The region has seen some of the longest lockdowns in the world but experts are urging countries not to reopen too soon
The scene in Rio de Janeiro was as though much of 2020 had never happened.
The beaches at Ipanema and Copacabana heaved with visitors, the white sand obscured by bronzed bodies, sun loungers and parasols, as locals enjoyed the blistering 38C heat.
Continue reading...Consumers buying chlorine dioxide solution on Amazon platform say they have been drinking fluid despite FDA warnings
Industrial bleach is being sold on Amazon through its product pages which consumers are buying under the mistaken belief that it is a “miracle cure” for Covid-19, despite health warnings from the US Food and Drug Administration that drinking the fluid can kill.
Related: 'Archbishop' of Florida church selling bleach 'miracle cure' arrested with son
Continue reading...Male and female are killed and 14 are injured in shooting in upstate New York
Two people have died and 14 others have been wounded in a mass shooting at a party in Rochester, New York, police said.
A male and a female died in the shooting on Saturday, the interim police chief Mark Simmons told reporters. The wounded people were taken to two different hospitals. Simmons said none of them were reported to have life-threatening injuries.
Continue reading...Covid has forced many people out of workplaces. Some have saved money by moving overseas
When the coronavirus lockdown forced Mason Palmer, 26, to start working from home, the digital content creator had a rethink about where that home was and in July he moved from Bristol to Milan. “I’ve always loved travelling to Italy,” he says. “I was always going over there; it was like an expensive hobby.”
He did not expect his boss to necessarily be on board with his plans and suggested that he move to working for the company, Working Word, on a freelance basis. But the firm was open to the idea and his boss kept him on staff. “Now I’m like the unofficial Milan branch,” he laughs.
Continue reading...Brad Downey says first lady shows contradiction between US’s position on race in 2020
The American artist behind a controversial statue of the US First Lady Melania Trump, unveiled this week in bronze in her native Slovenia, has defended the work as a representation of the contradictions of her husband’s presidency.
Brad Downey, a conceptual artist from Kentucky based in Berlin, said the statue that replaced an earlier wooden carving destroyed in an arson attack in July, was motivated by his “frustrations with the policies of my birth country.”
Continue reading...Donald Trump’s decision to ban downloads of the Chinese-owned platform prompts realignment of tech space
TikTok users in the United States have reacted with a collective shrug to Donald Trump’s decision to ban new downloads of the video-sharing app, but many are already planning an exit to other platforms should the clampdown lead to an outright ban.
“Oh my God! Ok! It’s happening! Everybody stay calm!” TikToker Nick Foster told his 577,000 followers, dubbing a video of himself with audio of actor Steve Carell’s character on the series The Office panicking during a fire alarm.
Continue reading...The move follows a number of clashes with Russian forces now stationed along the Turkish border
The US military has stepped up its deployment of troops and equipment in north-eastern Syria after a rise in tensions with Russia in the region.
US central command “has deployed Sentinel radar, increased the frequency of US fighter patrols over US forces, and deployed bradley fighting vehicles to augment US forces” in the area, which is controlled by the US and its Kurdish allies, spokesman Captain Bill Urban said in a statement.
Continue reading...The supreme court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died of metastatic pancreatic cancer. She was 87 years old.
Ginsburg was the second woman appointed to the court in history and became a liberal icon for her sharp questioning of witnesses and intellectually rigorous defenses of civil liberties, reproductive rights, first amendment rights and equal protections under the law
Continue reading...The supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, arguably the single most important female lawyer in the history of the American republic, has died from complications of metastatic pancreatic cancer. She was 87 years old.
Appointed by Bill Clinton in 1993, Ginsburg was a stalwart of the court’s liberal bloc, which Donald Trump appears now to have the opportunity to confine to a minority for a generation.
Later nicknamed RBG, Ginsburg was an icon, especially for women, and provided an essential vote in watershed rulings that combatted gender discrimination and protected abortion rights, equal pay, civil liberties and privacy rights.
Continue reading...Firefighters in Southern California continue to tackle one of 27 huge wildfires blazing across the state which has already burned more than 21,600 acres (8,741 hectares) of forest.
A firefighter has died while battling the El Dorado fire which has been burning in San Bernardino National Forest since 5 September.
A front of humid and rainy weather has brought some relief to western states that have suffered a historically devastating fire season
Olivia Troye attacks Trump and says he called his own supporters ‘disgusting people’ he no longer had to shake hands with
The coronavirus pandemic moved to the centre of the US election again on Friday, as a former senior official on the White House taskforce turned on Donald Trump.
Related: 'He’s paying attention to people like us': Trump’s messages resonate in Wisconsin
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Kamala Harris, the Democratic party’s vice-presidential candidate, has paid tribute to Ginsburg, calling on the nation to fight for the late justice’s legacy.
Tonight we mourn, we honor, and we pray for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her family. But we also recommit to fight for her legacy.
Doug and I send our heartfelt prayers to Jane and James, and the entire Ginsburg family, particularly on this holy day of Rosh Hashanah. pic.twitter.com/SNyqZCznfv
With the stage set for an epic political battle over who will succeed Ginsburg, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell indicated that the vote will go ahead quickly.
Although McConnell did not give any specific timing, he implied that Trump’s nominee for the vacant position would be put to the vote before the election in November.
Related: Mitch McConnell vows US Senate will push on with Trump's pick to replace Ginsburg
Continue reading...WikiLeaks founder was asked to reveal source of leak damaging to Hillary Clinton, hearing told
Two political figures claiming to represent Donald Trump offered Julian Assange a “win-win” deal to avoid extradition to the US and indictment, a London court has heard.
Under the proposed deal, outlined by Assange’s barrister Jennifer Robinson, the WikiLeaks founder would be offered a pardon if he disclosed who leaked Democratic party emails to his site, in order to help clear up allegations they had been supplied by Russian hackers to help Trump’s election in 2016.
Continue reading...AP review finds no evidence of mass hysterectomies but files show growing allegations of operations women did not fully understand
Sitting across from her lawyer at an immigration detention center in rural Georgia, Mileidy Cardentey Fernandez unbuttoned her jail jumpsuit to show the scars on her abdomen. There were three small, circular marks.
Related: Ice hysterectomy allegations in line with US's long and racist history of eugenics | Moira Donegan
Continue reading...Message from the US embassy comes during long-postponed direct talks between the government and the Taliban
The United States has warned women in Afghanistan that they are at increased risk of attack by extremist groups.
The US embassy in Kabul warned on Thursday that “extremist organisations continue to plan attacks against a variety of targets […], including a heightened risk of attacks targeting female government and civilian workers, including teachers, human rights activists, office workers, and government employees.”
Continue reading...Followers believe that Donald Trump is waging secret war against ritual child abusers
A conspiracy theory that Donald Trump is waging a secret war against an elite who engage in ritual child abuse is growing across UK social media, Guardian analysis has found.
The QAnon conspiracy theory is propelled by an unlikely coalition of spirituality and wellness groups, vigilante “paedophile hunter” networks, pre-existing conspiracy forums, local news pages, pro-Brexit campaigners and the far right.
Continue reading...The most prominent US agency for delivering public health advice on Friday reversed key guidelines about who should get tested for coronavirus that were published just a month ago.
Related: Trump under fire for 'shocking' Covid failures as ex-adviser turns against him
Continue reading...Fellow accuser E Jean Carroll leads chorus of voices supporting former model
A prominent American former magazine columnist who accused Donald Trump of raping her in the 1990s has joined a chorus of voices supporting the latest woman to accuse Trump of sexually assaulting her, Amy Dorris.
Dorris, a former model and actor, said in a Guardian interview published on Thursday that Trump had forced his tongue down her throat and groped her at the 1997 US Open.
Continue reading...This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks with the Guardian’s Washington DC bureau chief David Smith about why Joe Biden is seemingly doing better than Hillary Clinton did in the polls in 2016
This week, the question is: “Why is Biden polling better than Clinton did in 2016?” Polls don’t necessarily determine who will win an election, as anyone who lived through the 2016 election knows – Democrats especially.
However, it is noticeable that Joe Biden has had a consistent lead over Donald Trump for the last 12 months and that when polls are averaged out, he is 6.2% ahead. Around the same time in 2016, Hillary Clinton’s lead over Trump was just 1%. So, what is causing this bump in numbers for Biden?
Continue reading...Donald Trump railed against what he called a 'leftwing revolution' in schools and universities teaching about slavery and colonialism, as he signed an executive order to promote 'patriotic education' in the US. Critics immediately accused the president of attempting to rewrite America's historical legacy of slavery to appeal to his core base of white voters.
'The left has warped, distorted, and defiled the American story,' Trump said at a history conference in Washington DC. 'We want our sons and daughters to know they are the citizens of the most exceptional nation in the history of the world'