Search and rescue crews using dogs combed through neighborhoods left in blackened ruins by massive wildfires burning across three states on Saturday, and U.S. President Donald Trump said he would travel to California to see the devastation first-hand.

Flames have destroyed thousands of homes and a half dozen small towns in the latest outbreak of wildfires that have raged across the western United States this summer, scorching a landscape the size of New Jersey and killing at least 26 people since early August.

But after four days of brutally hot, windy weather, the weekend brought calmer winds blowing inland from the Pacific Ocean, and cooler, moister conditions that helped crews make headway against blazes that had burned unchecked earlier in the week.

At least six people have been killed this week in Oregon, according to the state’s wildfire tracking website. Governor Kate Brown has said that dozens of people remained missing across three counties.

In California, tens of thousands of firefighters were battling 28 major wildfires as of Saturday afternoon, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.  Improving weather conditions had helped them gain a measure of containment over most of the blazes.

The White House said Trump, a Republican, will meet with California officials on Monday. The president has said that western governors bear some of the blame for intense fire seasons in recent years, accusing them of poor forest management.

Trump’s Democratic opponent in the November election, Joe Biden, on Saturday linked the conflagrations to climate change, echoing comments made a day earlier by California Governor Gavin Newsom.

Thick smoke blankets three states

“The debate is over around climate change. Just come to the state of California. Observe it with your own eyes,” Newsom said in a briefing livestreamed from a charred mountainside near Oroville, California.

The Pacific Northwest has since Labor Day endured a string of fierce wildfires that have darkened the sky with thick smoke and ash, creating some of the world’s worst air-quality levels and driving residents indoors.

The small mountain town of Paradise, California, nearly destroyed in 2018 by the deadliest wildfire in state history, posted the world’s worst air quality index reading at 592, according to the PurpleAir monitoring site, as two of the state’s largest blazes burned on either side of it.

More than 4,000 homes and other structures have been incinerated in California alone over the past three weeks.

In southern Oregon, an apocalyptic scene of charred residential subdivisions and trailer parks stretched for miles along Highway 99 south of Medford through the neighboring communities of Phoenix and Talent.

Molalla, a logging community 25 miles (40 km) south of downtown Portland, was an ash-covered ghost town after its more than 9,000 residents were told to evacuate, with only 30 refusing to leave, the city’s fire department said.

Molalla was on the front line of an evacuation zone stretching north to within 3 miles (4.8 km) of downtown Portland. The sheriff in suburban Clackamas County set a 10 p.m.  PDT (0500 on Saturday GMT) curfew to deter “possible increased criminal activity.”

In Portland, the Multnomah County Sheriff chastised residents who had set up their own checkpoints to stop cars after conspiracy theories spread on social media that members of Black Lives Matter or Antifa were lighting fires. Local officials have called those assertions groundless.

“We are removing false claims that the wildfires in Oregon were started by certain groups,” a Facebook spokesman said on Saturday. “This is based on confirmation from law enforcement that these rumors are forcing local fire and police agencies to divert resources from fighting the fires and protecting the public.”

Source: REUTERS

US officials warned Friday of potential “mass” fatalities as more than 20,000 firefighters from across the country battled sprawling deadly wildfires up and down the West Coast.

A prediction of cooler weather offered some hope of respite in coming days, but the true scale of the destruction from dozens of massive blazes in California, Oregon and Washington states remained hard to gauge.

There were 16 deaths confirmed this week, with wide stretches of land still cut off by flames.

“We’re preparing for a mass fatality incident based on what we know and the number of structures that have been lost,” warned Andrew Phelps, director of the office of emergency management in Oregon on Friday.

Oregon defines “mass fatality incident” as one that causes death and suffering which cannot be met by usual individual or community resources, according to the Washington Post.

“We anticipate that number (of deaths) may potentially go up as we get back into areas that have been ravaged by flame and obviously, smoke begins to clear,” warned California governor Gavin Newsom, as he visited a scorched forest near the raging North Complex Fire.

Ten people have been confirmed dead from that blaze in Butte County, which was driven at unprecedented pace toward the city of Oroville earlier in the week by strong, dry winds and soaring temperatures.

But Newsom said the weather “is beginning to cooperate,” with winds settling down and some rain forecast.

In neighboring Oregon, where one million acres (400,000 hectares) have burned and three people are reported dead with dozens still unaccounted for, governor Kate Brown also expressed hope a corner had been turned.

More than 40,000 Oregonians have fled their homes so far, with around half a million under evacuation warnings, Brown told a press conference—clarifying previous higher figures given by state officials.

“The weather system fueling these fires over the past few days has finally broken down,” she said.

“We anticipate cooler air and moisture coming in the next few days, which is really good news.”

Dozens of people remained missing in connection with the fires, Brown said.

Even as the weather forecast offered hope, Newsom painted a grim picture of California as the canary in the climate-change coal mine.

“I’m a little bit exhausted that we have to continue to debate this issue,” he said in televised comments as he toured the damage. “This is a climate damn emergency. This is real, and it’s happening.

“This is the perfect storm.”

He added: “California, folks, is America fast-forward. What we’re experiencing right here is coming to communities all across the United States of America unless we get our act together on climate change, unless we disabuse ourselves of all the BS that’s been spewed by a very small group of people.”

‘Complete loss’

The August Complex Fire this week became by far the biggest recorded blaze in Californian history, ripping through 746,000 acres of dry vegetation in the state’s north, as multiple fires combined.

But it is just one of around 100 large fires on the West Coast, and other rapidly growing blazes closer to populated areas have proven deadlier.

“We are at a complete loss for words right now,” Bobbie Zedaker told the San Francisco Chronicle, after DNA tests proved her missing 16-year-old nephew was among those killed by the North Complex Fire.

Two more people were killed near the rural community of Happy Camp, a Cal Fire spokeswoman told AFP Friday.

But in a mountainous region of central California, close to where the Creek Fire is burning, some members of an indigenous community refused to leave their homes despite evacuation orders.

“I don’t feel it’s going to come this way,” said James Hancock, 52, whose home on the Cold Springs Rancheria Indian Reservation currently has no light, electricity or water.

Huge wildfires are becoming more common, with the World Meteorological Organization saying the five years to 2019 was unprecedented for fires, especially in Europe and North America.

Climate change amplifies droughts which dry out regions, creating ideal conditions for wildfires to spread out of control and inflict huge material and environmental damage.

California has already seen more than 3.1 million acres burn this year—an annual record, approximately the size of Connecticut—with nearly four months of fire season still to come.

Source: AFP

US prosecutors dropped charges Friday against a black man who was tried six times and spent more than 20 years in prison for the same murders.

Curtis Flowers served 23 years for a quadruple murder committed in Mississippi in 1996. He has always maintained his innocence.

The prosecutor in all six trials was ultimately accused last year by the US Supreme Court of trying hard to keep black people off the jury and eventually resigned from the case.

Flowers — who has been sentenced to death four times in the case — was released on bail in December, although another trial was still possible. But on Friday Mississippi’s attorney general dismissed the charges against him.

“I am finally free from the injustice that left me locked in a box for 23 years,” Flowers said in a statement.

“The day I’ve prayed for is here at last.”

Under US law, a suspect acquitted of a crime cannot be tried again. Still, Flowers was tried six times.

His case became well known in a podcast called “In the Dark.”

Each of the convictions and death sentences in the first three trials was overturned by the Mississippi Supreme Court for prosecutorial misconduct. The next two ended in hung juries.

In 2010 Flowers was convicted a final time and sentenced to death.

But this decision was overturned in 2019 by the US Supreme Court because of what it called a prosecutor’s “relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of black individuals.”

That prosecutor, Doug Evans, had been on the case from the outset.

In January he agreed to step down from the case and the state attorney general Lynn Fitch started the proceedings from scratch.

She asked that the case be thrown out, and a judge agreed.

Source: AFP

The US has urged states to get ready for a potential Covid-19 vaccine rollout two days before the presidential election, it emerged Wednesday, as France prepared to present a mammoth spending plan for its virus-hit economy.

Across the world, governments are hoping to announce a vaccine as soon as possible to reopen economies shuttered to contain an illness that has killed more than 850,000 people and infected over 25 million.

In a widely circulated letter, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked states to sweep away red tape that could prevent a network of vaccine distribution centers being “fully operational by Nov. 1, 2020.”

That is two days before voters head to the polls in an election clouded by the virus and the economic crisis it provoked, sparking concerns President Donald Trump’s administration is rushing to have a vaccine before November 3.

“The normal time required to obtain… permits presents a significant barrier to the success of this urgent public health program,” CDC head Robert Redfield told states in the August 27 letter.

“CDC urgently requests your assistance in expediting applications for these distribution facilities.”

Priority will be given to essential workers, national security officials, seniors and members of vulnerable racial and ethnic groups, according to The New York Times.

Three Western drug makers are progressing with their Phase 3 clinical trials, involving tens of thousands of participants.

AstraZeneca is partnering with Oxford University in England while Moderna is collaborating with the US National Institutes of Health. Pfizer and BioNTech are partnering on the third candidate.

– ‘Dangerous’ –

Under normal procedures, test administrators must wait — probably for months — to verify that vaccine candidates work and are safe.

The US Food and Drug Administration however has raised the possibility that a vaccine might be given emergency authorization before the end of trials.

The FDA has faced mounting criticism from the medical community that it is bowing to political pressure from Trump, who is behind Democratic challenger Joe Biden in the polls and has said one might be ready before the election.

“This means mass vaccination nationwide could start in 59 days. FIFTY-NINE DAYS. Is any #COVID19 #vaccine likely to have completed Phase 3 safety and efficacy clinical trials, and gone through full scientific and @US_FDA review in 59 days?” award-winning epidemiology writer Laurie Garrett asked on Twitter.

“To my knowledge, none of the US #COVID19 #vaccines have finished even enrolling test subjects for Phase 3 trials. Rushing this to completion within 59 days is DANGEROUS.”

FDA chief Stephen Hahn, however, has denied he is acting under pressure from Trump, arguing that any vaccine approval would be a “science, medicine, data decision.”

The US has registered more than six million Covid-19 cases — almost a quarter of the global total — and 185,000 deaths.

Shutdowns have taken a toll on livelihoods across the globe as business revenues plunge and millions are forced out of work.

In Europe, where GDP plunged 12.1 percent in the three months to June, fears are growing of more lockdowns and disruption this autumn and winter as the virus resurges.

The French economy has been pushed into its worst downward spiral since 1945, with GDP down 13.8 percent in the second quarter, after a drop of more than five percent in the first.

– Venice festival tribute –

Paris, hoping to ward off the threat of mass layoffs, has earmarked 100 billion euros ($120 billion) to counter the devastating impact of the coronavirus.

Some critics say the money may come too late to save many companies, while others say high hopes for President Emmanuel Macron’s green revolution in the French economy are likely to be dashed.

Economists have welcomed the departure from the kind of austerity measures seen after the 2008 crisis which were “a huge error,” said Philippe Martin, who heads up the CAE think tank, which advises the government.

Unlike the post-2008 crisis response, much of the new plan targets the supply and investment side of the economy, namely businesses.

The measures over the next two years include 10 billion euros’ worth of corporate tax cuts.

Youth employment is also a major target of the spending, with 6.5 billion euros aimed at encouraging hiring for millions of new entrants on a depressed job market.

In Australia, the government announced a record contraction of seven percent despite authorities providing billions of dollars in support to struggling firms.

New Delhi reported that growth suffered a historic 23.9 percent decline in the second quarter, while Brazil’s economy contracted by a record 9.7 percent.

And to add insult to injury for the sports-mad South American nation, football icon Neymar was one of three Paris Saint-Germain stars to have contracted the coronavirus, a well-placed source told AFP.

“Three Paris Saint-Germain players have confirmed positive Sars CoV2 tests and are subject to the appropriate health protocol,” PSG said in a statement.

When contacted by AFP, the club declined to confirm the identity of the players in question.

The virus failed to put the brakes on the Venice film festival in Italy, which opened Wednesday with a tribute to those who lost their lives from coronavirus.

The festival, rolling out on the glitzy beachfront Lido through September 12, is the first major international festival to take place since Covid-19 shuttered theaters, halted production and drove millions of moviegoers around the world to their television sets.

Source:  AFP

The United States on Wednesday imposed sanctions on International Criminal Court prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, over her investigation into whether American forces committed war crimes in Afghanistan. The Hague-based tribunal reacted denouncing an “unprecedented” attack against “the rule of law”.

“The International Criminal Court condemns the economic sanctions imposed by the US earlier today on the court’s prosecutor and a member of her office,” an ICC statement said. “These coercive acts, directed at an international judicial institution and its civil servants, are unprecedented and constitute serious attacks against the court, the Rome Statute system of international criminal justice, and the rule of law more generally.”

The war crimes court said it “continues to stand firmly by its personnel and its mission of fighting impunity for the world’s most serious crimes.”

Pompeo also said that Phakiso Mochochoko, the head of the ICC’s Jurisdiction, Complementarity and Cooperation Division, had been blacklisted under sanctions authorised by President Donald Trump in June that allow for asset freezes and travel bans.

“Today we take the next step, because the ICC continues to target Americans, sadly,” Pompeo told reporters.

In addition, Pompeo said that individuals and entities that continue to materially support Bensouda and Mochochoko would risk exposure to sanctions as well.

The US State Department also restricted the issuance of visas for individuals Pompeo said were involved in the court’s efforts to investigate US personnel. He did not name those affected, though.

‘Kangoroo court’ investigating war crimes in Afghanistan

The US move came after President Donald Trump authorised sanctions on the ICC on June 11 for probing and prosecuting US troops.

Pompeo at the time referred to the ICC as a “kangaroo court” and warned that if US soldiers are investigated by it, those of US allies in Afghanistan risk the same threat. US Attorney General Bill Barr said in June that the ICC has become “little more than a political tool employed by unaccountable international elites”.

Bensouda was given the go-ahead by the court in March to investigate whether war crimes were committed in Afghanistan by the Taliban, Afghan military and US forces.

The sanctions were announced just two months before US elections, in which Trump is running in part on his record of standing up to international institutions that don’t bow to US demands.

But Washington’s move also added to the broader pressure on the ICC to shore up its legitimacy, 18 years after it was founded to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

The ICC was founded by the Rome Statute, which entered into force in 2002, and has since been signed by 123 countries. The United States – like Russia, China, Israel, Syria and a number of other countries – is not a member of the ICC, and its opposition to the court is longstanding.

US Sanctions ‘only serve to weaken the fight’ against ‘mass atrocities’

The head of the ICC’s Assembly of States Parties, which groups the court’s member countries, said separately that it would meet to discuss how to support the tribunal in the face of the US measures. “I strongly reject such unprecedented and unacceptable measures against a treaty-based international organisation,” said assembly president O-Gon Kwon. “They only serve to weaken our common endeavour to fight impunity for mass atrocities.”

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was concerned by Pompeo’s announcement, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters. He said that “we trust that any restriction taken against individuals will be implemented consistently” with a decades-old US deal with the UN to host the world body’s headquarters in New York.

The United States revoked Bensouda’s entry visa in 2019 over the possible Afghanistan inquiry. But under an agreement between the UN and Washington, she was still able to regularly travel to New York to brief the UN Security Council on cases it had referred to the court in The Hague.

Rights groups immediately condemned the US designations.

Richard Dicker, Human Rights Watch international justice director, said it was a “stunning perversion of US sanctions”. “The Trump administration has twisted these sanctions to obstruct justice, not only for certain war crimes victims, but for atrocity victims anywhere looking to the International Criminal Court for justice,” he said.

(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS & AFP)

Former White House adviser Steve Bannon was arrested Thursday on charges that he and three others committed fraud as part of an online fundraising campaign to build US President Donald Trump’s Mexican border wall.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan announced that Bannon had been charged in an unsealed indictment for allegedly defrauding hundreds of thousands of donors through a $25 million crowdfunding campaign called, “We Build the Wall.”

The donors thought the money would go towards helping to build a border wall along the frontier with Mexico, prosecutors said.

Co-defendants Brian Kolfage, Andrew Badolato and Timothy Shea were also charged.

According to the indictment, Bannon promised that 100 percent of the donated money would be used for the project. But the three men are accused of collectively using hundreds of thousands of dollars in a manner inconsistent with the organisation’s public claims. Kolfage, whom prosecutors described as the public face and founder of the operation, allegedly received thousands of dollars that he used to fund a lavish lifestyle.

However, after calling the effort a “volunteer organisation”, Bannon received more than $1 million of the donations, which he funneled through a non-profit he controlled, prosecutors said, using some of it for his personal expenses.

All four men are charged with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.

The indictment said they faked invoices and used sham “vendor” arrangements, among other methods, to hide what was really happening with the money.

“Not only did they lie to donors, they schemed to hide their misappropriation of funds by creating sham invoices and accounts to launder donations and cover up their crimes, showing no regard for the law or the truth,” said Philip Bartlett, head of New York’s division of the US Postal Inspection Service, which worked on the investigation.

The initiative began in 2018 as a GoFundMe campaign to raise money that organisers said would go towards the border wall Trump had promised throughout his 2016 campaign, which Bannon led in its critical final months.

Before his role in the campaign, Bannon ran the conservative website Breitbart News. After Trump was elected, he moved on to a top White House strategy post.

The blunt-spoken, combative Bannon became the voice of an inflammatory nationalistic conservatism. He encouraged Trump to follow through on some of his most contentious campaign promises, including a controversial travel ban on some countries and the decision to pull out of the Paris climate change agreement.

But Bannon also clashed with other top advisers, and allegations that he was the power behind the throne irked Trump. He left the White House after falling out of favour in August 2017.

(FRANCE 24 with AP, AFP and REUTERS)

Former monarch Juan Carlos I of Spain has been in the United Arab Emirates since he left his country amid a growing financial scandal, the Spanish royal household said Monday, resolving a two-week mystery and reining in speculation over the ex-king’s whereabouts.

The Spanish government and Royal House officials have been tight-lipped about Juan Carlos’ location since Aug. 3, when he published a letter to his son, King Felipe VI, that said he was moving outside Spain due to the “public repercussions of certain episodes of my past private life.”

At 82, the former king is the target of official investigations in Spain and Switzerland into possible financial wrongdoing.

Conservative Spanish newspaper ABC had published a photo of Juan Carlos stepping out of a plane at an airport in Abu Dhabi. But without any official confirmation, Spanish media had placed him in places as far afield as the Dominican Republic, Portugal, Switzerland or New Zealand.

Ending the swirl of speculation, a Royal House spokesman said Monday that Juan Carlos had asked to convey that he had traveled to UAE on Aug. 3.

“That’s where he currently remains,” the official, who wasn’t authorized to be quoted in media reports, told The Associated Press.

The spokesman declined to say if the UAE, a federation of seven sheikdoms on the Arabian Peninsula, would be Juan Carlos’ permanent residence.

UAE authorities have not responded to repeated questions regarding Juan Carlos’ stay in the country.

Juan Carlos facilitated Spain’s transition to democratic rule in the 1970’s, when the heir of the Bourbon dynasty replaced former Gen. Francisco Franco as the country’s head of state. He reigned for nearly four decades while Spain modernized and joined the European Union.

But criticism grew as his luxurious life and corruption scandals tarnishing members of the royal family offered a striking contrast with the suffering of Spaniards during the global financial crisis.

In 2014, Juan Carlos abdicated the throne that then went to Felipe, who has taken steps to shield the monarchy from the scandals.

Felipe VI has not publicly spoken about his father’s departure earlier this month. On Monday, he and Queen Letizia were scheduled to pay a visit to the Mediterranean island of Ibiza. The royal couple and their two daughters are currently vacationing on a nearby island.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, whose monarchy-supporting Socialist Party is in a coalition government with the pro-republic, far-left Unidas Podemos (United We Can), has praised the Royal House’s decision to take distance from the former king.

Spain’s king has a mostly ceremonial role. Executive power lies with the elected parliamentary government.

Despite relocating outside of Spain, Juan Carlos has pledged via his lawyer to make himself available to prosecutors in Spain. Their investigation, which is in early stages, is looking into whether the former monarch received millions of dollars in kickbacks from Saudi Arabia during the construction of a high-speed railway there by a Spanish consortium.

A separate Swiss judicial probe is looking into millions of euros (dollars) that were allegedly given to Juan Carlos by Saudi Arabia’s late King Abdullah and allegedly transformed by Juan Carlos to a former companion.

Source: AP

Facebook Inc on Wednesday took down a post by U.S. President Donald Trump, which the company said violated its rules against sharing misinformation about the coronavirus.

The post contained a video clip, from an interview with Fox & Friends earlier in the day, in which Trump claimed that children are “almost immune” to COVID-19.

“This video includes false claims that a group of people is immune from COVID-19, which is a violation of our policies around harmful COVID misinformation,” a Facebook spokesman said.

A tweet containing the video that was posted by the Trump campaign’s @TeamTrump account and shared by the president was also later hidden by Twitter Inc for breaking its COVID-19 misinformation rules.

A Twitter spokesman said the @TeamTrump account owner would be required to remove the tweet before they could tweet again.

The Trump campaign accused the companies of bias against the president, saying Trump had stated a fact. “Social media companies are not the arbiters of truth,” said Courtney Parella, a spokeswoman with the campaign.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said that while adults make up most of the known COVID-19 cases to date, some children and infants have been sick with the disease and they can also transmit it to others.

An analysis by the World Health Organization of 6 million infections between Feb. 24 and July 12 found that the share of children aged 5-14 years was about 4.6%.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. During a briefing at the White House, Trump repeated his claim that the virus had little impact on children.

“Children handle it very well,” he told reporters. “If you look at the numbers, in terms of mortality, fatalities … for children under a certain age … their immune systems are very very strong and very powerful. They seem to be able to handle it very well and that’s according to every statistical claim.”

It was the first time Facebook had removed a Trump post for coronavirus misinformation, the company’s spokesman said.

It also appeared to be the first reported instance of the social media company taking down a post from the president for breaching its misinformation rules.

Twitter has taken down a post retweeted by Trump pointing to a misleading viral video about the coronavirus, but left up clips of the president suggesting scientists should investigate using light or disinfectant on patients.

Twitter said those remarks expressed a wish for treatment, rather than a literal call for action.

It also left up a March post from Tesla Inc’s outspoken CEO Elon Musk stating that “kids are essentially immune” from the virus.

Facebook has taken heat from lawmakers and its own employees in recent months for not taking action on inflammatory posts by Trump.

The company has previously removed ads from Trump’s election campaign for breaking misinformation rules, in that case around a national census.

It also took down both Trump posts and campaign ads that showed a red inverted triangle, a symbol the Nazis used to identify political prisoners, for violating its policy against organized hate.

Source: REUTERS

France and the Netherlands are gearing up for stricter mask-wearing rules to fight the coronavirus as the global death toll from the pandemic neared 700,000.

Paris, Toulouse and other cities announced that the wearing of masks would be compulsory in particularly busy streets and squares. People already have to wear them inside most private businesses and all public buildings.

A scientific committee advising the French government warned that the country could lose control of its spread “at any time.”

In the Netherlands, the same mask-wearing measure will be applied in Rotterdam and the famous red-light district of Amsterdam from Wednesday.

And Ireland postponed the reopening of pubs and other nightspots on the advice of scientists, concerned about rising infections.

In other developments, the Philippines placed millions of people back under lockdown. And the hunt for an effective treatment continued with the United States launching trials of an antibody treatment for COVID-19.

Philippines resumes lockdown

Millions of people in the Philippines were ordered to stay home Tuesday in a bid to contain the rising rate of infections, and relieve pressure on overwhelmed hospitals.

More than 27 million people on the main island of Luzon, including the capital Manila, went back into a partial lockdown.

People have been told to stay home unless going out to buy essential goods, for exercise or for work, after the number of recorded infections surged past 100,000.

But with only 24 hours’ notice of the shutdown, many people were stranded in Manila, unable to get back to their hometowns after public transport and domestic flights were halted.

More than 18 million people worldwide have been infected with the virus since it first emerged in China late last year.

The worst hit country, the United States, had added 1,300 new deaths as of Tuesday evening, bringing its toll to nearly 156,000, according to Johns Hopkins University. The caseload grew by 53,847 to nearly 4.8 million, it said.

Far from slowing down, the latest figures show that the rate of infection is accelerating.

Brazil is driving a surge in Latin America and the Caribbean, where infections passed five million on Monday.

South America’s largest country has recorded more than 2.75 million cases, and nearly 95,000 deaths, nearly half the region’s 203,800 deaths.

US announces clinical trials

The world’s hope of ending the current cycle of outbreaks and lockdowns rests on finding a treatment.

The United States announced Tuesday it had begun late-stage clinical trials into a drug they hope will be an antibody against the coronavirus.

The Phase 3 trial will initially enroll some 300 volunteers around the world who have been hospitalized with mild to moderate COVID-19 with fewer than 13 days of symptoms.

On Monday, Russia said it aimed to launch mass production of a vaccine in September and turn out “several million” doses per month by next year.

In response, the World Health Organization on Tuesday urged Russia to follow the established guidelines for producing safe and effective vaccines.

Just a day earlier, the agency’s chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called on countries to focus on basic suppression measures, such as contact tracing, maintaining physical distance and wearing a mask.

“There’s no silver bullet at the moment — and there might never be,” he warned.

‘Extraordinarily widespread’

Despite the grim numbers in America, President Donald Trump adopted a resolutely optimistic tone.

“We’re seeing indications that our strong mitigation efforts are working very well, actually, especially to protect those who are most at risk,” he said during a White House press conference addressing the pandemic.

In a morning tweet, he lashed out at his coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx after she warned the virus was “extraordinarily widespread” in the US.

Trump — angered by what he sees as overly pessimistic media coverage of his much-criticized handling of the epidemic — accused her of giving in to pressure to sound negative about the new surge.

“Deborah took the bait & hit us. Pathetic!” Trump wrote on Twitter Monday. 

Despite rising infection numbers in Europe, some countries are pushing ahead with plans to reopen schools and finding ways to keep their battered tourism sectors functioning.

Angry Nadal withdraws from US Open

Fears over the virus led defending champion Rafael Nadal to announce on Tuesday that he will not play the US Open, which is due to start in New York on August 31.

“The situation is very complicated worldwide, the COVID-19 cases are increasing, it looks like we still don’t have control of it.” Nadal said on Twitter.

“This is a decision I never wanted to take… for the time being I rather not travel.”

Women’s world number one Ashleigh Barty withdrew from the tournament last week citing “significant risks” from COVID-19.

(AFP)