Egyptian Messi lookalike thrills orphans

RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil is set to pass 300,000 COVID-19 deaths on Wednesday, as President Jair Bolsonaro’s fourth health minister used his first official day in the job to pledge a vaccination goal of 1 million shots a day to put the brakes on the snowballing crisis.

Latin America’s biggest country, already home to the world’s secondhighest coronavirus death toll after the United States, has become the global epicentre of COVID-19 deaths, with one in four global fatalities currently a Brazilian. The outbreak is reaching its worst ever stage in the country, fanned by a patchy vaccine rollout, an infectious new variant and a lack of nationwide public health restrictions.

ZAGAZIG, Egypt - They may not be meeting the real Lionel Messi, but Islam Battah’s resemblance to the Barcelona footballer is so uncanny, that the children at an orphanage in the Egyptian city of Zagazig swarm around him in delight anyway.

Seeing the excitement his presence causes at such events, the 27-year-old Egyptian painter is happy to pose as the Argentine, wearing a Barcelona shirt and joining in a game of football.

“When I started growing my beard, my friends told me that I look like Messi. When I grew my beard even more, the resemblance was clearer,” he said.

“The kids’ happiness with the resemblance between me and Messi is indescribable. When you make someone happy, God rewards you. I wanted to share this happiness with them,” he added.