At the beginning of a new week, global cases of coronavirus passed 13 million, with the World Health Organization sending out warning signals as 1 million cases in five days hastened the spread. The precipitous rise was the product of the United States, Brazil, India, and South Africa, four countries where the bulk of infections were taking place. Surging cases across the most populous states of California, Texas, and Florida culminated during the course of the week in a new record for America, which reported more than 77,000 infections in one day, taking the tally racing past 3.5 million. While the virus was no longer spreading exponentially in the major states of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, the tally exceeded 2 million as infections remained perilously high in Brazil. Up and down the Americas few countries were being spared the most pernicious effects of the virus. Infections surged in Argentina, which lifted a strict lockdown over Buenos Aires despite the region being home to 90 percent of all cases to date. Colombia imposed rolling quarantines in the capital Bogotá, as hospitals buckled under the strain. Mexico continued its uneven climb up the league tables for infections and fatalities. Only Peru, which maintained one of the world’s worst death rates per capita, seemed to have rode out the crest of the wave.
Regional differences were laid bare across the Middle East and Asia. There were positive signs in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, but no letup for Iran, where officials walked back President Rouhani’s suggestion that the virus had already infected 25 million people. Israel loitered on the verge of curfews and lockdowns, as the country reported record cases and the government and Knesset remained at loggerheads. Outdoor leisure facilities and restaurants received last-minute reprieves, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu planned to dole out public cheques, not enough to quell mass protests as his corruption trial resumed. Cases in India surged past 1 million, not the only deluge in the region as floods roiled Assam and marooned Bangladesh. Reduced testing meshed with lower cases in Bangladesh and Pakistan, while 125 million people were now under some form of lockdown across India, as runaway growth forced the country to finally accept evidence of community transmission.
Cases slowed in Egypt but were rising rapidly across South Africa, as the authorities warned of coronavirus fatigue. Surging cases in the Australian state of Victoria meant mandatory masks for Melbourne and the Mitchell Shire. While the situation remained stable across South Korea, China, and Singapore, despite localised outbreaks and imported infections, spiralling cases prompted fresh concerns for Tokyo and Hong Kong. Rogue imports upset Thailand and 250,000 people were back under lockdown in Metro Manila, but Indonesia remained hardest-hit in Southeast Asia, as the country suffered its deadliest week. Russia presented a stolid outlook despite high mortality rates and protests in the Far East, but there was less certainty in other parts of Eastern Europe as political strife meshed with rising cases in Serbia and Belarus. There were early signs of a resurgence across Western Europe, especially in the Catalonia region of Spain. By the end of the week localised outbreaks in hilly Lleida and Huesca had spread to the regional capital Barcelona, while amid sudden spikes in Brittany and Leicester, France and England prepared to press their mask mandates indoors.
As cases and hospitalisations hit record highs in Texas and California while Florida reported successive days of rising deaths, San Francisco was forced to pause reopening, the whole of California rolled back indoor dining, and evening curfews put paid to partygoing in Miami Beach. Schools had become the latest battleground between federal government and the states, as the White House bemoaned science while districts from Houston to Los Angeles and San Diego confirmed online-only classes from the start of the autumn term. The threat of legal action forced the Trump administration to rescind a new directive on student visas. As politicians broke ranks and health experts faced concerted criticism, the defining image of primary elections in Texas, Maine, and Alabama was Jeff Sessions’ withered face. From lockdowns and job losses to soaring temperatures and social unrest, some American cities were also reporting significant spikes in the homicide rate. At least hospitalisations continued to fall in the former hotspots of New York and New Jersey, with New York City ready to welcome back botanical gardens and zoos.
Where life was measured by beer and circuses, no joy for South Africa which maintained a contentious ban on booze. Spain paid tribute to the victims of the pandemic, and health workers were the focus of a muted Bastille Day as the reopening of the Eiffel Tower and Disneyland Paris gave French tourism a timely boost. Following Geneva, Seattle, and other fashionable destinations, Moscow sought the formation of new habits as it turned miles of road into bicycle routes. As Russia touted its antiviral drug Avifavir, the biotech company Moderna announced that its fledgeling vaccine had provoked a promising immune response. While the Food and Drug Administration in America authorised pooled testing and a European Union summit stalled over a suitable financial response, studies turned towards issues of air pollution and childhood vaccination and the impact of coronavirus on the young and very young. By the weekend 1 million cases in 100 hours had taken the global coronavirus tally past 14 million. The virus had killed more than 600,000 people, with over 140,000 victims in America and almost 80,000 in Brazil.
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Since September 2017, archaeologists have been investigating the ruins around the historic courtyard of the Nacional Monte de Piedad, a not-for-profit pawnshop located just off the Zócalo, the main plaza of Mexico City. This week they discovered the remains of an Aztec palace, which according to the ministry of culture boasts ties to two major historical figures. The archaeologists uncovered basalt floor slabs which they believe belonged to an open area in the palace of Axayácatl, the ruler of the Aztec Empire between 1469 and 1481. Axayácatl was the sixth tlatoani of the altepetl of Tenochtitlán, which is to say the ruler of the city state Tenochtitlán which covered present-day Mexico City, leading the Triple Alliance which had hegemony over the Valley of Mexico. After the line of succession passed through his brothers, Axayácatl’s son Moctezuma II expanded the empire before being killed during the early stages of the Spanish conquest led by Hernán Cortés. Above the basalt floor the archaeologists also found evidence of the home of the famous conquistador, built by Cortés out of the rubble of the palace upon the fall of the Aztec Empire in 1521.
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The Solar Orbiter, developed by the European Space Agency and launched from Cape Canaveral in February, describes itself as the most complex scientific laboratory ever to have been sent to the Sun. With a dedicated heat shield, through a combination of six remote sensors and four in situ instruments, the spacecraft hopes to offer unprecedented up-close images of the Sun and its polar regions, exploring the inner heliosphere, measuring patterns of magnetic activity, and identifying the characteristics of the solar wind. The mission involves international collaboration between the European Space Agency and NASA, and is scheduled to last seven years, with a closest distance to the Sun of 42 million kilometres. In the middle of June the Solar Orbiter completed its first pass at a distance of 77 million kilometres, sending back to date the closest pictures ever taken of the Sun.
The remarkable images show what principal investigator David Berghmans – an astrophysicist at the Royal Observatory of Belgium in Brussels – calls ‘campfires’, the ‘little nephews’ millions of times smaller than solar flares. These campfires are already being equated with nanoflares, a feature first hypothesised by the astrophysicist Thomas Gold and later developed by Eugene Parker, conceived as miniature explosions which help the corona, the outer atmosphere of the Sun, reach a temperature 300 times hotter than the solar surface. Emissions from the Sun, including from solar flares which flash brightly and eject plasma, can cause auroras but also disrupt satellite and radio communications. One of the objectives of the Solar Orbiter mission is therefore a fuller understanding of space weather so as to better predict its impact on life on Earth. Other images captured during the first pass offer rare glimpses of the zodiacal light, the phenomenon where rays of sunlight are scattered by interplanetary dust, holding out hope for more evidence of solar wind structures as the Solar Orbiter approaches the Sun.
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Caught in the cultural maelstrom which has swept up beloved dramas and comedy institutions from Fawlty Towers to Gone With the Wind, the emblematic noughties New York sitcom 30 Rock this week achieved something akin to its very own A Blaffair to Rememblack. After voluntarily withdrawing four episodes from the original run which featured characters in blackface, the show was back ponying up for its old network NBC, with a one-time special serving to advertise the launch of the new streaming service Peacock. Unlike other socially distanced specials offering fan service in the time of coronavirus, the 30 Rock special stretched beyond the pitfalls and pratfalls of teleconferencing to go out on the streets of New York City. With Tina Fey once more at the helm, the core cast of Alec Baldwin, Tracy Morgan, Jane Krakowski, and Jack McBrayer returned alongside a host of guest stars. For its frantic pace and reflexivity, 30 Rock remains the exemplary modern comedy, but after many NBC affiliates refused to air the promotional episode fearing competition from the new streaming service, those critics who did see 30 Rock: A One-Time Special gave the reunion a tepid response.
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The statesman and civil rights leader John Lewis died on Friday at the age of 80. Born to sharecroppers in Pike County, Alabama, with youthful aspirations of becoming a preacher, Lewis was engaged in the civil rights movement and had met Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. by the time he graduated from the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Tennessee. He subsequently began a bachelor’s degree in religion and philosophy at Fisk University, while under the auspices of James Lawson, as part of the Nashville Student Movement he helped organise sit-ins at segregated lunch counters alongside other forms of nonviolent protest. In 1961, Lewis became one of the original thirteen Freedom Riders, who planned to travel in an integrated fashion from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans to challenge segregated public transportation in the South. The 1960 Supreme Court decision Boynton v. Virginia had made racial segregation on public transportation illegal, but Southern states refused to abide by the ruling which was unenforced by the federal government.
Setting a template for the journeys to come, Lewis was attacked when he tried to enter a white-only waiting room in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and the riders were routinely assaulted by armed mobs often conspiring with local police, before they were arrested in Jackson, Mississippi. While the Kennedy administration urged a cooling-off period, the Congress of Racial Equality led by James Farmer and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee organised further rides, which in the summer of 1961 criss-crossed the south. In 1963 Lewis became the chairman of the SNCC, opening Freedom Schools to provide African Americans with free education, and organising the Freedom Summer project in Mississippi which registered African Americans to vote. In August 1963 Lewis was one of the Big Six who led the March on Washington, as around a quarter of a million people gathered by the Lincoln Memorial to advocate for civil and economic rights. He was the youngest speaker at the event, which climaxed with King’s famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, spurring a political course which culminated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
When a voter registration campaign in Alabama resulted in the murder of local activist Jimmie Lee Jackson by state troopers, in March 1965 Lewis and Hosea Williams led the first of three protest marches from Selma to the state capital Montgomery. On a day which would become known as Bloody Sunday, the marchers were met by Alabama State Troopers at the end of Edmund Pettus Bridge, who ordered the crowd to disperse then mounted on horses and firing tear gas beat the protesters with nightsticks. Organiser Amelia Boynton was left unconscious while Lewis suffered a skull fracture, bearing the scars for the rest of his life. The Selma to Montgomery marches hastened the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Lewis subsequently worked for the Field Foundation, the Southern Regional Council, and from 1970 served as the director of the Voter Education Project, before entering party politics. After five years on the Atlanta City Council, in 1986 Lewis was elected to the United States House of Representatives, beating Julian Bond in the Democratic primary in a contentious race for Georgia’s 5th congressional district.
John Lewis was reelected sixteen times in the heavily Democratic district, serving in the House of Representatives from 1987 until the time of his death. One of the most liberal members of Congress, often taking an independent tack on foreign affairs, Lewis opposed the Clinton administration on NAFTA and welfare reform, before emerging as one of the Bush administration’s fiercest critics. In 2008 his shifting allegiance served as a coup for Barack Obama, consolidating support for the future president among African American lawmakers and other senior Democrats. In 2016, Lewis led a House sit-in as Democrats demanded gun control legislation in the wake of the Orlando nightclub shooting. With each new Congress since 1988, Lewis had proposed a bill for the creation of a national African American museum in Washington, which finally came to fruition when the National Museum of African American History and Culture opened in late 2016. Lewis was also an acclaimed author, writing the bestselling autobiography Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement and the March series of graphic novels. His death on Friday followed a six-month battle with pancreatic cancer, as political figures from across the international community paid tribute.
