Brazil’s Steady Stream of Grief
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 30 January 2021
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Brazil is going through a deadly second-wave of Covid-19 – and it’s precipitated the collapse of the health system in– Manaus, the biggest city in the Amazon. The hospitals are overloaded with patients and oxygen supplies have run perilously low. Local and national leaders are now coming under scrutiny for their management of the outbreak. Katy Watson visited Manaus. We hear from Afghanistan, where there has been a recent surge of targeted killings, blamed on the Taliban. Peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban have stalled, and the rise in violence is proving a toxic backdrop. Meanwhile, locals are worried that the further US drawdown in troops could herald the Taliban’s return, says Yogita Limaye. We have an insight into the cyber world of online extremists. Meet the team who track the outlandish web of conspiracy theories spun by shadowy groups. They watched the emergence of the group now known as QAnon. In a fiercely divided America where facts are often dismissed as fake news, blurring the boundaries of reality and myth has becomes all too easy, finds Alistair Coleman. We visit the small Russian town of Nikel where, until recently, a decades-old smelter produced tonnes of nickel. Nornikel, closed the smelter in December in a move they claim is part of their shift towards a greener future. But for hundreds of employees, their future is less clear, finds Guy Kiddey. In September 2017, a ferocious Category 5 hurricane swept through Dominica, St Croix and Puerto Rico with 160-mile-per hour winds. On the eastern-Caribbean island of Dominica, Hurricane Maria left a trail of devastation and 65 people died.. Mark Stratton went to visit the island recently where efforts continue to rebuild, even as they face a new storm front: Coronavirus.
Presenter: Kate Adie Producer: Serena Tarling
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts. |
| 0:05.0 | Good morning. |
| 0:06.5 | Today we're in Afghanistan, a policeman shot in a wave of high profile attacks, |
| 0:11.8 | the Taliban waiting in the wings, and the rest of the world less engaged. |
| 0:16.6 | A different world, that of online extremists, oozing conspiracy theories which fueled the storming of Washington's capital building |
| 0:25.3 | and where those who monitor them encounter entwined fact and fiction. |
| 0:31.6 | Norway has a northern border with Russia and used to get polluted air coming across from an old nickel smelter. |
| 0:38.0 | No longer, but its closure means a doubtful future for its Russian workers, and the struggle to rebuild after |
| 0:45.8 | a hurricane, taking years in the island of Dominica not helped by the arrival of COVID-19. |
| 0:54.0 | First to Manaus, deep in the Amazon jungle, a huge sprawling city remote from the rest of Brazil, |
| 1:00.9 | though not from the pandemic, which is now going through a second wave in a country |
| 1:05.0 | which has an unenviable death toll. |
| 1:08.5 | Despite Manau's historic centre, it struggles economically, and the hospitals are overloaded with patients with oxygen |
| 1:16.4 | supplies running low. |
| 1:19.0 | Numbers of cases of deaths are rising and, says Katie Watson, there's inevitably a blame game in progress. |
| 1:26.5 | Manaus is a city like no other. Deep in the rainforest the most direct way in is by plain or by boat. It adds to the uniqueness and its |
| 1:37.1 | beauty on the banks where the Negro and Solimoy's rivers meet, the massive |
| 1:42.4 | waterway winding its way through the Amazon. |
| 1:46.4 | In the 1800s, thanks to the rubber industry, this city was the richest in South America. It was nicknamed Paris of the tropics and a lavish |
| 1:56.0 | opera house was built with materials from Europe. But now it's a very different |
| 2:01.9 | story. |
| 2:03.2 | Its people feel desperately forgotten. |
... |
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