The world at a glance

Washington DC

Patriotic masks: As concern about the US’s Covid-19 infection rate intensified, President Trump tweeted a picture of himself in a face mask, and urged Americans to wear them too, describing it as their patriotic duty in situations where social distancing is not possible. Previously, Trump had derided his rivals for wearing masks, and referred to them as pointless and “politically correct” – though public health officials, including the leading virologist Dr Anthony Fauci (pictured), had recommended their use, and most state governors have mandated their use in public places. On Tuesday, at his first press briefing in months, Trump said wearing masks will “have an effect” on what he referred to as the “China virus”, and conceded that the crisis in the US will “probably get worse before it gets better”.

Around 1,100 coronavirus-related deaths were recorded in the US on Tuesday. The daily toll is still far lower than it was at its peak in late April, but the trend is now upward. Texas and California have announced some schools will not reopen for the next academic year, and it has been predicted that millions of Americans will opt to vote by post in November’s presidential election – leading to potentially chaotic results. Trump has often questioned the legitimacy of postal voting; this week, he warned that if defeated in such circumstances, he might not accept the result.

Portland, Oregon

Military-style enforcement: President Trump’s deployment of federal forces to the city of Portland has caused a bitter row about the limits of presidential power. The officers were deployed under an executive order issued to protect statues during the unrest that followed the police killing of George Floyd. However, politicians in Oregon say the personnel, who wear military-style camouflage and drive in unmarked vehicles, have used excessive force to break up protests, and that they have only inflamed tensions. They are demanding that the forces be withdrawn. But this week, Trump said they had done a “fantastic job”, and named other cities where forces could be sent – including New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Baltimore.

Guadalajara, Mexico

Show of force: Footage of a large military-style convoy of armoured vehicles owned by one of Mexico’s most powerful cartels went viral on social media last week, just as President López Obrador (Amlo) made a high-profile visit to their heartlands, in the violence-racked states of Guanajuato, Jalisco and Colima. The video, which also showed heavily armed men in combat fatigues, appeared to be a show of force by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. Amlo claims his government has halted the “upward trend” of homicides in Mexico. But the number of murders rose 3% during his first year in power, and 2020 is projected to be the worst year on record.

Bogotá

Covid warning: Doctors in the Colombian capital say that the city’s intensive care facilities have been overwhelmed by the ongoing surge in Covid-19 cases, and have warned of an unfolding catastrophe in the country. So far, Colombia’s outbreak has not been as severe as those in Brazil, Chile or Peru. But whereas in those three countries reported levels of new cases and deaths have plateaued or are falling, in Colombia they are rising rapidly. Colombia imposed a lockdown early, but it has included unusual variations, including alternating days of quarantine for men and women, and two-week lockdowns that rotate randomly around the districts of Bogotá. “The authorities are improvising,” Dr Sergio Isaza, the president of the Colombian Medical Federation, told The Sunday Telegraph. “We need a coherent public health strategy to save lives, and we need it now.”

New York

PA accused of murder: The millionaire tech entrepreneur whose body was found decapitated and dismembered in his $2.2m Manhattan apartment last week was killed by his personal assistant, police believe. Tyrese Haspil, 21, had allegedly used his own credit card to buy the Taser with which he stunned his victim, Fahim Saleh, 33, and had even signed for the package himself. He was also reportedly caught on CCTV buying a saw and cleaning supplies. The police believe his motive was financial: they say that Haspil, who has been charged with second-degree murder, had embezzled $90,000 while managing Saleh’s finances. Detectives started to investigate him after finding texts on Saleh’s phone accusing him of theft. Rather than report his employee to the police, Saleh – who started the Nigerian ride-hailing motorbike app and delivery service Gokada – had given him time to pay back the stolen money in instalments.

Brasília

Forest warning: The destruction of the Amazon rainforest has accelerated dramatically this year, newly published data suggests.

According to analysis of satellite imagery released by Brazil’s space agency, the INPE, an area of 1,034 sq km was cleared – the 15th month in a row to see an increase. In the 12 months to June, 9,564 sq km of forest was lost – almost twice as much as in the previous year, and more than in any year since the INPE began monitoring forest cover in 2007. According to figures collated by Greenpeace, 2,248 fires were recorded in the Amazon last month, 20% more than in June last year. Indigenous leaders have warned that the damage done to the economy by Covid-19 is only going to lead to more mining and logging in indigenous territories.

Jerusalem

Back to lockdown: Israel is the latest country to reimpose lockdown – closing shops, hairdressers and other businesses – following a surge in coronavirus infections. Back in April, Israel had one of the world’s lowest infection rates – just 30 cases a day in a nation of nine million – and was widely praised for its decisive response to the threat. But the hasty reopening of the economy in May has led to daily infection rates climbing to 2,000 a day. Protests against the way Benjamin Netanyahu has dealt with the crisis, in particular his handling of the economy – unemployment sits at 21% – are an almost daily occurrence. To “get the economy moving faster”, the PM has unveiled a 6bn shekel (£1.4bn) “fiscal stimulus” package that includes direct payments of up to £175 for individuals and nearly £700 for families.

Harare

Journalist arrested:

A prominent

Zimbabwean journalist, known for reporting on official corruption, has been abducted from his home by eight “state security agents”. The seizure of Hopewell Chin’ono, who has now been charged with “inciting public violence”, is just the latest in a series of abductions and arrests of government critics – detention that Amnesty International condemns as being “designed to intimidate and send a chilling message to journalists, whistle-blowers and activists who draw attention to matters of public interest”. More than 105,000 people have been arrested in Zimbabwe since March for violating coronavirus restrictions; critics accuse President Mnangagwa’s government of using this as a pretext to target opposition supporters.

Delhi

High rate of infection: India’s government has released data which show the capital territory, Delhi, to have one of the highest infection rates of any major city. Random testing of more than 21,000 Delhi residents found almost a quarter (23.5%) testing positive for Covid-19 antibodies. Delhi has been one of India’s worst-hit cities – in the first half of June, its hospitals were overwhelmed – but it has so far recorded just 124,000 cases, equivalent to less than 1% of its population. The new data suggest that many carriers are asymptomatic and that the outbreak in the country as a whole is vastly bigger than currently recorded. By contrast, a Lancet study of 60,000 people in Spain – one of the worst-affected European countries – concluded that no more than 5.2% of Spain’s population had developed antibodies.

Hong Kong

Virus on the rise: Hong Kong is facing a “critical” situation due to a resurgence in Covid-19 cases, according to the territory’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, who says there’s no sign “of the situation being brought under control”. Hong Kong enjoyed early success in tackling the virus, and has had around 2,100 cases. But a third of these have appeared in the past fortnight, and doctors fear the virus is now spreading freely in the densely populated city of 7.5 million. Lam introduced a range of social-distancing measures and restrictions last week, and is reported to be considering a full lockdown.

Assam, India

Flood devastation: The bursting of the banks of the Brahmaputra River following monsoon rains has forced around four million people in India’s tea-growing state of Assam and in neighbouring Nepal to flee their homes. In Assam, where more than 2,500 villages have been inundated by floodwaters and mudslides, at least 84 people have died. Around 50,000 are being sheltered in emergency camps, raising fears that the coronavirus and other diseases may quickly spread there. In Nepal, at least 110 people have perished.

Khabarovsk, Russia

Governor dismissed: In a rare show of popular defiance against Moscow, tens of thousands took to the streets of Khabarovsk last week, to protest the sacking of the regional governor. Sergei Furgal, a popular leader who in 2018 defeated Vladimir Putin’s candidate for governor of this remote region in Russia’s far east, was arrested earlier this month on charges (seen by many as politically motivated) of organising two murders and one attempted murder of two businessmen

in 2004.

Melbourne, Australia

Covid record: Australia recorded 501 new cases of Covid-19 on Wednesday, its highest daily tally since the crisis began. The vast majority were in Victoria, which also recorded two new deaths. A new lockdown was imposed on much of the state on 8 July; this week, its premier, Daniel Andrews, warned that unless people take the guidelines seriously, the figures “will continue to go up and up. And a six-week shutdown will not be for six weeks. It will run for much longer than that.” In total, Australia has registered 12,896 cases and 128 deaths.

Training for the Olympics

At the Rio Olympics four years ago, Max Whitlock became the first British gymnast ever to win a gold medal. In fact, he ended up with two golds and a bronze, making him Team GB’s most decorated gymnast ever. This summer, he should have been in Tokyo defending his record on the pommel horse. The pandemic has put paid to that, but he is trying to turn it into a positive. “It’s given me another window to clean up my routine even more,” he told Murad Ahmed in the FT. For the past few months, he has been spending 35 hours a week going over and over a routine he has perfected over the past four years, so that if the Games go ahead next summer, he will be in peak form. But the 27-yearold knows that in his sport, a year is a long time. “One of my proudest achievements is keeping the highest difficulty, the hardest routine in the world. I have got that,” he pauses. “At the moment.”

An emigrant’s journey

When actor Shalom BruneFranklin was 15, she moved with her parents from a council flat in St Albans to Western Australia. It was in Perth that she enrolled at drama school – despite having seen just two staged shows and barely any television (she was an outdoorsy child). “I’m such an unlikely suspect in this industry,” she told Eleanor Halls in The Daily Telegraph. Yet she made it, and at 25, she is about to appear with Hugh

Laurie in BBC thriller Roadkill.

It was her parents’ determination that inspired her, she says. When they emigrated, her mother “couldn’t even run around the block”, yet in Australia, she became a competitive bodybuilder, while her father became a chef. “They’d decided they’d rather struggle by the sea than struggle in a council flat, so they picked their whole lives up and reinvented themselves.”

Jarvis Cocker’s life lesson

Jarvis Cocker was seven when his father left the family home in Sheffield. “And then all the people who lived across the yard... all the dads left at once. I think they must have discussed it in the pub: ‘So, we’ll all scarper at the same time.’” It meant he grew up in a “very female-dominated environment” with his mother, who is now a Tory parish councillor. “I learnt about sex from eavesdropping on my mum and her friends’ conversations after school,” he told Krissi Murison in The Sunday Times. “I remember something that my mum or one of her friends said once, where they were talking about this guy, and they said, ‘Oh, he’s too nice.’ As a kid I was thinking, ‘Well, you’re always told to be nice.’” He realised something that day that stayed with him – and that he’d later write about in his songs. “Sex and sexual attraction, it’s not a cut-and-dried thing, is it? That thing of whether you get a spark between two people is really elusive.”

In the early 1980s, a new generation of young actors was sweeping through Hollywood. Dermot Mulroney was a member of that “Brat Pack”: aged 24, he was in Young Guns with Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez; his agent billed him as better than Tom Cruise. Did he believe he was destined for the A list?.“The straight answer is yes, of course,” he says, slowly. “I’ve never even really said that. But that was the programme... that was gonna be the plot.” It didn’t come about, said Elle Hunt in The Guardian. Indeed, his biggest mark on popular culture could be his 2012 Saturday Night Live skit about being confused with actor Dylan McDermott. So what happened? “Well, I had some alcoholism. That slowed me down. And I... wasn’t six feet. Does that work? No, that’s a little flimsy. Let’s keep thinking.” Stiff competition? (“People like Patrick Dempsey, man, they were tough to beat!”) Too handsome! (“I heard Rob Lowe say that – but have you seen the guy?”) “Really, the answer is, I don’t know. I tried f***ing hard.” And yet he is by no means a failure. Although best known for his role in My Best Friend’s Wedding, opposite Julia Roberts (who remains a friend), he has never stopped working in film and on TV. “I had a fair shot at the welterweight belt, I took a few on the chin and I’m still in the game – so I couldn’t be happier,” he says. “I could have made more money. But I couldn’t give a damn about being more famous.”