Where is Nicaragua's president?

Last Monday, the top story on British front pages was Boris Johnson being admitted to the hospital for Covid-19. Exactly a week later, they are marking his recovery. Conservative tabloid The Sun has actually published photos of the two ICU nurses who they say were by Johnson’s bedside day and night. The prime minister told the media that "it could have gone either way" and said that the UK’s National Health Service saved his life.

For left-wing papers, though, there is quite a bit of hypocrisy in Johnson’s statement. A cartoon by Brian Adcock in The Independent shows Johnson waving goodbye to his nurse who is looking completely run down. In recent weeks, Johnson’s government has been criticised for failing to provide NHS workers with proper protective equipment and testing.

Meanwhile, The Washington Post is taking a look at another world leader – the president of Nicaragua, who has not been seen in public in a month. The paper writes that Nicaraguans are starting to wonder if Daniel Ortega is "ill, dead or simply avoiding human contact". For the paper, his absence is somewhat symbolic of Nicaragua’s refusal to confront the pandemic. Not only has the country not banned mass gatherings as its neighbours have done, Nicaragua has actually been encouraging and even organising them, much to the alarm of health and human rights groups. 

Finally, we end with the story of a damsel in distress: a 93-year-old woman in Pennsylvania held a sign up to her window to alert her neighbours that she was facing a dire crisis – she had run out of beer. The photo of her went viral and reportedly led to many offers of Coors Light, her apparent drink of choice. It definitely makes you want to try it at home, although many of us likely wouldn’t have the same success.