Author: CensorBiz

Nurse Flora Ajayi parks her car on a residential block in Queens, New York and pops open the trunk, revealing plastic bins full of personal protective gear. She dons gloves, a blue gown, two masks, a face shield and shoe covers and turns to enter the home of one of her COVID-19 patients.   Ajayi, 47, works alone on the next front line of the coronavirus pandemic. She is part of a network of New York home care nurses treating hundreds of patients who have been discharged from hospitals and sent home to recover from the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus.   The highly infectious disease has killed at least 20,300 people in the state, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States, where more people have died than any other country — at least 49,000, according to a Reuters tally.   Home care nurses have a vital role to play as patients transition from around-the-clock care in a hospital to life at home. Ajayi enters and exits virus-ridden homes daily, donning and doffing her protective equipment up to 12 times a day on curbsides around the city.   Home care nurse Flora Ajayi poses for a portrait after visiting a client during the ongoing coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in the Queens borough of New York City, April 22, 2020.Still, Ajayi worries she might bring the virus back from a patient’s home to her own, where she lives with her son, 23, and her sister. She wears a mask at home and tries to stay 6 feet away from her family to limit any infection – a sacrifice she makes for the job she loves.   “I love to be part of the healing, part of the mentorship, part of the progression,” she said. “It makes it all worth it.” ‘We don’t know’ Ajayi works for Northwell Health, New York’s largest healthcare provider with 23 hospitals.   Almost all hospitalized COVID-19 patients will require some medical follow-up or rehabilitation when they are discharged before they can regain their former quality of life, if that ever happens, said Dr. Maria Carney, Northwell’s medical director for post-acute services.   “We’re really entering an area of ‘we don’t know.’ We don’t know what patients need right now, we just see that they are extremely weak, both physically and mentally,” Carney said. “How can our health system deal with that next phase of recovery? It’s going to be a challenge.”   Of the patients who have been discharged so far, many suffer from blood clots in their legs, muscle atrophy, aches, fatigue, cardiac issues and continued respiratory distress.   Home care nurse Flora Ajayi is thanked by a clients daughter as she departs from a home while wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) to protect herself and prevent cross-contamination while visiting a client, April 22, 2020.Patients who were intubated are showing these symptoms more acutely when discharged, and many also are showing cognitive impairment, which could be an effect of long-term sedation or a condition called Post-Intensive Care Syndrome, Carney said.   As the number of COVID-19 patients discharged from Northwell’s hospitals topped 6,600 this week, the hospital system is considering hiring more home care nurses. It may also expand telehealth services and partner with local skilled care facilities to accommodate the discharged patients, Carney said.   Inside the homes, Ajayi answers a flood of questions from patients and their families, ranging from how often they should go to the grocery store to how they can self-monitor blood pressure.   She listens to the patients’ lungs with a stethoscope for signs of fluid build-up. She reminds them to not share toiletries and to wipe down doorknobs and light switches.   She checks the refrigerator and sometimes nudges them to call charitable meal delivery services if it is empty. She tells the doctor a patient needs more oxygen if she sees they are sleeping propped up in a chair, unable to breathe while lying flat.   Ajayi’s five confirmed COVID-19 patients have made slow and steady progress since returning home, and none have needed to be readmitted to hospital.   Ajayi never removes her two masks and face shield around patients, but the creases around her silver eye-shadowed eyes give away her smile and her even voice brings comfort.   “We keep the calm in this hysteria for them,” Ajayi said. “They’re scared, we’re scared, but we can do it.”     
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Greeted by relieved parents, pet dogs, flares and a cloud of orange smoke, a group of 25 Dutch high school students with very little sailing experience ended a trans-Atlantic voyage Sunday that was forced on them by coronavirus restrictions.The children, ages 14 to 17, watched over by 12 experienced crew members and three teachers, were on an educational cruise of the Caribbean when the pandemic forced them to radically change their plans for returning home in March.That gave one of the young sailors, 17-year-old Floor Hurkmans, one of the biggest lessons of her impromptu adventure.“Being flexible, because everything is changing all the time,” she said as she set foot on dry land again. “The arrival time changed like 100 times. Being flexible is really important.”Instead of flying back from Cuba as originally planned, the crew and students stocked up on supplies and warm clothes and set sail for the northern Dutch port of Harlingen, a five-week voyage of nearly 7,000 kilometers (4,350 miles), on board the 60-meter (200-foot) top sail schooner Wylde Swan.As they arrived home, the students hung up a self-made banner saying “Bucket List” with ticks in boxes for Atlantic Ocean crossing, mid-ocean swim and surviving the Bermuda triangle.The teens hugged and chanted each other’s names as they walked off the ship and into the arms of their families, who drove their cars alongside the yacht one by one to adhere to social distancing rules imposed to rein in the spread of the virus that forced the students into their long trip home.Aukje Wakkerman is the last to disembark from the Wylde Swan schooner carrying 25 Dutch teens who sailed home from the Caribbean across the Atlantic when coronavirus lockdowns prevented them flying arrived at the port of Harlingen, April 26, 2020.For Hurkmans, the impossibility of any kind of social distancing took some getting used to.“At home you just have some moments for yourself, but here you have to be social all the time to everyone because you’re sleeping with them, you’re eating with them you’re just doing everything with them so you can’t really just relax,” she said.Her mother, Renee Scholtemeijer, said she expects her daughter to miss life on the open sea once she encounters coronavirus containment measures in the Netherlands.“I think that after two days she’ll want to go back on the boat, because life is very boring back at home,” she said. “There’s nothing to do, she can’t visit friends, so it’s very boring.”The twin-masted Wylde Swan glided into Harlingen harbor late morning Sunday, its sails neatly stowed. Onlookers gathered on a sea wall to watch the arrival set off flares and a smoke grenade that sent an orange cloud drifting over the glassy water.Masterskip, the company that organized the cruise, runs five educational voyages for about 150 students in all each year. Crossing the Atlantic is nothing new for the Wylde Swan, which has made the trip about 20 times.The company’s director, Christophe Meijer, said the students were monitored for the coronavirus in March to ensure nobody was infected.He said he was pleased the students had adapted to life on board and kept up their education on the long voyage.“The children learned a lot about adaptivity, also about media attention, but also their normal school work,” he said. “So they are actually far ahead now of their Dutch school colleagues. They have made us very proud.”
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Mexico has almost entirely cleared out government migrant centers over the past five weeks to contain the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, returning most of the occupants to their countries of origin, official data showed on Sunday. In a statement, the National Migration Institute (INM) said that since March 21, in order to comply with health and safety guidelines, it had been removing migrants from its 65 migrant facilities, which held 3,759 people last month. In the intervening weeks, Mexico has returned 3,653 migrants to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador by road and air, with the result that only 106 people remain in the centers, it said. The institute’s migrant centers and shelters have a total capacity of 8,524 spaces, the INM said. Victor Clark Alfaro, a migration expert at San Diego State University, said the announcement went hand in hand with the Mexican government’s readiness to keep migrant numbers in check under pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump. “Today, Mexico’s policy is to contain and deport,” he said. There are dozens of other shelters run by a variety of religious and non-governmental organizations throughout the country that continue to harbor migrants. Among those who remained in the INM centers were migrants awaiting the outcome of asylum requests or judicial hearings, and others who had expressly sought permission to stay, a migration official said. The vast majority of those sent back were migrants detained by authorities because they were in Mexico illegally, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Some no longer wished to stay in centers because of the risk of coronavirus infection, the official added. Most of the migrants passing through Mexico to reach the U.S. border are from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. More than 80 Guatemalan migrants deported to their homeland from the United States have tested positive for the coronavirus.
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A shooting in Louisiana’s capital city of Baton Rouge has left one police officer dead and a wounded colleague fighting for life Sunday, authorities said, adding a suspect was in custody after an hourslong standoff at a home.Baton Rouge Police Chief Murphy Paul told The Advocate the officers were shot in the northern part of the city, and one of the officers later died.  Police said the officers were responding to a call about reports of gunfire when they were shot.At a news conference Sunday evening, the police chief said the slain officer was a 21-year law enforcement veteran and that the wounded colleague had seven years of police work, according to WBRZ-TV.  The chief did not identify the officers.  The second wounded officer was hospitalized and “fighting for his life,” Paul said, adding both officers were rushed earlier to a leading Baton Rouge hospital.Paul said a suspect was taken into custody after the standoff. The police chief did not elaborate on any possible charges. Many details of events leading up to the shooting remained sketchy, and the chief said only that police continue to investigate.Later Sunday, dozens of officers gathered outside the hospital where the wounded officer was being treated, awaiting updates amid their impromptu vigil.  A coroner’s van was seen during the afternoon being escorted away by dozens of law enforcement vehicles as it left the hospital, according to media reports. 
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Amazon.com Inc is piloting the use of video conference calls to verify the identity of merchants who wish to sell goods on its websites, in a new plan to counter fraud without in-person meetings in the pandemic, the company said on Sunday. The world’s largest online retailer has long faced scrutiny over how it polices counterfeits and allegedly unsafe products on its platform. Fakes have frustrated top labels like Apple Inc and Nike Inc and discouraged some from selling via Amazon at all. Amazon said its pilot began early this year and included in-person appointments with prospective sellers. However, it switched exclusively to video conferencing in February because of social distancing requirements related to the highly contagious coronavirus, which has infected more than 2.9 million people globally. The interview vetting, on top of other risk-screening performed by Amazon, has been piloted with more than 1,000 merchant applicants based in China, the United States, United Kingdom and Japan, Amazon said. The extra scrutiny by Amazon could make it harder for some China-based sellers, who have registered multiple accounts using private internet networks or fake utility bills. China-based merchants accounted for 40% of the top 10,000 Amazon sellers in Europe, according to 2019 research from firm Marketplace Pulse.
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With limited supplies of coronavirus tests available, the Pentagon is focusing first on testing those performing duties deemed most vital to national security. Atop the list are the men and women who operate the nation’s nuclear forces, some counterterrorism forces, and the crew of a soon-to-deploy aircraft carrier.Defense leaders hope to increase testing from the current rate of about 7,000 a day to 60,000 by June. This will enable them to test those showing symptoms as well as those who do not.The current tight supply forced the Pentagon to take a phased approach, which includes testing sailors aboard the USS Nimitz, the Bremerton, Washington-based Navy carrier next in line to head to the Pacific. Officials hope to avoid a repeat of problems that plagued the virus-stricken USS Theodore Roosevelt. On Friday the Navy disclosed a virus outbreak aboard another ship at sea, the USS Kidd.Despite President Donald Trump’s assertion that testing capacity is not an issue in the United States, Pentagon officials don’t expect to have enough tests for all service members until sometime this summer.Defense Secretary Mark Esper recently approved the tiered approach. It expands the Pentagon’s practice of testing mainly those who show symptoms of the virus to eventually testing everyone. Many virus carriers show no symptoms but can be contagious, as was discovered aboard the Roosevelt.The aim is to allocate testing materials to protect what the military considers its most important missions, while not depleting supplies for high-risk groups in the civilian population, including the elderly at nursing homes and health care professionals on the front lines of battling the virus.The first tier of U.S. troops are being tested this month, followed in May and June by the second-highest priority group: forces in combat zones such as Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Next will be those abroad outside of war zones, like troops in Europe and aboard ships at sea, as well as those returning to the United States from overseas deployments.Last in line: the remainder of the force.Gen. John Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the first three groups could be fully tested by June. By then the Pentagon hopes to reach its goal of being able to conduct 60,000 tests per day. To complete testing of the entire force will take “into the summer,” he said without being specific.Hyten said that testing under this tiered approach started to step up in mid-April, and that it included a plan to fully test the crew of the Nimitz. The complications that come with trying to test for coronavirus aboard a ship while it’s already underway were made clear with the Roosevelt, which pulled into port at Guam in late March after discovering its first infections. It wasn’t able to test 100% of the crew until a few days ago.Beyond its desire to limit the spread of the virus, the Pentagon views testing and associated measures such as isolating and quarantining troops as tools to keep the force viable and to ensure it can perform its central function: to defend the nation. At least 3,900 members of the military had tested positive, including more than 850 from the Roosevelt.Military members, being fitter and younger than the general U.S. population, are thought to be less vulnerable to COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. So far only two military members have died from it.For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and death.The military’s staggered approach to testing is necessary, officials said, because of limited supplies and incomplete knowledge about the virus.”It is a supply issue right now, which is causing us not to be able to go down the full spectrum of all of the forces,” Hyten said. “So we’ll have to — that’s why we came up with the tiered approach.”Keeping coronavirus out of the nuclear force has been a high priority from the earliest days of this crisis. There are several reasons for that, including the Pentagon’s view that operating those forces 24/7 is central to deterring an attack on the United States. Also, there are limited numbers of military personnel certified to perform those missions, which include controlling Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missiles from cramped underground modules and operating nuclear-armed Ohio-class submarines.Since early in the outbreak crisis, Minuteman 3 launch officers have been operating in the missile fields for 14 days at a time, an extraordinary arrangement for personnel who for years had done 24-hour shifts and then returned to base.Gen. David Goldfein, the Air Force chief of staff, said Wednesday there are no COVID-positive cases in the nuclear force. That’s a “no fail” mission, he said, that will have to work around the virus indefinitely.Other first-tier forces, Goldfein said, are elements of the new Space Force, including those who operate Global Positioning System navigation satellites as well as the satellites that would provide early warning of a missile attack on the United States or its allies.The Air Force and the other services are prioritizing testing in their own ranks, he said, “to make sure that as test kits become available, we’re able to put them where they are most needed.”Goldfein said the military understands that the limited national supply of test kits means it cannot have all that it would like.”One of the top priorities right now across the nation is nursing homes,” he said. “I would not want to take tests away from that top national priority for my younger and healthier force. As tests become available, we’ve tiered them out and we know where we need to put them.” 
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The United States has renewed a waiver for Iraq to continue importing Iranian electricity, a State Department official said on Sunday, but this time for a shorter period of 30 days, adding that Washington would be reassessing whether to renew again once a ‘credible government’ is formed in Iraq.”The Secretary granted this brief extension of the waiver to allow time for the formation of a credible government,” a State Department official said, referring to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and added that the waiver would expire on May 26.Washington has repeatedly extended the exemption for Baghdad to use crucial Iranian energy supplies for its power grid, for periods of 90 or 120 days.The United States has insisted that oil-rich Iraq, OPEC’s second-largest producer, move towards energy self-sufficiency as a condition for its exemption for importing Iranian energy.Earlier this month, Iraq’s president named intelligence chief Mustafa al-Kadhimi as prime minister-designate, the third person tapped to lead Iraq in just 10 weeks as it struggles to replace a government that fell last year after months of deadly protests.”Once that government is in place, the Secretary will reassess whether to renew the waiver and for how long, and looks forward to resuming our cooperation with the Government of Iraq to reduce Iraq’s dependence on unreliable Iranian energy imports,” the State Department official said. 
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After weeks and months of shutting businesses and schools, communities in the United States and around the world are talking about what it will take to open up again. One tool is “contact tracing,” a practice whereby health workers find those who have been exposed to a disease, such as COVID-19, in order to stop its spread. But COVID-19 presents some unique challenges for tracing. People without symptoms can spread it and for some, it can be deadly. Apple and Google among other tech entities are offering help that will allow people to learn, through the use of apps on their smartphones, whether they have been exposed to the coronavirus. VOA explains how that might work.
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Hong Kong riot police armed with shields dispersed a crowd of 300 pro-democracy activists holding a singing protest in an upmarket shopping mall on Sunday, despite a ban on public gatherings of more than four people. Chanting popular protest slogans, mostly young activists clad in black swarmed the Cityplaza mall shouting “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times!” while others called for the release of pro-democracy activists. The protest was the first sizable gathering since the government imposed the ban on public meetings at the end of March to curb a spike in coronavirus infections. Fears that Beijing is flexing its muscles over the Asian financial hub risk reviving anti-government protests after months of calm as social distancing rules start to ease. Political tensions have escalated over the past two weeks after the arrest of 15 pro-democracy activists in the city’s biggest crackdown on the movement. Beijing has said it supported the arrests in the Chinese special administrative region. On Sunday, police cordoned off sections of the Cityplaza mall, prompting some stores to shut as activists and shoppers, including families with children, were ordered to leave. “People were just singing, it’s very peaceful … we didn’t do anything illegally. Democracy and freedom is more important,” said a high school student surnamed Or who came to participate ahead of his university entrance exam on Monday. Adding to concerns that Beijing is increasingly meddling in the city’s affairs — a claim the central government rejects — Beijing’s top official in there urged local authorities last week to enact national security legislation as soon as possible.  
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As Italy prepares to emerge from the West’s first and most extensive coronavirus lockdown, it is increasingly clear that something went terribly wrong in Lombardy, the hardest-hit region in Europe’s hardest-hit country. Italy had the bad luck of being the first Western nation to be slammed by the outbreak, and its total of 26,000 fatalities lags behind only the U.S. in the global death toll. Italy’s first homegrown case was recorded Feb. 21, at a time when the World Health Organization was still insisting the virus was “containable” and not nearly as infectious as the flu.But there’s also evidence that demographics and health care deficiencies combined with political and business interests to expose Lombardy’s 10 million people in ways unseen anywhere else, particularly the most vulnerable in nursing homes.Virologists and epidemiologists say what went wrong there will be studied for years, given how the outbreak overwhelmed a medical system considered one of Europe’s best. In neighboring Veneto, the impact was significantly more controlled.Prosecutors are deciding whether to lay any criminal blame for the hundreds of dead in nursing homes, many of whom aren’t even counted in Lombardy’s official death toll of 13,269.By contrast, Lombardy’s front-line doctors and nurses are being hailed as heroes for risking their lives to treat the sick under extraordinary levels of stress, exhaustion, isolation and fear.Even after Italy registered its first homegrown case, doctors didn’t understand the unusual way COVID-19 could present itself, with some patients experiencing a rapid decline in their ability to breathe.“This was clinical information we didn’t have,” said Dr. Maurizio Marvisi, a pneumologist at the San Camillo private clinic in hard-hit Cremona.Death notices are seen on a board along an empty road in Alzano Lombardo, near Bergamo, the heart of the hardest-hit province in Italy’s region of Lombardy, March 17, 2020.Because Lombardy’s intensive care units were filling up within days of Italy’s first cases, many primary care physicians tried to treat and monitor their patients at home, even putting them on supplemental oxygen. That strategy proved deadly, since many people died at home or soon after being hospitalized, having waited too long to call an ambulance.Italy was forced to rely on home care in part because of its low ICU capacity: After years of budget cuts, Italy went into the emergency with 8.6 ICU beds per 100,000 people, below the average of 15.9 within the developed countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.As a result, Italy’s primary care physicians became the front-line filter of COVID-19 patients, an army of mostly self-employed general practitioners who work outside the public hospital system.Since only those showing strong symptoms were being tested because Lombardy’s labs couldn’t process any more, these family doctors didn’t know if they themselves were positive, much less their patients.The doctors also had no guidelines on when to admit the sick or refer them to specialists and didn’t have the same access to protective equipment as hospitals.Some 20,000 Italian medical personnel have been infected and 150 doctors have died. Two days after Italy registered its first case in the Lombardy province of Lodi, sparking a quarantine in 10 towns, another positive case was registered more than an hour’s drive away in Alzano in the province of Bergamo.By March 2, the Superior Institute of Health recommended Alzano and nearby Nembro be sealed off like the Lodi towns.But political authorities never implemented that recommendation, allowing the infection to spread for a second week until all of Lombardy was locked down March 7.Asked why he didn’t seal off Bergamo province sooner, Premier Giuseppe Conte argued that Lombardy’s regional government could have done so on its own. Lombardy’s governor, Attilio Fontana, said if there was a mistake, “it was made by both. I don’t think that there was blame in this situation.’’Lombardy has one-sixth of Italy’s 60 million people and is the most densely populated region, home to the business capital in Milan and the country’s industrial heartland. Lombardy also has more people over 65 than any other region, as well as 20% of Italy’s nursing homes, a demographic time bomb for COVID-19 infections.“Clearly, with the benefit of hindsight, we should have done a total shutdown in Lombardy, everyone at home and no one moves,” said Andrea Crisanti, a microbiologist and virologist advising Veneto’s regional government. But he acknowledged how hard that was, given Lombardy’s outsize role in Italy’s economy.“Probably for political reasons, it wasn’t done,” he told reporters.Unions and mayors of some of Lombardy’s hardest-hit cities now say the country’s main industrial lobby group, Confindustria, put enormous pressure on authorities to resist production shutdowns, claiming the economic cost would be too great in a region responsible for 21% of Italy’s GDP.On Feb. 28, a week into Italy’s outbreak and well after more than 100 cases had been registered in Bergamo, the province’s branch of Confindustria launched a social media campaign aimed at reassuring skittish investors. It insisted the outbreak was no worse than elsewhere and that production in provincial steel mills and other industries were unaffected.Even after the national government locked down all of Lombardy March 7, it allowed factories to stay open, sparking strikes from workers worried that their health was being sacrificed.“It was a huge error. They should have taken the example where the first cluster was found,” said Giambattista Morali of the metalworkers’ union in the Bergamo town of Dalmine.While the regional government focused on finding new ICU beds, its testing capacity lagged and Lombardy’s nursing homes were left to fend for themselves.Of particular attention to Milan prosecutors investigating deaths in care facilities was the March 8 decision by the regional government to allow recovering COVID-19 patients to be housed in nursing homes to free up hospital beds.Another regional decree March 30 told nursing home directors to not hospitalize sick residents over 75 if they had other health problems and avoid further risking their health during transport. 
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Ulises García went from being a waiter to working at a laundromat. Yelitza Esteva used to do manicures and now delivers groceries. Maribel Torres swapped cleaning homes for sewing masks.  The coronavirus pandemic has devastated sectors of the economy dominated by immigrant labor: Restaurants, hotels, office cleaning services, in-home childcare and hair and nail salons, among others, have seen businesses shuttered as nonessential. The Migration Policy Institute found that 20% of the U.S. workers in vulnerable industries facing layoffs are immigrants, even though they only make up 17% of the civilian workforce.  And some of those immigrants, those without social security numbers, are unable to access any of the $2.2 trillion package that Congress approved to offer financial help during the pandemic. The economic meltdown has forced many immigrants to branch out to new jobs or adapt skills to meet new demands generated by the virus. Those immigrants who are able to find new jobs say the possibility of catching the virus makes them nervous. “I wonder sometimes if I should quit because I don’t feel comfortable working, when the virus is everywhere,” said García, a former waiter who now works at the laundromat in Brooklyn selling detergent, bleach or fabric softener. “The problem is that no one knows for how long this will last,” he added.  For Venezuelan immigrant Yelizta Esteva there was no option other than to work after she lost the $2,100-per-month salary she earned at a Miami hair salon. Her husband also lost his job at a house remodeling company. Besides rent and bills, they send money to at least seven family members in Venezuela. “I was terrified. I was left with nothing,” said the 51-year-old immigrant, who left Venezuela in 2015 to seek asylum. Now, Esteva and her husband work for the grocery delivery service Instacart and make an average of $150 per day, working more than 12 hours daily. “I am very, very fearful,” said Esteva, who applies anti-bacterial lotion constantly while shopping at the supermarkets. “I trust God, who is protecting us.”  Most green-card holders can benefit from unemployment insurance and from the economic stimulus package. Some immigrants on a temporary work permit, like those applying for asylum, can also get unemployment insurance and the new relief checks. Immigrants in the country illegally can’t access the stimulus help or unemployment benefits even if they pay taxes. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, however, announced that his state will give cash to immigrants living in the country illegally who are hurt by the coronavirus, offering $500 apiece to 150,000 adults.  Some cities in the country are pushing similar efforts: Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, have both set up bridge funds that are open regardless of immigration status. Austin, Texas, has a fund that will be used in part to help people left out of federal relief.  Diana Mejía, health and safety coordinator for an interfaith organization that helps immigrants, Wind of the Spirit, says day laborers have shown up near the train station in Morristown, New Jersey, for years to wait to be picked up by construction and landscaping companies.  Now, Mejía says she sees new faces. “Many used to work at restaurants. Also, for construction companies that closed,” she said. In New York, Maribel Torres, a 47-year-old Mexican immigrant used to clean apartments, but tenants stopped calling her when the pandemic started. Her husband, a cook, lost his job when the restaurant he worked at closed.  Now, with support from MakerSpace, a collaborative work space full of tools and materials that people can learn to use, and La Colmena, a non-profit that helps day laborers, she is sewing masks from home.  Torres, along with three other immigrant women who do this work with her, will donate some masks and sell others. So far, they have sold about 300 online. A young day laborer who also lost his job has been making the deliveries. “I feel that we are helping, and we plan to make a little money too,” said Torres. Leymar Navas, a former attorney in Venezuela, was working as a restaurant cashier in Miami before the virus outbreak. But the sushi shop closed its doors in March, almost at the same time that her husband and her two adult sons also lost their jobs.  After a desperate search, she found a part-time job for a disinfecting company that cleans bank ATMs.  “Nobody expected this,” said the 47-year-old asylum seeker. “But any job is decent as long as you bring food to the table.” According to a Pew Research Center study conducted in March, around half (49%) of Hispanics surveyed say they or someone in their household has taken a pay cut or lost a job – or both – because of the COVID-19 outbreak, compared with 29% of white people and 36% of black people.  A recent analysis from Pew based on Census statistics found that about 8 million Hispanic workers were employed in service-sector positions that are at higher risk of job loss.  Many of the immigrants with new jobs now say they feel grateful to have a job amid the pandemic, even if it means putting their own health at risk.  
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Weeks into France’s strict coronavirus lockdown, Mohammed, a 14-year-old with autism, took a pickax and started hitting the wall of his family’s house.His explanation: “Too long at home, too hard to wait.”The disruptions in daily life caused by the virus pandemic are a particularly trying ordeal for children with disabilities and the people who love them and are caring for them confined at home while special-needs schools and support programs remain closed.Mohammed hasn’t picked up the ax again since the incident last month, his father, Salah, said with relief. But the boy still gets frustrated being stuck inside and says, “I want to break the house down.”The family, like others who spoke to The Associated Press about their experiences, spoke on the condition of being identified by first name only out of concern for the privacy of their children.Mohammed, a 14-year-old with autism, on his bike outside his home April 15, 2020, in Mantes-la-Jolie, west of Paris.Making matters worse, Mohammed’s mother, who works in a nursing home, has been on sick leave after testing positive for COVID-19. For weeks, she had to live isolated on the top floor of their house in the Paris suburb of Mantes-la-Jolie. Her health has since improved.The physical distance from her family was particularly hard for Mohammed, who has a close relationship with his mother.“We kept telling him that there’s the disease. He took note. Then he tried again to go up and see her,” Salah said.Violent outbursts, incomprehension, disputes, panic attacks: Life under lockdown has been a shock to many children with special needs who suddenly lost their reassuring routines, cut off from friends and teachers. And France’s virus lockdown measures — now in their second month and set to run until at least May 11 — are among Europe’s strictest.At home, Mohammed requires constant attention so that he won’t injure or endanger himself.“That’s tough on him. We reprimand him, saying no. … We need to repeat and repeat,” Salah said. The father admits to his own fatigue, working at home as a telecom engineer while caring for Mohammed and his two brothers, ages 12 and 8.Salah knows how to detect signs on Mohammed’s face when he is under too much pressure and may get angry: “I don’t let things get heated.”Mohammed normally attends the Bel-Air Institute near Versailles, which provides specialized educational and therapeutic services for dozens of children with different types of disabilities. His teacher, Corentin Sainte Fare Garnot, is doing his best to help.“If you remove crutches from someone who needs them from one day to the next, it gets very complicated,” he said.“The feeling of loneliness and lack of activity can be very deep” for people with autism, the teacher said. Mohammed calls him several times a day.Aurelie Collet, a manager at the Bel-Air Institute, said that at first, some teenagers didn’t understand the lockdown rules keeping them stuck at home and kept going out. Others who had been well-integrated in their classes turned inward, isolating themselves in their bedrooms.The staff developed creative tools to keep communicating and working with the children, including through social networks, she said.In this photo taken April 16, 2020, Jerome, second left, Nadege and their children Thomas, 17, right and Pierre, 14, pose outside their home in Montigny-le-Bretonneux, near Paris.Thomas, 17, and Pierre, 14, brothers with intellectual disabilities who also go to the Bel-Air, have been similarly destabilized by lockdown restrictions.“I feel worried about how long the lockdown will last, what’s going to happen next,” Thomas said. The teenager wonders “how many people will get the virus, when the epidemic will stop?”Another big concern for Thomas is his future; an internship he planned to do this summer is likely to be postponed.Pierre says he’s having more nightmares than usual, adding that the lockdown is also prompting more family quarrels.At first, their parents recalled, the boys acted as if they were on vacation, playing all day and calling their friends. The parents organized activities to give Pierre and Thomas more structure amid the public health crisis.Pierre especially misses the gardening he used to do at the Bel-Air, so he planted seeds in pots to grow radishes.Under nationwide restrictions, the French can only leave home for essential services, like buying food or going to the doctor, and must stay close to home. Physical activity in public is strictly limited to one hour and within a nearby radius. Police routinely fine violators.Recognizing the burden the regulations place on people with autism, French President Emmanuel Macron announced an exception that allows them to go out to customary places without having to observe time or distance limits.The new challenges the pandemic presents to children with special needs are familiar to millions of families around the world. Across the U.S., teachers are exploring new ways to deliver customized lessons from afar, and parents of children with disabilities are not only home-schooling but also adding therapy, hands-on lessons and behavioral management to their responsibilities.Salah has started taking Mohammed out again for bike riding, an activity his eldest son enjoyed before the pandemic.“This is like a safety valve to him. He needs it. … We’re having a hard time following him, he’s going ahead, happily shouting,” Salah said with a smile in his voice.Sainte Fare Garnot is helping the family find concrete solutions. Because playing soccer with his brothers in the garden has proven difficult for Mohammed because the rules of team games are too complex for him, Sainte Fare Garnot suggested that the three boys instead take shots at goal in turn.France is still playing catch-up with some developing-country peers in terms of educational opportunities for children with autism spectrum disorders, and teachers fear that some will also have to spend months relearning skills they may have lost during the lockdown period.The president has announced that schools will be “progressively” reopened starting May 11, but authorities have not provided details yet about special-needs children. France counts more than 350,000 school students with disabilities, including 70,000 in the special education system that includes the Bel-Air.The uncertainty is especially hard for young people like Mohammed. “I know he will ask me again,” his teacher said. “‘When is it ending?’”  
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The cancellation of marathons and major races because of coronavirus lockdown measures doesn’t mean sports lovers can’t compete. Racing and breaking records is still possible – it’s just a bit more complicated. Maxim Moskalkov reports. 
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The head of the world’s largest humanitarian network is urging governments to start thinking about tackling the economic damage from the coronavirus with something like the Marshall Plan used by the United States to help countries recover after World War II.Francesco Rocca, president of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, which operates in 192 countries, warned Friday of the risk of social unrest, hunger and starvation as a result of the pandemic.”We need to plan together with institutions a social response before it is too late,” he said.Rocca said during a video news conference that the lack of any source of income for millions of people because of lockdowns was “a huge concern for us, both in Western countries as well as in the countries in fragile and protracted crisis.”Without a major economic recovery program, he said, people will abandon their communities if “their only option is hunger and starvation,” which will increase migration.Rocca, who also heads Italy’s Red Cross, said this “should give a wake-up a call to the international community.”Postwar help for Western EuropeThe Marshall Plan was an American initiative approved in 1948 to help Western Europe recover after the defeat of Nazi Germany. The U.S. transferred $12 billion to West European countries to spur their economic recovery, which according to one estimate would be equivalent to over $128 billion in 2020.Rocca said he thought a similar economic initiative “is an imperative on which the governments should start to think.”FILE – Anti-lockdown protesters gather outside the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio, April 20, 2020.He cited a number of problems as the world deals with COVID-19: people not respecting lockdowns, including those needing to find food; loss of income for those put out of work; a lack of safe water, adequate sanitation and reliable energy for homes; and insufficient means with which to communicate and obtain information.Rocca also cited the challenges of getting medical supplies and equipment to countries in need, and sanctions creating additional barriers to the flow of humanitarian aid.He said every decision political leaders make must be “an informed decision” taken after consulting with scientists, and they should strike “the balance of the economy and the human rights, to protect the health and life of the communities.”Calling for global unity, Rocca said Red Cross and Red Crescent teams were supporting the most vulnerable communities affected by the crisis.Work in SyriaCiting Syria, he said Red Crescent volunteers in protective gear were distributing food door to door and operating ambulances around the clock. Before COVID-19, he said, more than 6 million Syrians were at risk of food insecurity, “and now, due to the economic crisis, the number could rise to between 9 [million] and 10 million.”FILE – A member of the military stops people riding on a rickshaw at a check post during a government-imposed countrywide shutdown amid concerns over the coronavirus disease outbreak in Narayanganj, Bangladesh, April 9, 2020.In Bangladesh, where more than 1 million Rohingya Muslim refugees from Myanmar have swelled the population, Rocca said volunteer teams had set up water distribution points and were going home to home to teach more than 372,000 people handwashing skills. In Venezuela, teams have worked to provide more than 40 tons of humanitarian aid, including medical supplies and hygiene items, to those most in need, he said.  Rocca warned that in 43 out of 55 African countries, there are just 5,000 intensive care beds, which means five beds for every million people, compared with Europe, where there are 4,000 beds for every million people.  “We are only starting to see glimpses of the impact COVID-19 might have on the African continent,” he said.
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Yemen’s separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC) on Sunday announced it would establish a self-ruled administration in the regions under their control, which the internationally recognized Saudi-backed government said would have “catastrophic consequences” for a November peace deal.Under a deal to end the power struggle in south Yemen, agreed to in Riyadh, the STC and other southerners were supposed to join a new national cabinet and place all forces under control of the internationally recognized government. The STC is supported by the United Arab Emirates.“The announcement by the so-called transitional council of its intention to establish a southern administration is a resumption of its armed insurgency… and an announcement of its rejection and complete withdrawal from the Riyadh agreement,” Yemen’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Twitter.”The so-called transitional council will bear alone the dangerous and catastrophic consequences for such an announcement,” it said.  
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The FBI is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of anyone connected to a fire that badly damaged an Islamic center in southeastern Missouri and that coincided with the start of a holy month for Muslims.Richard Quinn, the special agent in charge of the St. Louis Division, announced the award Friday, hours after the fire broke out early that morning at the Islamic Center of Cape Girardeau. Twelve to 15 people were evacuated and escaped injury. Fire Chief Travis Hollis said the damage to the building was extensive.The Missouri chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim advocacy group, said the fire began at the front door of the building. CAIR noted the timing of the blaze — Thursday night was the beginning of Ramadan, a holy month during which Muslims fast and pray.”Because the fire was deemed ‘suspicious,’ and because it occurred at a house of worship on a significant religious date, we urge law enforcement authorities to investigate a possible bias motive for the blaze,” CAIR’s national communications director, Ibrahim Hooper, said in a statement.The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the state fire marshal also were investigating the fire.Cape Girardeau is about 115 miles south of St. Louis.
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U.S. President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, issued a rare joint statement Saturday commemorating a 1945 World War II link-up of U.S. and Soviet troops on their way to defeat Nazi Germany as an example of how their countries can cooperate.The statement by Trump and Putin came amid deep strains in U.S.-Russian ties over a raft of issues, from arms control and Russia’s intervention in Ukraine and Syria to U.S. charges that Russia has spread disinformation about the novel coronavirus pandemic and interfered in U.S. election campaigns.The Wall Street Journal reported that the decision to issue the statement sparked debate within the Trump administration, with some officials worried it could undercut stern U.S. messages to Moscow.The joint statement marked the anniversary of the April 25, 1945, meeting on a bridge over the Elbe River in Germany of Soviet soldiers advancing from the east and American troops moving from the West.“This event heralded the decisive defeat of the Nazi regime,” the statement said. “The ‘Spirit of the Elbe’ is an example of how our countries can put aside differences, build trust and cooperate in pursuit of a greater cause.”Last Elbe statement in 2010The Journal said the last joint statement marking the Elbe River bridge link-up was issued in 2010, when the Obama administration was seeking improved relations with Moscow.Trump had hoped to travel to Moscow to mark the anniversary. He has been complimentary of Putin, promoted cooperation with Moscow and said he believed the Russian leader’s denials of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.Senior administration officials and lawmakers, in contrast, have been fiercely critical of Russia, with relations between the nuclear-armed nations at their lowest point since the end of the Cold War.The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday issued a bipartisan report concurring with a 2017 U.S. intelligence assessment that Russia pursued an influence campaign of misinformation and cyber hacking aimed at swinging the vote to Trump over his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.U.S. intelligence officials have warned lawmakers that Moscow is meddling in the 2020 presidential election campaign, which Russia denies.
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