Asia Pacific, Western Europe, and the Northeastern United States, each in their own ways former epicentres of coronavirus, were breathing more freely this week as the rest of the world sailed in the wrong direction, with Latin America and South Asia bearing the worst of the storm. Over the course of the week cases in Brazil climbed from half a million past 600,000, while day after day of record fatalities saw the death toll surpass 34,000 by the weekend. The country was now second for global infections and third for COVID-related fatalities, but instead of stepping up its response to the crisis the government of Jair Bolsonaro sought to suppress the figures, hiding the cumulative data and alleging undisclosed reporting mistakes. The virus was also surging in Mexico, where spiralling deaths took the tally from 10,000 to more than 13,000 in a matter of days, yet with an air of defianceĀ both countries continued to ease restrictions, especially in the major centres of SĆ£o Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Mexico City. Peru and Chile offered variations on a theme, per capita two of the most infected countries in the world, but whether it was stricter measures or reporting differences, their death counts remained relatively low. Meanwhile lockdowns were extended across Buenos Aires and the other major urban centres of Argentina.
India narrowly evaded most of Cyclone Nisarga amid a season of cyclones, earthquakes, and locust swarms, but the coronavirus was everywhere as cases stretched past 250,000 with more than 7,000 fatalities, even as the country took steps to unlock the economy and prepared for the reopening of shrines and malls. Pakistan lifted a lockdown deemed too costly to afford, amid suggestions that more than 100,000 reported casesĀ were merely the tip of the iceberg. As the first Rohingya refugee died in Bangladesh, the country reported record deaths and cases in excess of 65,000, while disaster loomed ever closer in war-torn Afghanistan. Across the Middle East there were no signs of a let-up in Iran and Saudi Arabia, which both reported record infections, but eased restrictions followed the first signs of a slowdown in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. Amid protests over Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans to annex parts of the West Bank, daily cases in Israel appeared to at least provisionally flatten out. Protests prompted a reduced evening curfew in Senegal, cases continued to creep up in Egypt, and a spike in South Africa whose lockdown measures were challenged in the courts served to drive the situation across the continent, where total cases swept past 180,000 over the course of the weekend.
Some parts of the United States afforded some much-needed respite. New York City recorded no daily deaths for the first time since the start of the pandemic, deaths reached new lows across the whole of New York, and New Jersey saw declining cases and hospitalisations as the outlook eased across America’s two most affected states. Seven regions in New York were even able to resume outdoor dining. On the other hand states in the south and west of the country including Florida, Texas, and California continued to prioritise reopening even amid rising cases, the offset with the northeast placing America on a temporary plateau. Places like New York City and Michigan could look forward to eased restrictions with some degree of justification, but states like Florida, Mississippi, Arizona, and California pressed ahead despite rising cases and record-breaking weeks. As commentators questioned whether Americans had simply grown tired of the threat posed by coronavirus, Louisiana also stepped into a new phase of reopening while in the crosshairs of Tropical Storm Cristobal.
For the time being however the spread of coronavirus across the United States was overshadowed by a long legacy of police brutality and racial inequality, whose latest outpouring came in the form of nationwide protests over the death of George Floyd. Despite outbreaks of violence and the imposition of evening curfews, marches and demonstrations continued at a steady pace throughout the week, culminating on Saturday when more than 10,000 people gathered in Washington, D.C. while late reprieves and defiant activism saw protests extend to Sydney, London, and beyond. President Donald Trump responded with typical magnanimity, berating governors and urging them to ‘dominate’ protesters using National Guard troops, while in a divisive speech on Monday he threatened to call in the military as police used tear gas and flash grenades to clear his path to a local church. Meanwhile both the Minnesota authorities and an independent autopsy concluded that Floyd’s death was the result of homicide, and charges were brought against three more Minneapolis police officers, before Floyd was eulogised in a memorial service towards the end of the week. By Sunday curfews were being lifted and the National Guard were ordered to withdraw from the streets, as overwhelmingly peaceful protests continued to stretch their reach.
Despite concerns over drabs of data, deaths had slowed to a trickle in Spain, where Pedro SĆ”nchez secured one final extension to the state of alarm as the regions steadily reopened. Fatalities in France swept past 29,000 after a surge in the middle of the week, but the wider story was of dwindling deaths and hospitalisations as Paris welcomed back restaurants and cafes. The country claimed to have the pandemic under control as it hosted socially-distanced D-Day commemorations. The course of coronavirus was also slowing in Italy, while bars and restaurants made comebacks in the Netherlands, Norway, and Finland. In the United Kingdom the slowdown was more sedate, as the country became the second in the world with more than 40,000 fatalities, belatedly imposing traveller quarantines and face masks on public transport. Sweden, which once more recorded the world’s highest weekly per capita death rate, launched an inquiry into its tepid response to the outbreak. Cases stretched beyond 450,000 in Russia as the country took steps to reopen, were on the rise in the Ukraine, and spiked among miners in Poland, while Turkey enjoyed a rare curfew-free weekend as the country claimed recovery in eighty percent of patients.
East Asia showed a familiar picture, with a relatively small number of cases subsumed by careful tracking and concern over further outbreaks. Tokyo sounded the alarm after a small spike in cases at the start of the week following the reopening of cinemas, gyms, and other businesses, while the hub of cluster infections in South Korea switched from a distribution centre in Bucheon to churches in Incheon. Widescale testing in Wuhan showed no silent carriers of the virus, but China still suffered a spurt in cases at the start of the week, with another cluster prompting curbs in Hong Kong as the city held its annual Tiananmen vigil. Cases were higher across Southeast Asia, where community infection showed a slight uptick in Singapore, but the bulk of new cases were still in migrant worker dormitories as the tally approached 38,000 and the country reopened at the end of circuit-breaker mode. Where community transmission was occurring, it was often among asymptomatic patients. Cases raced past 30,000 as Indonesia haltingly entered the new normal. And plans were also apace for eased restrictions as cases fluctuated in Malaysia and the Philippines. Meanwhile in the far-off south, New Zealand became the first major country to talk tentatively of eliminating the virus.
If the recent killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor showed black lives imperilled on neighbourhood jogs or even in the confines of their own apartment, inevitably the wave of protests raised concerns around the spread of coronavirus, as the response in the United States was also tested by primary elections. At the initiative of two music industry professionals, Jamila Thomas and Brianna Agyemang, who under the hashtag #TheShowMustBePaused called for ‘a day to disconnect from work and reconnect with our community’ in light of the death of Floyd, Blackout Tuesday became a phenomenon beyond musical circles, as labels and streaming platforms issued statements of solidarity while artists and influencers posted black boxes via social media, with some arguing that the original intention had been lost. Meanwhile another Bandcamp Friday saw the company waive its revenue share in favour of artists, who prepared special releases in support of racial justice and pledged the proceeds to Black Lives Matter groups. The coronavirus was still disproportionately affecting black and other minority communities, leading to the redoubling of data collection efforts in a belated attempt to buck the trend.
Other entertainment industries struggled to weather the impact of the virus. The NBA approved plans for a curtailed end to the basketball season at Disney World in Orlando, the Metropolitan Opera cancelled its fall calendar, and tennis stars cast doubt on the viability of the US Open, while authorities in Japan began to contemplate a streamlined Summer Olympics for 2021. Practical changes to buffets and props heralded the return of Hollywood production. France cancelled its annual Bastille Day parade, eased restrictions led to a run on South African alcohol stores, and Indonesia preempted a decision from Saudi Arabia by unilaterally calling off the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. Italy and the Czech Republic gained a head start as the European Union vowed to lift internal border restrictions at the latest by the end of the month. With travel back on the agenda and despite the reduced industrial output, coronavirus had failed to stall the threat to the environment,Ā as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels hit record highs.
In a topsy-turvy week for treatments, the first randomised clinical trial of the antimalarial hydroxychloroquine showed that the drug failed to prevent people contracting the virus, but the World Health Organization resumed its own trial while a controversial study in the medical journal The Lancet which had negated the benefits of the drug was retracted owing to concerns over the dataset. Just as there seemed to be some hope for hydroxychloroquine, the Recovery trial led by Oxford University declared categorically that the drug does not work. As a fifth doctor in Wuhan succumbed to COVID-19, reports suggested that China had sat on the genome for more than a week at the start of the pandemic. The World Health Organization finally updated its guidance to recommend face masks in public. Continuing jobless claims in the United States rose to 21.5 million, but the job report for May indicated that the unemployment rate actually fell to 13.3 percent from 14.7 percent in April, prompting a victory lap from Donald Trump who claimed that the news represented a good day for George Floyd.Ā A federal appeals court blocked the expansion of mail voting in Texas, while coronavirus continued to play havoc with plans for the Republican National Convention. By Sunday’s toll, cases had topped 7 million with more than 400,000 deaths worldwide.
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Lidar technology, short for light detection and ranging, has revolutionised the field of archaeology from the ground up. The technology measures distance using laser sensors, with handheld or airborne devices shining rapid pulses of light towards an intended target, tracking the response. The time it takes for each beam of light to reflect back to the sensor registers distance, and when each measurement is plotted, computers can work the results into comprehensive three-dimensional surface maps. Lidar is prized for its accuracy, while its ability to penetrate layers of vegetation and indicate surface anomalies allows for the possibility of archaeological breakthroughs. Tracing the straight lines and corners indicative of human development, pinpointing tiny hollows or bumps, relatively quick and inexpensive to operate, lidar has revealed everything from gravesites, roads, and dwellings to pyramids, palaces, and forts previously hidden by thick shrubbery and high-canopy trees.
Now archaeologists investigating the ancient Maya civilisation have revealed what appears to be the largest and oldest Maya monument yet found. Airborne lidar surveys and excavations of the previously unknown site of Aguada FĆ©nix, in the state of Tabasco near the Guatemalan border, about 850 miles east of Mexico City, have unveiled an extensive ceremonial complex which in volume exceeded even the Great Pyramid of Giza. The foundation of the complex is an artificial plateau made of earth and clay, which measures 1,400 metres in length and approximately 13 metres in height, with nine causeways radiating out from the structure. Though Aguada FĆ©nix sits in the Maya lowlands, at the very heart of the ancient civilisation, the sheer size of the plateau in half-forested terrain helps to explain its obscurity. Takeshi Inomata, the University of Arizona archaeologist and lead researcher of the paper published in Nature, said of the plateau, ‘Because it is so large horizontally, if you walk on it, it just looks like natural landscape’.
Prior to the discovery of Aguada FĆ©nix, the oldest known ceremonial site attributed to the Maya civilisation was Ceibal, which was first settled around 900 BC and emerged as a prominent city following a revival in the Late Classic period. At Aguada FĆ©nix the researchers have dated the earliest construction of the monument to 1000 BC, and it stands as not only the largest structure of the period but of the entire pre-Hispanic history of the region. The discovery supports the emerging view that some of the earliest Maya structures were significantly larger than those built more than a millennium later during the Classic Period, which stretched from 250 AD to 900 AD and saw the Maya raise dated monuments using the Long Count calendar. Beyond its enormous scope, the ceremonial complex at Aguada FĆ©nix suggests a community without strong social hierarchy. The older ceremonial site of San Lorenzo in the neighbouring state of Veracruz, about 240 miles to the west and belonging to the Olmec civilisation, bore colossal human statues indicating status, while a solitary depiction of an animal remains the only stone sculpture found so far at Aguada FĆ©nix.
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After the British Academy of Film and Television Arts confirmed that this year’s television awards will be pushed back to the end of July, with the comedian, writer, and director Richard Ayoade set to host a virtual ceremony, upon the release of the nominations this week, Chernobyl led the charge. The miniseries which meticulously depicts the fallout of the nuclear disaster, created by Craig Mazin and produced by HBO and Sky UK, picked up fourteen nominations, tying a record set by Killing Eve last year. Chernobyl is joined by A Confession, The Victim, and The Virtues in the race for Best Miniseries, while The Crown, with seven total nominations, leads the way in the Best Drama category, alongside The End of the F***ing World, Gentleman Jack, and Girl/Haji, which navigates the criminal underworlds of Tokyo and London and stars Takehiro Hira and Kelly Macdonald as twin detectives.
Hira heads up the cast of acting nominees, which includes Jared Harris (Chernobyl), Stephen Graham (The Virtues), Callum Turner (The Capture), Jodie Comer (Killing Eve), Glenda Jackson (Elizabeth Is Missing), Suranne Jones (Gentleman Jack), and Samantha Morton (I Am Kirsty) in the Best Actor and Actress fields, with more diversity as Joe Absolom (A Confession), Josh O’Connor (The Crown), Will Sharpe (Girl/Haji), Stellan SkarsgĆ„rd (Chernobyl), Naomi Ackie (The End of the F***ing World), Helen Behan (The Virtues), Helena Bonham Carter (The Crown), and Jasmine Jobson (Top Boy) compete in the supporting categories. Fleabag by Phoebe Waller-Bridge leads the laughs, with the conversational comedy joining Girl/Haji on a total of six nominations.
The 73rd British Academy Film Awards, held at the Royal Albert Hall earlier this year on 2 February, were heavily criticised for their lack of diversity, with no actors of colour among the twenty acting nominees and no female director up for Best Director or Best Film. As a result last month the organisation named a steering group to lead a review of its voting processes, following up on the decision to implement diversity requirements for two all-British film categories from the summer of 2018. BAFTA subsequently confirmed plans to roll out diversity requirements for all of its award categories by 2022, preempted by the Oscars, who with Academy Aperture 2025 outlined their own set of diversity measures. The plans unveiled by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences include a task force of industry leaders, new Board of Governors term limits, and the consolidation of ten nominees for the prestigious Best Picture award.
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Following the bottom-clenching and fist-pumping return of ultimate fighting with UFC 249 in Jacksonville last month – mostly triumphant as despite the incessant rescheduling of the card and a late coronavirus outbreak, the night itself provided plenty of entertainment while the competitors emerged otherwise unscathed – the closed circuit of mixed martial arts moved on to Las Vegas in time for UFC 250. Ahead of UFC 249, positive COVID-19 tests for JacarĆ© Souza and two of his cornermen could have forced an already contentious event to its knees, but president Dana White held firm and insisted the show must go on. Similarly in the days leading up to UFC 250, Ian Heinisch was scratched from the card after one of his cornermen recorded a positive test for coronavirus. By now though the UFC are well-versed in this, capable of treating coughing fits like hiccups while dodging the jabs of the press, and in this case a false positive allowed Heinisch to be reinstated to face Gerald Meerschaert as planned on the preliminary card.
Holed up at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas, Nevada in an event once again taking place behind closed doors, UFC 250 saw marquee victories for the charismatic prospect Sean O’Malley and for Cody Garbrandt, as the former bantamweight champion finally returned to winning ways. O’Malley dispatched the veteran Eddie Wineland with a fierce right hand in the first round, while on the back of three defeats and a year-long absence, Garbrandt popped up with seconds remaining in the second round of the co-main event to shatter Raphael AssunĆ§Ć£o with a devastating right hook. In the previous fight, Aljamain Sterling staked his claim for a place at the top of the bantamweight division with a submission victory over Cory Sandhagen thanks to a rear-naked choke. Come the main event, the imperious Amanda Nunes steadily beat up Felicia Spencer, scoring a comfortable decision to retain her featherweight belt. As fight fans revelled in the action and Nunes hinted at some time away from the sport, Conor McGregor snatched headlines by once more announcing his retirement, by way of explanation adding ‘there’s just no buzz’.
