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Wed 19 May 2021 20.00 EDT
There was a time before when the Ganges was “swollen with dead bodies”.
In 1918, when the great flu pandemic swept through India and killed an estimated 18 million people, the water of this river – upon which so many lives depended – was filled with the stench of death.
And so it is again. India’s official death toll from the coronavirus pandemic may be just over a quarter of a million, but experts believe the real figure to be up to five times higher, and the bodies that have begun washing up in India’s holiest river have become haunting representations of the uncounted Covid dead.
The United States has yielded to India a dark statistic of the global pandemic – India has recorded the highest single-day death toll. Latest COVID-19 news.
First Thing: pause after call for de-escalation raises hopes of Israel-Gaza ceasefire Miranda Bryant
Good morning.
Israel and Palestinian militants stopped firing for several hours early this morning after Joe Biden called for “a significant de-escalation”.
The eight-hour pause in attacks – the longest since the start of the conflict 11 days ago – came as efforts to secure a ceasefire appeared to gain momentum. But the attacks later restarted when air-raid sirens sounded in Israel near Gaza and Israel’s military said a fighter jet had hit a rocket launcher.
France, which has circulated a UN resolution, has put pressure on the US to demand a truce and issued a joint statement with Egypt and Jordan calling for an immediate ceasefire. In a phone call on Wednesday, the US president told the Israeli prime minister that he expected “a significant de-escalation today on the path to a ceasefire”.