There it was. With that simple phrase, Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro dashed the hopes of everyone who thought he might perform a U-turn. The hateful media, the think tanks, the politically-minded state governors, the scores of lockdown.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi leaves after a function at the Bharatiya Janata Party headquarters following a state election in New Delhi, India, November 11, 2020. AP/File
India’s hospitals were packed with coronavirus patients, relatives of the sick scrambled to find supplies of oxygen, and crematoriums were running near full capacity to handle the dead.
Yet despite those clear signs of an overwhelming health crisis, Prime Minister Narendra Modi pressed ahead with a densely packed campaign rally.
“I have never seen such a huge crowd before!” he roared to his supporters in West Bengal state on April 17, before key local elections. “Wherever I can see, I can only see people. I can see nothing else.”
India s virus surge damages Modi s image of competence
KRUTIKA PATHI, SHEIKH SAALIQ and RAVI NESSMAN, Associated Press
May 4, 2021
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1of21FILE - In this Nov. 11 2020, file photo, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi leaves after a function at the Bharatiya Janata Party headquarters following a state election in New Delhi, India. Despite clear signs that India was being swamped by another surge of coronavirus infections, Modi refused to cancel campaign rallies, a major Hindu festival and cricket matches with spectators. The crisis has badly dented Modi’s carefully cultivated image as an able technocrat.Manish Swarup/APShow MoreShow Less
2of21FILE - In this April 25, 2021, file photo, relatives and municipal workers in protective suit bury a COVID-19 victim in Gauhati, India. Despite clear signs that India was being swamped by another surge of coronavirus infections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi refused to cancel campaign rallies, a major Hindu
Narendra Modi, India s Prime Minister, Called a COVID Super-Spreader By Medical Official
On 5/5/21 at 10:56 AM EDT
Associated Press reported.
India s new COVID-19 cases reached more than 380,000 for two weeks in a row, putting the nation s total at 20.7 million. Dr. Navjot Dahiya, vice president of the Indian Medical Association, called Modi a super-spreader for his failure to cancel the traditional Holi festival, which draws massive crowds, as well as cricket matches with tens of thousands of spectators.
While Modi initially garnered praise for controlling the outbreak in 2020 by putting India s 1.4 billion people in lockdown, his image is now tainted by a surge that has launched the country into crisis and killed an average of more than 3,500 people a day in the past week.
The Brazilian Amazon Is Now Releasing More Carbon Dioxide Than It Absorbs
Aerial view of a burning area of the Amazon Rainforest reserve, south of Novo Progresso in the state of Pará, Brazil, on August 16, 2020.
CARL DE SOUZA / AFP via Getty Images
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A recent study published in the journal
Nature Climate Change found that the Brazilian Amazon released roughly 20 percent more carbon dioxide than it absorbed during the 2010s. More specifically, the rain forest absorbed 13.9 metric tons of carbon dioxide between 2010 and 2019 but released 16.6 billion metric tons during that same period. (To put that in context, human fossil fuel combustion is believed to produce around 35 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide.)