Americas

Liberal congressional Democrats unveiled a proposal Thursday to expand the number of seats on the Supreme Court from nine to 13 — a move Republicans have blasted as "court-packing" and which has almost no chance of being voted on after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she "has no plans to bring it to the floor."

"We are not packing the Supreme Court, we are unpacking it," Jerrold Nadler said at a news conference in front of the Supreme Court.

The US has announced sanctions against Russian entities and expelled 10 Russian diplomats in response to a hacking attack and election interference.

President Joe Biden's executive order "sends a signal that the United States will impose costs in a strategic and economically impactful manner on Russia if it continues or escalates its destabilising international action," the White House said.

President Joe Biden announced Wednesday the withdrawal of all United States troops from Afghanistan by September 11, after two decades of fighting militants. The US would miss a May deadline for a pull-out agreed with the Trump administration's Taliban last year.

"It's time to end this forever war," said Biden.

France suspended all flights from Brazil on Tuesday amid mounting fears over the particularly contagious Covid variant that has been sweeping the South American country.

"We note that the situation is getting worse and so we have decided to suspend all flights between Brazil and France until further notice," Castex said, drawing scattered applause from lawmakers.

Castex noted that travelers from Brazil already needed to test negative for the virus before their departure and upon arrival in France, and also quarantine for 10 days.

Antoine Fuqua and Will Smith announced they would move production on their runaway slave thriller "Emancipation" out of Georgia in protest over the state's controversial new voting restrictions. This is the first film to pull its production out of the state because of the legislation.

“At this moment in time, the Nation is coming to terms with its history and is attempting to eliminate vestiges of institutional racism to achieve true racial justice,” said Smith and Fuqua in a joint statement Monday.

The closures would go into effect April 12, roughly a month after some 100 of the island's 858 public schools were authorized to reopen for the first time in a year amid the pandemic. The announcement was praised by some health experts, teachers and parents who worried about an increase in infections and had warned that reopening schools was a rushed decision. Health Secretary Carlos Mellado said that while no COVID-19 breakouts were identified at any of the schools, the move is necessary given the recent spike in cases.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, Director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Wednesday that the B.1.1.7 Covid-19 variant is now the most common strain in the United States.

"Based on our most recent estimates from CDC surveillance, the B.1.1.7 variant is now the most common lineage circulating in the United States," Walensky said

Pacific Gas & Electric is facing new criminal charges for its role in igniting the 2019 California Wildfires. Five felony and 28 misdemeanour charges have been filed by the Sonoma County district attorney Jill Ravitch, including recklessly causing a fire that seriously injured six firefighters.

PG&E has stated that they "do not believe there was any crime here" but that they "remain committed to making it right for all those impacted and working to further reduce wildfire risk on our system."

President Joe Biden announced Thursday that all US adults will be eligible to receive a Covid-19 vaccine by April 19, two weeks earlier than the initial May 1 date.

"Let me be deadly earnest with you: We aren’t at the finish line. We still have a lot of work to do. We’re still in a life and death race against this virus," Biden cautioned, adding that as "new variants of the virus are spreading and they’re moving quickly, cases are going back up, hospitalizations are no longer declining."

Brazil recorded 3,733 deaths from Covid-19 in the last 24 hours, totaling this April 7th 341,097 victims since the beginning of the pandemic. After the record of deaths registered the previous day, this is the third worst mark so far. As a result, the moving average of deaths in the country in the last 7 days was 2,744. Compared to the average of 14 days ago, the variation was + 21%, indicating an upward trend in deaths from the disease.

U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said Monday that CEOs should "stay out of politics" after several companies issued statements regarding the new election law in Georgia.

"My advice to the corporate CEOs of America is to stay out of politics. Don’t pick sides in these big fights," so McConnell. "Corporations will invite serious consequences if they become a vehicle for far-left mobs to hijack our country from outside the constitutional order."

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that 161,688,422 doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered in the United States as of Saturday, April 2.

104,213,478 people have received at least the first dose, and 59,858,146 people have been fully vaccinated.

The president of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, reported in the early hours of Saturday, April 3rd that he tested positive for Covid-19 after showing symptoms of the disease. Fernández had the two doses of the Russian Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine.

"For everyone's information, I am physically fine and, although I wanted to end my birthday without this news, I am also in a good mood," posted the president of Argentina, who thanked for the messages of congratulations.

"We believe we are starting the second wave, with a sustained increase in cases, which causes concern," Health Minister Carla Vizzotti told a radio station on Friday.

The U.S. economy added approx. 916,000 jobs in March, with the unemployment rate dropping to 6 percent compared to 6.2% in February, the Labor Department reported Friday. The March job increase was the best since August 2020.

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, from the University of Washington, in the United States, projects one hundred thousand deaths from Covid-19 in Brazil in April alone. According to Ethel Maciel, an epidemiologist and professor at the Federal University of Espírito Santo (Ufes), if the current pace is maintained, Brazil may surpass the United States in absolute numbers of deaths in August. The moving average of deaths exceeded 3,000 for the second time and reached 3,013, according to data from the National Council of Health Secretaries (Conass).

New York prosecutors have subpoenaed personal banking records of longtime Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg and are investigating whether Weisselberg and his family received gifts from the former president. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance and several prosecutors are currently conducting a probe into Donald Trump and his company and, according to people familiar with the matter, are looking to Weisselberg for cooperation in this criminal probe.

President Joe Biden introduced The American Jobs Plan – a roughly $2 trillion infrastructure package – on Wednesday in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The plan included spendings for the modernisation of infrastructure such as roads, bridges and rail systems, affordable housing, manufacturing, community-based care for the elderly as well as clean energy.

"It's not a plan that tinkers around the edges," Biden said in a speech in Pittsburgh. "It's a once-in-a-generation investment in America, unlike anything we've seen or done since we built the interstate highway system and the space race decades ago. In fact, it's the largest American jobs investment since World War II."

Due to a manufacturing error, a batch of Johnson & Johnson's (J&J) Covid 19 vaccine is unusable. There was a problem with a drug substance for its vaccine that did not meet quality standards at Emergent Biosolutions' manufacturing facility, the US pharmaceutical company said on Wednesday.

The error had been reported to the FDA and more staff were now assigned to monitor production.

New York state has legalized recreational marijuana for adults and will expunge thousands of former low-level marijuana convictions. The legislation, which Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed on Wednesday, could create up to 60,000 jobs and $350 million in tax revenue for the state.

"This is a historic day in New York -- one that rights the wrongs of the past by putting an end to harsh prison sentences, embraces an industry that will grow the Empire State's economy, and prioritizes marginalized communities so those that have suffered the most will be the first to reap the benefits," Cuomo said in a statement.

Canada announced Monday that the National Advisory Committee on Immunization is recommending that the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine should not be administered to people under the age of 55 due to safety reasons.

“There is substantial uncertainty about the benefit of providing AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccines to adults under 55 given the potential risks,” said Dr Shelley Deeks, vice-chair of the National Advisory Committee on Immunization.

"Following population-based analyses of VIPIT assessing risk of COVID-19 disease by age, and considering that alternate products are available (i.e., mRNA vaccines), from what is known at this time, there is substantial uncertainty about the benefit of providing AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine to adults under 55 years of age given that the potential risks associated with VIPIT, particularly at the lower estimated rates," committee officials said.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro will replace the commanders of the country's army, navy and air force, the defense ministry said Tuesday. Some local media, including the Folha de Sao Paulo daily, reported that the military chiefs had quit in protest at the unexpected ministerial reshuffle. The president named Carlos Alberto Franco Franca as the new foreign minister after Araujo tendered his resignation earlier in the day.

According to a report of the consortium of Brazilian media companies consortium released on March 29 3,668 deaths by Covid-19, a new daily record. The country had, since the beginning of the pandemic 317,936 deaths.

The head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Dr. Rochelle Walensky issued a warning of a potential fourth Covid-19 wave, as the country sees a rise in infections, hospitalizations and deaths.

"I’m going to lose the script and I’m going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom. Right now I’m scared," Walensky said during a press conference. "We do not have the luxury of inaction. For the health of our country, we must work together now to prevent a fourth surge."

Dr. Anthony Fauci urged Americans to "hang in there", adding it "will be a race between the vaccine and what’s going on with the dynamics of the outbreak, and we can win this by just hanging in there a bit longer."

Five people were killed in a helicopter crash in the Knik glacier, approximately 54 miles east of Anchorage, Alaska on Sunday. The Alaska Rescue Coordination Center was sent to the crash site and found five people dead, among them Czech billionaire Petr Kellner, and one survivor who was transported to a hospital where he remains in serious but stable condition.

The polemic Brazilian Foreign Policy Ministry Ernesto Araújo presented his resignation Monday to the President Jair Bolsonaro.

In the Brazilian Congress, the assessment is that the minister's performance isolated Brazil in the international scenario and hindered the obtaining of vaccine doses against Covid-19.

Mr. Araújo adopted in his administration the same principles as the foreign policy of former US President Donald Trump. This stance generated friction with important trading partners, such as China, the main destination for Brazilian exports, as well as the largest producer of vaccine supplies in the world.

Facebook has frozen the page of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, a company spokesperson said, after the leader was accused of violating the platform's policies about the spread of Covid-19 misinformation.

A spokesperson for the company also told the AFP news agency that a video from Maduro's page had been removed "for violating our policies against misinformation about Covid-19 that is likely to put people at risk for harm".

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Friday five White House staffers were "no longer employed" over their use of marijuana as part of a vetting process for security clearance, as the Biden administration comes under fire over reports that numerous young staffers have been penalized for past marijuana use (including in states where it’s legal) even though they were told they wouldn’t be.

In just 24 hours, 3,650 deaths linked to the disease were officially registered Friday, according to data from the National Council of Health Secretaries (Conass). The previous record had been registered last on March 23rd, with 3,251 lives lost in 24 hours.

With the new balance, the total number of victims of the disease in Brazil is 307,112. The mortality rate per group of 100,000 inhabitants rose to 146.1 in Brazil, the 18th highest in the world, when disregarding the dwarf countries San Marino, Liechtenstein and Andorra, according to a Johns Hopkins University survey.

The Foreign Ministry issued a statement in which it stressed that, since the arrival of Alberto Fernández to the Casa Rosada, "Argentina has never participated in meetings or signed documents" of the Lima Group and emphasised that his administration "the only thing it has done" with respect to this alliance was to "distance itself". "Once again, we reiterate that the best way to help Venezuelans is to facilitate an inclusive dialogue that does not favour any particular sector, but rather to achieve elections accepted by the majority with international control," the letter from the San Martín Palace states.

Argentina also maintains that, in "a context in which the pandemic has wreaked havoc in the region, the sanctions and blockades imposed on Venezuela and its authorities, as well as the destabilisation attempts that occurred in 2020, have only aggravated the situation of its population and, in particular, that of its most vulnerable sectors".

The Argentinean government on Friday formalized the suspension of flights from Brazil, Chile and Mexico, due to the increasing cases of Covid-19 in those countries, and the circulation of new strains. The new measure starts on Saturday.

The government's objective is to reduce the number of trips during Easter Week, a time when many citizens tend to travel around the country or abroad, which in this case is the main concern.