
'Isolated' but defiant, Brazil's Bolsonaro defends handling of Covid and climate at UN
CNN
With Covid-19 and the environment at the top of the agenda at this year's United Nations' General Assembly, observers braced for the first world leader to speak in the UN headquarters' storied hall: Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro, notorious for both his off-the-cuff comments and controversial handling of the pandemic and the environment.
The Brazilian President's speech was calmly given, even monotone at times, opening with a numbing sales pitch of his country to investors that touted developments in sanitation and transportation services. He was presenting "a new Brazil whose credibility has been recovered in the world" -- one very different from the country devastated by the coronavirus on his watch and lashed by fires in the Amazon, where Bolsonaro has pushed for development.
The conservative populist leader stuck to established provocations on social and pandemic issues, repeatedly alluding to the importance of "the traditional nuclear family" and criticizing pandemic lockdown measures. Doctors should be free to prescribe the use of "off-label" medications against Covid-19, added the president, who has long championed the unproven malaria medicine hydroxychloroquine as a treatment.

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