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From Our Own Correspondent: Trump’s Achilles heel

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Trump’s Achilles heel

23/05/2020 GMT

BBC World Service - From Our Own Correspondent, Trump’s Achilles heel

White House staff are now training their sights on the looming economic crisis

President Trump and his team train their sights on the growing economic crisis; Brazil’s death toll soars but many have become complacent and Siberia embraces capoeira.

Stories from the US, Brazil, Siberia and the Netherlands 

For months Donald Trump downplayed the threat of the novel coronavirus suggesting it would one day disappear. All it took was a few White House staffers, including the press secretary for Vice-President Mike Pence, testing positive for the virus for the White House to transform from business as usual to something akin to the lockdown much of America has endured. But the looming economic crisis is a far greater preoccupation for the president, as Anthony Zurcher reports.

Brazil is now the third worst-affected country in numbers of coronavirus infections with more than 290,000 cases, and a death toll that exceeds 18,000. With so little testing in the country, experts believe the true number of infections could be 12 times higher. But an increasing number of people are failing to take it seriously. And national and state governments have very different views on when the lockdown should end. South America correspondent Katy Watson reports from Sao Paolo.

The Afro-Brazilian martial art and dance form, Capoeira continues to be practised around the world, even during the lockdown. Over the last decade, it has caught on in far cooler climes, such as Russia. Olga Smirnova went to Lake Baikal in eastern Siberia months before the pandemic broke out. She visited the world’s largest freshwater lake, where she discovered that capoeira is much more than just a form of exercise for young Russians.

The Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte called his country’s coronavirus restrictions “an intelligent lockdown” - designed to minimise the impact on society, the economy and mental health. But now some people are starting to question whether enough was done to shield the most vulnerable. And as the country adapts to life post-lockdown, there are some who are innovating to allow people to interact more safely, finds Anna Holligan

(Image: President Trump speaking about agriculture and the food supply chain in the Roosevelt Room at the White House on 19 May 2020. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times-Pool/Getty Images)

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