorney for the southern district of New York, Geoffrey Berman, who then denied he was stepping down.
Continue reading...Special agents in America have busted a smuggling ring on the US-Mexico border, but their haul is not drugs or the immigrants that President Donald Trump rails against with his “big beautiful wall”.
These smugglers were trafficking something all together less high profile – so-called “living rock cactus” that grows uniquely on the arid plains of Big Bend national park in Texas.
Continue reading...The World Health Organization has announced the coronavirus pandemic is accelerating and more than 150,000 cases of Covid-19 were reported in one day on Thursday, the highest single-day number so far.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director general, told reporters in Geneva refugees were particularly at risk from the pandemic and that nearly half of the newly reported cases were in the Americas, with significant numbers from South Asia and the Middle East
Clothing factory workers in Bangladesh were hit twice by Covid-19, once when their factories closed, and again when global retailers cancelled orders
Nazmin Nahar, a 26-year-old garment worker and mother of two in Dhaka, Bangladesh, is living on borrowed rice. She hasn’t had the wages to pay for food or rent for more than two months.
Even though the hours were long and the targets relentless, Nahar had been happy working at Magpie Knitwear, where she earned £150 a month, making clothes for UK brands such as Burton and H&M. Then, in late March, Bangladesh went into lockdown and the factory closed. When it reopened on 4 April, Nahar was told she had no job to go back to.
Continue reading...