South America

BUENOS AIRES, Aug 7 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Argentina will relax coronavirus restrictions as infection and mortality rates falls, the government announced, even as the South American nation approached 5 million cases with more than 107,000 deaths.

The government said its plan includes an increase in the number of people who can meet in person, re-opening of schools and an increase in the number of people allowed to enter the country to 1,700 per day from the current 1,000. Argentina has a total population of about 45 million.

BRASILIA, Aug 7 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro ignored calls to drop his feud with the Supreme Court on Friday (Aug 6) and called one of its justices a “son of a whore”, amid rising tensions over his unfounded claims the nation’s voting system is vulnerable to fraud.

Speaking to supporters in southern Brazil, he insulted Luis Roberto Barroso, the top court justice who also heads the Supreme Electoral Court. The insult was part of a live broadcast shared on Bolsonaro’s Facebook account but later deleted. Copies continue to be shared on social media.

LIMA, Aug. 6 (Xinhua) -- Peru's President Pedro Castillo on Friday expressed confidence in China's Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine after receiving his dose.

Castillo spoke to reporters after receiving the first shot of the multi-dose vaccine at a vaccination center here, as a part of the country's vaccination campaign.

"I came to be vaccinated with this vaccine, the Sinopharm, because I have faith, not just in this vaccine, but in all vaccines," said Castillo.

SAO PAULO, Aug 5 (NNN-CMA) – Brazil reported 40,716 new cases of COVID-19, raising its total caseload to 20,026,533, the Health Ministry said yesterday.

Meanwhile, the national death toll rose to 559,6071, after 175 more deaths were detected.

Brazil currently has the world’s second-highest pandemic death toll after the United States, and the third-largest caseload after the United States and India.

The South American country is experiencing a new wave of infections, which has overwhelmed hospitals, said the ministry.

BOGOTA, Aug 2 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Colombia’s attorney general’s office will charge former army commander General Mario Montoya for responsibility of 104 extrajudicial executions, as part of the “false positives” scandal.

The false positives took place between 2002 and 2008, during the term of ex-President Alvaro Uribe, when soldiers murdered civilians and registered them as guerrilla fighters killed in combat to receive benefits.

BRASILIA, Aug 2 (Reuters) - A group of 18 active and former Brazilian Supreme Court justices, who also act as judges in the Supreme Electoral Court, said on Monday that the election system is free of fraud in the face of consistent attacks by President Jair Bolsonaro.

Over the weekend, demonstrators demanded that there be a paper trail of printed ballots, changing the current all-electronic voting system.

LIMA, July 31 (Xinhua) -- The government of new Peruvian President Pedro Castillo will implement an economic policy that will promote private and public investment, Economy and Finance Minister Pedro Francke said on Saturday.

According to Francke, one of the new government's priorities will be job creation, after the COVID-19 pandemic caused around 2.2 million Peruvians to lose their jobs.

BUENOS AIRES, July 31. /TASS/: A study conducted in Argentina did not reveal any serious side effects when combining the first component of the Russian coronavirus vaccine Sputnik V with drugs from AstraZeneca and Sinopharm, the government of province of Buenos Aires announced on Friday.

"The Ministry of Health of the province of Buenos Aires reports that, according to preliminary results, during the ongoing safety study of combining the Sputnik V vaccine with the drugs AstraZeneca and Sinopharm, no serious side effects have been identified," the government announced.

RIO DE JANEIRO, July 30 (Xinhua) -- The unemployment rate in Brazil registered 14.6 percent in the three months from March to May, meaning about 14.8 million people were out of work, the state-run Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) said on Friday.

According to the IBGE, unemployment held steady compared to the previous three-month period (December 2020 to February 2021), when 14.4 million people were jobless, but rose 1.7 percentage points compared to the same period last year, when 12.7 million people were unemployed.

BRASILIA, July 30 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Brazil plans to cancel a contract signed in March for 10 million doses of Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, Health Minister Marcelo Queiroga said as the South American nation struggles with one of the worst outbreaks in the world.

He said the move was due to lapsed deadlines in the registration process with Brazilian health regulator Anvisa.

He added that Brazil’s national immunisation program does not currently need the Russian vaccine, though that could change if Anvisa licenses Sputnik V.