Mexico now has the third most COVID-19 deaths in the world, behind Brazil and the United States, where a hurricane bearing down on the East Coast on Saturday is threatening to complicate efforts to contain the virus.

Thousands of personnel from the Navy, Marines, Air Force, Army, and Coast Guard are now under the leadership of Adm. Craig Faller, the commander of U.S. Southern Command, for the operation.

Analysis

Over a third of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's cabinet hails from the military. While the military isn't about to split with the administration, there's growing push-back across the ranks, including officers within the government, to define clearer boundaries.

Isaias snapped trees and knocked out power as it blew through the Bahamas on Saturday and weakened to a tropical storm as it churned toward the Florida coast, where it still threatened to complicate efforts to contain the coronavirus in a hot spot.

The Trump administration on Wednesday named a special envoy for the Arctic, filling a post that had been vacant for more than three years as the administration seeks a greater role in the region and tries to blunt growing Russian and Chinese influence there.

U.S. authorities have moved to seize the cargo of four oil tankers carrying gasoline and fuel products from Iran to Venezuela, escalating a sanctions battle with two regimes Washington opposes and a contest over Iranian oil shipments that allegedly finance its nuclear program.

Two American oil executives jailed in Venezuela have been released and granted house arrest in the South American nation, former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said late Thursday.

Peruvian authorities and the Pan American Health Organization are investigating whether the country failed to count 27,253 deaths caused by the novel coronavirus, a figure that could more than double the country's official death toll from COVID-19.

Tropical Storm Isaias battered Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic on Thursday as it continued on a forecast track toward the U.S. East Coast.

Struggling to breathe, Luis Gualotuña arrived before dawn Wednesday at a coronavirus testing site in the Ecuadorian capital of Quito, which has experienced an alarming surge in COVID-19 cases since the government started to reopen the economy last month.

A small team of soldiers from the 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade will deploy next week to Colombia to aid that country in its longstanding fight against drugs, defense officials announced Thursday.

On Wednesday, Brazil posted a record of 65,339 new cases, bringing the total infected to 2.2 million, with 83,000 dead. Both counts are second only to the United States.

Britain, the United States and Canada accused Russian hackers on Thursday of trying to steal information from researchers seeking a coronavirus vaccine, warning scientists and pharmaceutical companies to be alert for suspicious activity.

On a visit to Miami on Friday, President Donald Trump portrayed himself as tough on drugs and a champion of Venezuelans, at a time when U.S. policy toward the troubled South American nation has not yielded the expected results and polls show him falling behind his Democratic rival in Florida.

President Nicolas Maduro continued his takeover of Venezuela’s main opposition parties Tuesday by ordering the suspension of the board of Popular Will, led by his biggest rival, Juan Guaido.

The sky-high results are easy to explain — though not so easy to fix. Mexico has stubbornly shunned wide-scale testing and instead runs exams only on the sickest of patients. Deputy Health Minister Hugo Lopez Gatell in late May said anything more would be “a waste of time, effort and resources.”