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California newspapers are asking the state to help rescue their industry, as the economic crisis from the coronavirus slashes print advertising revenues, causing layoffs in an already battered industry, even as reporters are deemed essential workers during the pandemic.In a dire request this week from the California News Publishers Association to the governor and state lawmakers, the newspapers asked for tailored grants and loans, sales tax exemptions for local papers and tax deductions for subscribers and advertisers.”The COVID-19 virus has left the newspaper industry, already struggling financially, gasping for air,” wrote the group’s president, Simon Grieve, the publisher of Gazette Newspapers in Long Beach.It comes after 33 daily newspapers reported losing an average of $1 million in print ads in March. That has forced several papers to cut printing schedules and staff. Nationwide, readers have been turning to local news sites for information about coronavirus in their communities. But hundreds of journalists have already been laid off or furloughed.Ken Doctor, a news media analyst, said that other outlets nationwide are considering seeking help from governments and Congress, but legislators already have their hands full.”It’s a tsunami. You can’t really lobby for specific benefits right now in the peak of the crisis, but they are looking for a range of proposals,” Doctor said.The California News Publishers Association has not yet heard back from officials, said its general counsel, Jim Ewert. He said replies from lawmakers’ staff have been “mostly empathy, but nothing in detail yet.””We are looking at their request,” said Lizelda Lopez, a spokeswoman for Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, in an email.The Legislature suspended work on March 16. Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, a Los Angeles Democrat, announced Friday that lawmakers will host their first hearing focused on the state’s spending on April 20. Rendon is “still reviewing this letter, and has not yet made any decisions,” spokeswoman Katie Talbot said.The governor’s office didn’t immediately comment. Ewert said the association is hoping for”some help to survive in the next two to three months,” not an ongoing government subsidy.Grieve’s letter suggests part of that help could come through state agencies taking out more advertisements in newspapers for public health announcements. Even as news has moved online, print advertisements remain more lucrative than digital ads for most newspapers.The news publishers association surveyed all its members, over 400 outlets including student publications, on the extent of the revenue hit. The association said the average print ad revenue loss for 33 daily papers was $1.03 million in March and is projected to rise to $1.8 million a month in April and May. Thirty-two ethnic and community newspapers also reported an average print advertising revenue loss of $35,000 in March.”The COVID crisis has exacerbated an already precarious situation, with many large businesses putting their advertising on hold – a development that is a crippling blow to California news outlets,” Grieve wrote.Doctor said he didn’t believe there are issues with newspapers seeking grants and loans during a crisis from governments they cover.”You kind of have the sniff test. Does it make sense that this program would affect coverage newspapers have of government? And the answer I think is no,” he said.  
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As the number of coronavirus cases from the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier continued to rise in Guam, the defense secretary said he would not rule out the possibility of reinstating the ship’s fired captain upon the conclusion of an investigation into the situation.Navy officials said 447 of the Roosevelt’s sailors had tested positive for coronavirus, which as of early Tuesday was more than 20% of all U.S. service members who had been confirmed with the virus worldwide. More than 3,100 sailors have been transferred off the ship.Last week, the carrier’s commanding officer, Captain Brett Crozier, wrote a letter of concern to his superiors, urging them to take “decisive action” to prevent deaths from the coronavirus. He was fired by the acting secretary of the Navy, who later resigned.Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Mike Gilday told a small group of reporters that the investigation of the Roosevelt matter was complete. He said he had begun to go through the report and would act based on where the investigation led.Defense Secretary Mark Esper told CBS on Friday that he had issued guidance that “no further action will be taken against Captain Crozier until the investigation is completed.”“We’ve taken nothing off the table,” Esper said, “so we’ll see how that plays out.”Medics, not spaceAs the military looks to Detroit, New Orleans and the state of Texas as the next COVID-19 hot spots, Thomas McCaffery, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, said the Pentagon appeared to have provided more hospital spaces than needed in hard-hit areas from coast to coast.In Seattle, a field hospital set up by the Army in a professional American football stadium shut down without ever seeing a patient. Washington state Governor Jay Inslee said Thursday that the move was to shift resources to a place where there was more urgent need.The temporary hospital at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan and the Navy hospital ship Comfort docked in New York Harbor are together filled with thousands of empty hospital beds, with the Javits Center treating just 255 patients and the Comfort treating just 64 patients as of Friday morning. The facilities have a combined capacity of about 3,000 hospital beds.But medical officials say New York City hospitals continue to be inundated with COVID-19 patients.McCaffery said Friday that the Pentagon had learned during the outbreak response that civilian hospitals really needed extra manpower and staffing.’Good due diligence’When asked why so few patients had been treated by the military, McCaffery said it was likely because of “a shortage of the doctors and nurses and the staff you need to run a facility.”“I wouldn’t say that the states got it wrong. I would say that the states were doing good due diligence,” he said, “rather than being in a situation where they need that capacity and it’s not there.”Esper told CBS on Friday that the Defense Department had about 2,500 doctors, nurses and others in New York City, and on Friday deployed another 300 to help local hospital workers.As of early Friday, 3,054 coronavirus cases around the globe were related to the U.S. military — 2,031 service members, 493 civilians, 325 dependents and 205 contractors — the Pentagon said. There have been 13 DOD-related COVID-19 deaths, including one service member.
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Signs of deadly prison unrest in Iran have made it the latest country to see prisoners’ anxieties about exposure to coronavirus outbreaks in cramped jails erupt into violence in recent weeks.In a Thursday statement, London-based rights group Amnesty International cited “credible” sources as saying that Iranian security forces have killed several dozen protesting inmates and wounded hundreds of others at three Iranian prisons since late March. It said the prisoners had joined protests against authorities’ refusal to grant them temporary releases to reduce their risk of contracting the virus inside crowded and unsanitary prison compounds.Iran has not released data on coronavirus cases inside its prisons, but human rights activists began reporting outbreaks in several major prisons in early March.In a March 29 announcement, Iran’s judiciary said that in order to curb the spread of the coronavirus, it was granting furloughs until mid-April to 100,000 prisoners, more than half of its publicly-declared prison population of 189,500 as of November 2019. But authorities have kept tens of thousands of inmates behind bars, among them Iranians charged with political crimes designated as “security” offenses.Live ammunition, tear gasAmnesty said its sources reported Iranian security forces using live ammunition and tear gas to suppress protests against ongoing detentions at two prisons in the southwestern city of Ahvaz on March 30 and 31.The rights group said it believes “up to 15” inmates were killed at Sepidar prison and “around 20” others were killed at Sheiban prison. It also said Danial Zeinolabedini, a juvenile offender who had joined prison protests in the northwestern province of West Azerbaijan, died in “suspicious circumstances” on April 2 after security force beatings that “possibly” led to his death.Amnesty said its sources for the reports of prison killings by Iranian security forces included prisoners’ families, independent journalists and human rights activists.In a VOA Persian interview on Friday, Philippe Nassif, Amnesty International USA’s Middle East and North Africa advocacy director, said Iran is not the only country in the region to have witnessed such violent coronavirus-related disturbances inside its prisons in the past month.“We know that the virus has entered Syrian prisons and authorities have reacted violently to some of the protests that have occurred in these facilities,” Nassif said. He singled out Syria’s notorious Sednaya prison north of Damascus as of greatest concern, saying Amnesty suspects it has a coronavirus outbreak started by infected residents of the nearby town.“We don’t have any more information about prison violence in Syria, because that’s an even more difficult place from which to get timely information,” Nassif said.Egypt releases some dissidentsThe rights activist said Amnesty also has seen evidence of recent protests inside Egyptian prisons, in addition to protests outside of jails where prisoners’ family members have demanded that their relatives be released rather than remain exposed to the virus in detention.Egypt released more than a dozen dissidents from prison last month. But neither Cairo nor Damascus have announced any significant releases of the tens of thousands of inmates in their prison populations to mitigate the risk of coronavirus spread.In a March 26 article, The Washington Post reported other incidents of prison violence linked to the coronavirus in Europe and Latin America.The report said prison riots in Italy had left 13 inmates dead and 59 guards injured since the start of the month. It said riots also killed at least 23 people in Colombian jails and plagued prisons in Peru and Chile, while as many as 1,000 inmates escaped detention in Brazil and five inmates were fatally shot trying to do the same in Venezuela.This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service.
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As the world fights the coronavirus pandemic, there are questions about whether restrictions to contain the virus are leading to cleaner air and skies. Some say there is a correlation between lockdowns and pollution levels, but others disagree. VOA correspondent Mariama Diallo reports.
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A former Kyrgyz customs officer has alleged that his ex-boss urged him to bring an RFE/RL Kyrgyz service journalist back to Kyrgyzstan “dead or alive.”Emilbek Kimsanov made the allegation in an undated video that was posted on Facebook on April 10 by his wife, Maria Zavorotnyaya.In the video, Kimsanov says that former Kyrgyz State Customs Agency Deputy Chairman Raimbek Matraimov sent him contact information in Prague for RFE/RL journalist Ali Toktakunov along with the command to bring him in “dead or alive.”Kimsanov showed screenshots on his telephone with the information about Toktakunov.Matraimov was not available to comment on the video. His brother, Kyrgyz lawmaker Iskender Matraimov, dismissed the video in comments to RFE/RL.”Kimsanov will answer not only before God, but also before the law,” Iskender Matraimov said. “Let law enforcement check his statements. I would ask the people not to believe the claims of just anyone.”Joint probeToktakunov was the lead reporter in a joint investigation by RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz service, known locally as Radio Azattyk; the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP); and the Kyrgyz news site Kloop.The investigation, Plunder and Patronage in the Heart of Central Asia, which implicated Raimbek Matraimov, chronicled how a 37-year-old Uighur businessman from China’s northwestern region of Xinjiang, self-confessed money launderer Aierken Saimaiti, moved hundreds of millions of dollars out of Kyrgyzstan.Toktakunov has received credible death threats in connection with the investigation and has been named by Matraimov and his family as a defendant in a libel lawsuit. According to the OCCRP, as many as 12 people who reported on or criticized the Matraimov family over the last 10 months have been harassed.Kimsanov was detained in St. Petersburg, Russia, in February and extradited to Kyrgyzstan. He faces charges connected to the 2018 beating of a son of former Interior Minister Moldomusa Kongantiev.On March 31, a Kyrgyz court ordered Kimsanov transferred from house arrest to pretrial detention.Wife’s statementOn Wednesday, Zavorotnyaya released a video statement in which she appealed to President Sooronbai Jeenbekov to protect her husband, claiming that the case against him had been trumped up by “an influential man of Kyrgyzstan.” She did not mention the man’s name.However, Kimsanov’s brother, Emirbek Kimsanov, earlier appealed to Jeenbekov to protect his brother from Matraimov and his family, who he said had been persecuting Emilbek Kimsanov for his refusal to participate in Matraimov’s alleged illegal activity.Jeenbekov’s office has not responded to the appeals.Emilbek Kimsanov’s lawyer, Nazgul Suyunbaeva, said Wednesday that “unknown people” had threatened her client before his transfer to custody by saying, “We will put you behind bars where they are already waiting for you.”Suyunbaeva asked prison officials to look into the alleged threats against Kimsanov.
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COVID-19 travel restrictions in Ethiopia are forcing pregnant women to give birth at home, health workers say.For Kenasa Kumera, receiving panicked phone calls from women going into labor has become an everyday occurrence.  Ever since Ethiopia implemented strict travel bans last month to stop the spread of the coronavirus, the Marie Stopes International maternity center he manages in Adama, roughly 100 kilometers from the capital, Addis Ababa, has received up to 10 calls a day from women unable to reach his center to give birth.  The trend, he said, is of particular concern in poor areas with no ambulances and where traveling even small distances can be difficult.”This morning, one client has called in need of an ambulance. She had two Caesarean sections before and she was appointed for another Caesarean section,” Kenesa told VOA via a messaging app. “She has been suffering due to the shortage of transportation and she asked for an ambulance. I immediately sent her one. Now she is admitted and the third Caesarean section is safely conducted.”FILE – Roads in the capital lie empty after they were closed to be disinfected to halt the spread of the new coronavirus, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, March 29, 2020.Kenasa said he was concerned that many other women have not been able to arrange transportation, so are forced to give birth at home where medical emergencies cannot be treated.”Definitely there could be complications since there is no means of transportation and proper health service provisions in the towns,” he said. “No doubt complications will happen.”Parliament on Friday approved a nationwide state of emergency, giving authorities sweeping powers to prevent the movement of people. Schools, bars, cultural restaurants, hairdressers and gyms were already closed.On March 23, the government issued orders to public transporters to cease overcrowding. The regions of Oromia, Amhara, Harari and Tigray have banned or restricted public transport to help limit the spread of the coronavirus. Ethiopia has recorded 65 cases.  The Ethiopian Ministry of Health did not respond to questions on access to health services for pregnant women. Risha Hess, country director for Marie Stopes in Ethiopia, told VOA via a messaging app that people all over the country were no longer able to reach health services for delivery or post-natal care. “We’re able to pick people up and bring them to the hospitals and so far that’s what we’ve done,” Hess said. “If it continues who knows — we only have one ambulance at every hospital. There will likely be people who we can’t get to fast enough or because we don’t have the capacity. I can only imagine what’s happening with all the other maternity centers in the country.”There are shortages of sexual and reproductive health products from India because factories there have closed and the borders are shut. This, she said, could result in “years of problems and backlogs” due to the borders shutting down across the world. 
 
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The World Health Organization is urging caution from nations anxious to lift restrictions imposed on their citizens to fight the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Speaking at the organization’s regular news briefing from Geneva on Friday, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the organization wants to see things return to normal as much as anyone, but he cautioned “the way down may be as dangerous as the way up” if not handled properly. The leaders of several nations – the United States included – had, at one time, marked this weekend, the weekend of Easter observances, as the date when restrictions would be lifted. Most nations, however, have backed away from that, and some have even extended their lockdowns and shelter-in-place rules to the end of the month. Tedros said the WHO is working with affected countries on strategies for gradually and safely easing their restrictions. The general-director said the pandemic has exposed weaknesses and vulnerabilities in the health care systems of even the strongest nations.   
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Indonesia, despite a growing coronavirus caseload, has avoided locking down population centers in favor of softer control measures to sustain an economy already stressed by poverty.The virus hitting most of the world now has sickened 3,293 people in Indonesia and killed 280. On Friday, the capital Jakarta ordered a two-week closure of offices, and banned gatherings of more than five people but did not issue a stay-at-home order and allowed some public transit to keep running. Schools and restaurants had been closed already.Although the order extends to an urban area of about 30 million people, other parts of the archipelago, including its mines and palm farms, are unaffected. About 265 million people live across Indonesia’s 13,000 islands.Officials must mind their country’s poverty rate of nearly 10 percent, analysts said, since business closures hurt incomes. Yet to ignore the deadly virus would let it spread and strain hospitals in rural areas.“If we get to the point where they have to go into total lockdown like India, or Malaysia, then the economic impact will be much greater,” said Rajiv Biswas, Asia-Pacific chief economist at IHS Markit. “There’s a lot of downside risk for Indonesia right now.Police officers check the number of people seated inside a car during the imposition of large-scale social restriction, at a checkpoint in Jakarta, Indonesia, April 10, 2020.“Many people live on the poverty line or below the poverty line in Indonesia,” he added.As it is, Indonesia’s GDP should grow 3 percent this year rather than about the 5 percent expected at the start of 2020, said Anushka Shah, vice president with Moody’s Sovereign Risk Group in in Singapore. Limited forced closures will keep mines, farms and factories running, Shah said. Indonesia exports palm oil, coal, rubber and minerals.But Shah expects a fall in Indonesian exports, along with their prices, because of a slump in demand from overseas where hundreds of millions of consumers are locked down and without jobs.“The shape and form that the government measures take with regard to potential shutdowns will determine production, but then a lot also depends on demand, because global demand has meaningfully slowed, and you’ve also seen a fall in prices,” Shah said.Relatively light containment measures will send a message to people that the coronavirus spread isn’t too severe, warned Philips Vermonte, executive director of Jakarta-based research organization Centre for Strategic and International Studies.Complicating the situation, in most years Indonesians travel in large numbers to their hometowns for the Ramadan holiday, which begins later this month, a movement that could make more people sick, Vermonte added. “In some corners, people will lose their guard & think it’s OK — and they’re (disease) carriers,” he said.A man reads the Quran at an empty mosque in Jakarta, Indonesia, April 10, 2020.“I think the first thing that came to the mind of the government back in March was the economy, and probably they were thinking the emergency wasn’t there at that time,” he said. COVID-19 cases began growing noticeably in mid-March.Now the central and local governments worry that hospitals and doctors lack the capacity to handle a spiraling caseload, Vermonte said.Indonesia has announced a total $8.725 billion in stimulus to ease economic losses.The Southeast Asian country’s current account and budget deficits are low, good for absorbing economic shocks, Moody’s said in an April 3 research note. But weak “debt affordability” could challenge the government later to assuage economic damage, the note said.The poor may just leave Jakarta. A lot are migrant workers who sell from the street sides to offices and schools, said Paramitaningrum Supamijoto, international relations lecturer at Bina Nusantara University in Jakarta.“Closing the stores, closing the offices, closing the schools will affect their income, especially if you are selling food, selling goods,” Supamijoto said. “Nobody is going out, or they prefer (to) order by online.”If the migrant workers go home, she said, they risk spreading the virus from Jakarta to the rest of Indonesia.Around Jakarta, most retailers had already closed as of early Friday and people were staying home whenever possible, including attending classes online, Supamijoto said. Muslims still pray at mosques however, she said, and malls with supermarkets or drugstores remain open. 
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Yemen’s internationally recognized government Friday announced the first confirmed case of coronavirus in the war-torn country, stoking fears that an outbreak could devastate an already crippled health care system.
Yemen’s Minister of Health Nasser Baoum told The Associated Press the case is a 73-year-old Yemeni national who works at the al-Shahr port in Hadramawt province. He added that he is in a stable condition, without further details.
Yemen is a uniquely dangerous place for the coronavirus to spread. Repeated bombings and ground fighting over five years of war have destroyed or closed more than half its health facilities. Deep poverty, dire water shortages and a lack of adequate sanitation have made the country a breeding ground for disease.
The Saudi-led coalition fighting the Iran-backed Houthi rebels declared a cease-fire on Thursday on humanitarian grounds to prevent the spread of the pandemic. However, fighting continued unabated Friday, diminishing hopes that a halt in the fighting will open doors for peace talks.
Yemen’s war erupted in 2014, when the Houthis seized the capital Sanaa and much of the country’s north. The U.S.-backed, Saudi-led coalition intervened to oust the rebels and restore the internationally recognized government. The conflict has killed over 100,000 people and largely settled into a bloody stalemate.
The U.N. has described Yemen as the world’s worst humanitarian disaster. Cholera outbreaks are the worst in modern history. Over 24 million people in the country require humanitarian assistance, many of them on the brink of starvation.
Even before the war, the southern province of Hadramawt saw some of the worst pockets of malnutrition and disease in the country. It recently witnessed an outbreak of dengue fever, with hundreds of cases filling the public hospital of al-Shahr, where the coronavirus was detected.
In Yemen’s under-equipped and barely functioning health system, it’s hard to distinguish between viral diseases. One young man with dengue fever died after a hospital in Mukalla, the provincial capital of Hadramawt, refused to admit him for fear he was carrying the coronavirus, two local aid and government officers said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the press.
Some of the symptoms of dengue fever are similar to the coronavirus, including muscle aches and and fever.
To try to curb the spread of the virus, provincial Gov. Farag al-Bouhsni announced on his Facebook page a partial curfew. He also placed all workers at one of the area’s key ports, Al-Shahr, under a 14-day quarantine. Residents criticized the governor for not shutting down all the ports Hadramawt which are the main lifeline of aid and commercial shipments for southern Yemen. The adjacent governorate of al-Mahra, which also borders Oman, sealed off its entry points just hours after the announcement of the first case in Yemen.
Experts have dreaded the virus’ eventual appearance in the country.
“The arrival of coronavirus in Yemen will be disastrous for many reasons,” said Altaf Musani, representative of the World Health Organization in Yemen.
In Israel, the number of coronavirus infections has risen to more than 10,000. The government imposed strict measures to contain the pandemic early on but has seen it tear through the insular ultra-Orthodox religious community.
The Health Ministry on Friday reported more than 10,000 cases, including 92 deaths.
The virus causes mild to moderate symptoms in most patients, who recover within a few weeks. But it can cause severe illness or death, particularly in older patients or those with underlying health problems.
Israeli authorities moved quickly in mid-March to close borders, ground flights and shut down all non-essential businesses. But in the early days and weeks of the pandemic many in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community ignored guidelines on social distancing, which health experts say is key to containing the outbreak.
In Oman on Friday, authorities ordered those living in the capital, Muscat, to remain there while banning people from traveling into the city over the virus. The country has more than 450 confirmed cases with two confirmed deaths.
There are more than 134,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the Middle East, including over 5,300 fatalities. Some 4,200 of those deaths are in Iran, which has the largest outbreak in the region. Authorities there had recorded over 68,000 total cases as of Friday.
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Detainees in Australian immigration centers are pleading to be released because of COVID-19 fears. They say it is impossible for them to self-isolate and protect themselves from the disease.Detainees at the Villawood immigration center in Sydney fear an outbreak of the new coronavirus inside the facility that houses more than 400 people would be impossible to control.  They are pleading to be released, and some said they are so desperate they’ve gone on a hunger strike.“We are not going to break or wreck anything, but this is the only form of way that we can reach out is by striking like this to do not eat in order to get some form of attention,” one detainee said.  “No eat, no drink.  We are sick of being in the dark and being in the shadows.  We are human beings, so we urge you, we are pleading with the Australian government to act now.  The time is now before it gets here and it is too late.”In a letter to the Prime Minister Scott Morrison, detainees insist they are living in a potential COVID-19 “death trap.”“We ask the community and the prime minister and the lawyers to help our family and  help us before the disease comes inside the detention (center) and sweep everybody,” a second detainee said.So far there has been one confirmed case of the new coronavirus in Australia’s detention network.“This COVID-19 virus is taking you out there and it hits in here like it is already the rumors are, we are all gone, we’re all going to die,” a third said. “We just get buried with nothing. They might as well just come and shoot the lot of us now.”The government insists there are established plans for dealing with a potential coronavirus outbreak within Australia’s detention network.  A spokesperson said detainees showing symptoms of COVID-19 would be quarantined and tested.There are about 1,440 people, including those from Iran, New Zealand and Sudan, being held in detention on the Australian mainland.  Forty percent are asylum seekers, while around 600 are being held for visa breaches.The average length of time in detention is more than 500 days.   
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Finance ministers from the 19 eurozone countries Thursday agreed on a package worth more than half a trillion euros to help companies, workers and health care systems mitigate the economic consequences of the coronavirus outbreak.Mario Centeno, president of the Eurogroup of eurozone ministers, called the package of measures “totally unprecedented.””The package we approved today is of a size close to 4 percent of European GDP,” he said. “Plus, the automatic stabilizers that are quite powerful to protect European economies in case of crisis. This is totally unprecedented. We have never ever reacted so quickly to a crisis as this one.”The measures provide for hard-hit Italy and Spain to quickly gain access to the eurozone’s bailout fund for up to 240 billion euros, as long as the money is used for the needs of their health care systems.Centeno said at a video news conference that countries are expected to identify enough health costs to access the money.People line up to buy supplies from a supermarket as the lockdown to combat the spread of coronavirus in Madrid, Spain, continues on April 9, 2020.The credit line is available only for the duration of the COVID-19 outbreak and expires immediately after that.The Eurogroup package also includes up to 200 billion euros in credit guarantees through the European Investment Bank to help companies stay afloat and 100 billion euros to offset lost wages for workers confined at home and others who are on reduced schedule.However, the deal did not include shared borrowing guaranteed by all member countries to pay for the cost of the coronavirus crisis, a key demand from Italy, Spain, France and six other countries, but rejected by Germany, Austria and the Netherlands.The finance ministers of Eurogroup left that issue open and up to national leaders of member countries as part of further negotiations on a possible fund to support the economic recovery in the longer term.
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International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva has warned that the coronavirus pandemic could lead to the world’s worst depression since the 1930s.Georgieva said Thursday that governments had already poured $8 trillion into programs to keep economies afloat but that more would be needed. She said developing countries and emerging markets would be the hardest hit. A partial recovery may be seen in 2021, she said.FILE – IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva speaks during a conference at the Vatican, Feb. 5, 2020.The U.S. automobile and aviation industries are expecting major losses amid travel and movement restrictions. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screened about 95,000 passengers Wednesday, a 96% drop from a year ago. With the Easter holiday on Sunday, many Americans normally would be traveling to spend the day with family.Washington-based Airlines for America said the United States last saw fewer than 100,000 passengers a day in 1954.The U.S. Labor Department reported Thursday that another 6.6 million workers filed for unemployment compensation last week, as companies and businesses shut down or limited their operations. That pushed the three-week total to nearly 17 million laid-off workers, about one-tenth of the country’s workforce.Press briefingIn his press briefing on Thursday, U.S. President Donald Trump welcomed the news that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was able to leave intensive care, although Britain’s leader remains hospitalized.White House correspondents were tested for the coronavirus as a precaution after a member of the White House press corps experienced symptoms on Tuesday.The number of infected people in the United States surpassed 460,000 on Thursday. Officials warned of a hard week ahead, even though the crisis appears to be leveling.New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said earlier that reductions in hospital admissions could be a sign that the situation in his state could soon be brighter. New York state, especially New York City, has had the most COVID-19 infections and deaths in the U.S.Health care workers take part in a national day of action calling on federal and local authorities to provide more Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and other support during the coronavirus pandemic, in New York City, New York, April 9, 2020.One of the continuing problems for the U.S. COVID-19 crisis is a shortage of protective gear for medical staff.The Strategic National Stockpile said it was nearly out of N95 masks, surgical masks, face shields, gowns, gloves and other items. It is feared that the shortage could endanger medical professionals at a time when the equipment is most needed.Global struggleCountries worldwide continue to struggle with the health and economic fallout from the coronavirus. As of Thursday evening, nearly 1.6 million people across the globe had contracted COVID-19 and more than 95,000 had died, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center.In Europe, officials told people to stay at home during the Christian world’s Holy Week, normally a time for pilgrimages and vacations.Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said the Netherlands could temporarily close its border crossings with Germany and Belgium over the Easter weekend if there was too much traffic.A man prays in front of the main gate of La Sed church after an Easter Holy Week procession was canceled due to the coronavirus outbreak in Seville, Spain, April 9, 2020.In Spain, where more than 15,000 have died from COVID-19, officials have made extra calls on citizens to remain at home rather than heading to the countryside for centuries-old religious processions.German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed “cautious optimism” about curtailing the spread of coronavirus in her country but described the situation as “fragile.”Germany has imposed shutdowns on many businesses through April 19.”We must keep this up over Easter and the days afterward, because we could very, very quickly destroy what we have achieved,” Merkel said.In the Mideast, the Saudi-led coalition that has been fighting Houthi rebels in Yemen for five years declared a two-week cease-fire starting Thursday in response to U.N. calls for peace as the world battles the coronavirus.Some leaders have expressed confidence that their countries have seen the worst of the outbreak and are beginning to plan a gradual return to normal life.
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OPEC and its allies led by Russia agreed on Thursday to cut their oil output by more than a fifth and said they expected the United States and other producers to join in their effort to prop up prices hammered by the coronavirus crisis. The cuts by OPEC and its allies, a group known as OPEC+, amount to 10 million barrels per day (bpd) or 10% of global supplies, with another 5 million bpd expected to come from other nations to help deal with the deepest oil crisis in decades.   Global fuel demand has plunged by around 30 million bpd, or 30% of global supplies, as steps to fight the virus have grounded planes, cut vehicle usage and curbed economic activity. An unprecedented 15 million bpd cut still won’t remove enough crude to stop the world’s storage facilities quickly filling up. And far from signaling any readiness to offer support, U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened OPEC if it did not fix the oil market’s problem of oversupply.   Trump, who has said U.S. output was already falling due to low prices, warned Riyadh it could face sanctions and tariffs on its oil if it did not cut enough to help the U.S. oil industry, whose higher costs have left it struggling with low prices. A White House aide said Trump held a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin and King Salman of Saudi Arabia, after a U.S. official said the move by OPEC+ sent an “important signal” to the market.  Both OPEC and Russian officials have said the scale of the crisis required involvement of all producers.   “We are expecting other producers outside the OPEC+ club to join the measures, which might happen tomorrow during G20,” the head of Russia’s wealth fund and one of Moscow’s top oil negotiators, Kirill Dmitriev, told Reuters.   Thursday’s OPEC+ talks will be followed by a call on Friday between energy ministers from the Group of 20 (G20) major economies, hosted by Saudi Arabia. OPEC and Russian sources said they expected other producers to add 5 million bpd to cuts. Brent oil prices, which hit an 18-year low last month, were trading around $32 a barrel on Thursday, half their level at the end of 2019. OPEC+, which groups the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Russia and others, would cutting output by 10 million bpd in May to June, OPEC+ documents showed. All members will reduce their output by 23%, with Saudi Arabia and Russia each cutting 2.5 million bpd and Iraq cutting over 1 million bpd. Gradual approach OPEC+ would then ease cuts to 8 million bpd from July to December and relax them further to 6 million bpd from January 2021 to April 2022, the documents showed.  OPEC+ sources said they expected cuts from the United States and others to amount to about 5 million bpd but the OPEC+ plus statement made no mention of such condition.  The sources said cuts would be gradual, as the group seeks to overcome resistance from the United States whose involvement they see as vital to a deal. U.S. officials have already said output would fall naturally over two years. The United States, whose output has surged to surpass Said and Russian production, was invited to Thursday’s OPEC+ talks but it was not clear if it had joined the video conference. Brazil, Norway and Canada were also invited. In a sign OPEC+ was struggling to win broader support, Canada’s main oil province of Alberta said output had already dropped and had not been asked by OPEC for more cuts. The province said it backed a U.S. idea for tariffs on imported crude. Before the talks, Moscow and Riyadh had been at odds over what level of production to use to calculate reductions, after Saudi Arabia hiked its supply in April to a record 12.3 million bpd, up from below 10 million bpd in March. Russian output, meanwhile, has been running about 11.3 million bpd. The two nations fell out during an acrimonious meeting in Vienna in March, when a previous production deal collapsed.   The two sides agreed on Thursday that cuts would be made from an 11 million bpd baseline for both countries, OPEC+ documents showed.   “We have managed to overcome differences. It will be a very important deal. It will allow the oil market to start on a path to recovery,” said Dmitriev, who last month was the first official to propose a deal involving members other than OPEC+.  Several U.S. states could order private companies to limit production under rarely used powers. The oil regulator in Texas, the largest producer among U.S. states with output of about 5 million bpd, meets on April 14 to discuss possible curbs.  If Saudi Arabia failed to rein in output, U.S. senators called on the White House to impose sanctions on Riyadh, pull out U.S. troops from the kingdom and impose import tariffs on Saudi oil. 
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Apollo 13’s astronauts never gave a thought to their mission number as they blasted off for the moon 50 years ago. Even when their oxygen tank ruptured two days later — on April 13.Jim Lovell and Fred Haise insist they’re not superstitious. They even use 13 in their email addresses.As mission commander Lovell sees it, he’s incredibly lucky. Not only did he survive NASA’s most harrowing moonshot, he’s around to mark its golden anniversary.”I’m still alive. As long as I can keep breathing, I’m good,” Lovell, 92, said in an interview with The Associated Press from his Lake Forest, Illinois, home.A half-century later, Apollo 13 is still considered Mission Control’s finest hour.  Lovell calls it “a miraculous recovery.”  Haise, like so many others, regards it as NASA’s most successful failure.  “It was a great mission,” Haise, 86, said. It showed “what can be done if people use their minds and a little ingenuity.”  As the lunar module pilot, Haise would have become the sixth man to walk on the moon, following Lovell onto the dusty gray surface. The oxygen tank explosion robbed them of the moon landing, which would have been NASA’s third, nine months after Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took humanity’s first footsteps on the moon.Now the coronavirus pandemic has robbed them of their anniversary celebrations. Festivities are on hold, including at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the mission began on April 11, 1970, a Saturday just like this year.That won’t stop Haise, who still lives in Houston, from marking what he calls “boom day” next Monday, as he does every April 13.Lovell, Haise and Jack Swigert, a last-minute fill-in who died in 1982, were almost to the moon when they heard a bang and felt a shudder. One of two oxygen tanks had burst in the spacecraft’s service module.FILE – In this April 10, 1970, photo made available by NASA, Apollo 13 astronauts, from left, Fred Haise, Jack Swigert and Jim Lovell pose for a photo on the day before launch.The tense words that followed are the stuff of space — and movie — fame.”OK, Houston, we’ve had a problem here,” radioed Swigert, the command module pilot.”This is Houston. Say again, please.””Houston, we’ve had a problem,” Lovell cut in.Lovell reported a sudden voltage drop in one of the two main electrical circuits. Within seconds, Houston’s Mission Control saw pressure readings for the damaged oxygen tank plunge to zero. The blast also knocked out two electrical power-generating fuel cells and damaged the third.  As Lovell peered out the window and saw oxygen escaping into the black void, he knew his moon landing was also slipping away. He shoved all emotions aside.”Not landing on the moon or dying in space are two different things,” Lovell explained, “and so we forgot about landing on the moon. This was one of survival. How do we get home?”The astronauts were 200,000 miles (322,000 kilometers) from Earth. Getting back alive would require calm, skill and, yes, luck.”The explosion could not have happened at a better time,” Lovell said.Much earlier, he said, and the astronauts wouldn’t have had enough electrical power to make it around the moon and slingshot back to Earth for a splashdown. A blast in lunar orbit or, worse still, while Lovell and Haise were on the surface, “that would be the end of it.”  “I think we had some divine help in this flight,” Lovell said.The aborted mission went from being so humdrum that none of the major TV networks broadcast the astronauts’ show-and-tell minutes before the explosion, to a life-and-death drama gripping the entire world.  As flight director Gene Kranz and his team in Houston raced to come up with a rescue plan, the astronauts kept their cool. It was Lovell’s fourth spaceflight – his second to the moon – and the first and only one for Haise and Swigert.Dark thoughts “always raced through our minds, but silently. We didn’t talk about that,” Lovell said.  Added Haise: “We never hit the point where there was nothing left to do. So, no, we never got to a point where we said, ‘Well, we’re going to die.'”The White House, less confident, demanded odds. Kranz refused, leaving it to others to put the crew’s chances at 50-50. In his mind, there was no doubt, no room for failure — only success.”Basically that was the name of the game: I’m going to get them home. My team’s going to get them home. We will get them home,” Kranz recalled.For the record, Kranz never uttered “failure is not an option.” The line is pure Hollywood, created for the 1995 movie “Apollo 13” starring Ed Harris as Kranz and Tom Hanks as Lovell.FILE – In this April 17, 1970, photo made available by NASA, the command module carrying the Apollo 13 crew parachutes to a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.The flight controllers went into crisis mode. They immediately ordered the command module Odyssey shut down to conserve what little power remained, and the astronauts to move into the lunar module Aquarius, now a lifeboat.  One of the low points, Lovell said, was realizing they’d be cramped together in the lander.”It was designed for two people for two days. We were three people for four days.”The carbon dioxide overload, from breathing, threatened to kill them.  Engineers scrambled to figure out how to convert the square air-purifying canisters in the dead capsule into round ones that would fit in their temporary home.  Their outside-the-box, seat-of-the-pants solution, using spacecraft scraps, worked. But it was so damp and cold that the astronauts couldn’t sleep. Condensation covered the walls and windows, and the temperature was close to freezing.Dehydrated and feverish, Haise had the roughest time during the six-day ordeal. Despite the sky-high stress, Haise recalls no cross words among the three test pilots. Even Swigert fit in, despite joining the crew a scant three days before liftoff. He replaced command module pilot Ken Mattingly, who with his crewmates had been exposed to German measles, but unlike them didn’t have immunity.  Rumors swirled that the astronauts had poison pills tucked away in case of a hopeless situation. Lovell dispelled that notion on page one of his 1994 autobiography, “Lost Moon,” the basis for the “Apollo 13” film.Splashdown day finally arrived April 17, 1970 — with no guarantees.The astronauts managed to power up their command module, avoiding short circuits but creating a rainfall inside as the spacecraft decelerated in the atmosphere.The communication blackout lasted 1 1/2 minutes longer than normal. Controllers grew alarmed. Finally, three billowing parachutes appeared above the Pacific. It was only then, Lovell said, that “we knew that we had it made.”  The astronauts had no idea how much their cosmic cliffhanger impacted the world until they reached Honolulu. President Richard Nixon was there to greet them.”We never dreamed a billion people were following us on television and radio, and reading about us in banner headlines of every newspaper published,” Lovell noted in a NASA history.The tank explosion later was linked to damage caused by electrical overheating in ground tests.  Apollo 13 “showed teamwork, camaraderie and what NASA was really made of,” said Columbia University’s Mike Massimino, a former shuttle astronaut.In the decades since, Lovell and his wife, Marilyn, of nearly 68 years have discussed the what-ifs and might-have-beens.”The outcome of everything is, naturally, that he’s alive,” she said, “and that we’ve had all these years.” 
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A partisan fight over voting in Wisconsin was the first issue linked to the coronavirus  to make it to the Supreme Court. Efforts to limit abortion during the pandemic could eventually land in the justices’ hands. Disputes over guns and religious freedom also are popping up around the country.The virus outbreak has put much of American life on hold, but the nation’s culture wars seem immune from the pandemic.And in a country deeply divided over politics, some liberals are accusing conservatives of using this crisis to advance long-held goals, especially in the areas of access to abortion and the ballot box. Conservatives have complained about restrictions on church services and gun shops. “We see the right as being very opportunistic to advance their agenda,” said Marge Baker, executive vice president of the liberal People for the American Way.‘Knee-jerk response’Tim Schmidt, founder and president of the gun-rights U.S. Concealed Carry Association, called restrictions on gun sales “a knee-jerk response to something we don’t quite understand. I hope and pray it doesn’t happen but that’s what I fear,” he said in a recent online forum. The clash over Tuesday’s election in Wisconsin is just one fight sparked by the coronavirus. Ultimately, conservative majorities  on both the high court and Wisconsin Supreme Court broke with more liberal colleagues to reject Democratic efforts to delay the vote and extend absentee balloting. The rulings signal an approaching season of bitter election-related litigation, said University of California at Irvine law professor Richard Hasen.”It is a very bad sign for November that the Court could not come together and find some form of compromise here in the midst of a global pandemic unlike anything we have seen in our lifetimes,” Hasen wrote about the U.S. Supreme Court justices on his Election Law blog.  “And it does not look like the courts are going to be able to do any better than the politicians in finding common ground on election principles,” he addedDemocratic U.S. presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during the 11th Democratic candidates debate of the 2020 U.S. presidential campaign, held in CNN’s Washington studios.‘All-mail ballots’Already, Joe Biden, now the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, has said the country should be looking “to all-mail ballots across the board” because of the pandemic. But President Donald Trump has weighed in strongly against voting by mail, even though he himself casts absentee ballots and Republicans have often favored mail-in ballots especially for older people. More fights over elections may be ahead, but the pandemic has already led to clashes in multiple states over abortion access. In Republican-led Alabama, Iowa, Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas, governors sought to prohibit almost all abortions by classifying them as elective procedures that should be put off during the virus outbreak. Those efforts have, so far, been mostly blocked. In Iowa, the American Civil Liberties Union and the state reached an agreement that allows women to obtain “essential” surgical abortions. Federal court rulings have allowed abortions to continue in Alabama, Ohio and Oklahoma. But not so in Texas, where the federal appeals court in New Orleans held 2-1 Tuesday that the state’s restrictions on abortions could remain in place during the pandemic. ‘Emergency measures’U.S. Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan, a Trump appointee, wrote for the court that “when faced with a society-threatening epidemic, a state may implement emergency measures that curtail constitutional rights so long as the measures have at least some ‘real or substantial relation’ to the public health crisis.”The ruling drew a blistering dissent from Judge James Dennis, a Bill Clinton appointee, who said that results in cases involving abortion at the conservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals don’t stem from “the law or facts, but because of the subject matter.” Abortion rights groups on Wednesday went back to a lower court in an effort to resume abortions, and the case could still eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court. Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said Texas “has been trying to end abortion for decades and they are exploiting this pandemic to achieve that goal.” Andrea Schry, right, fills out the buyer part of legal forms to buy a handgun as shop worker Missy Morosky fills out the vendors parts after Dukes Sport Shop reopened, March 25, 2020, in New Castle, Pa.Gun stores targetedAbortion clinics aren’t the only places that states have sought to close during the pandemic. Gun stores, too, have been targeted. Most states have deemed gun sellers essential businesses allowed to remain open during the emergency. But three states — Massachusetts, New Mexico and Washington — forced those businesses to close. Gun rights groups have gone to court to pressure New Jersey’s Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, and local officials in North Carolina to reverse course on gun restrictions. Other lawsuits are pending in California. Joe Bartozzi, president and CEO of the National Sports Shooting Foundation, said closing the stores is the wrong answer. “You don’t want to, in a time of crisis, be suspending civil liberties,” Bartozzi said.  Gun-control advocates said the National Rifle Association and allied groups were using the pandemic to advance their cause. “This is part of their playbook for many years which is to foment fear during a time of crisis,” said Shannon Watts, founder of the gun-control group Moms Demand Action. A sign highlighting Holy Week activities is displayed outside the Our Mother of Perpetual Help- St. James Parish, April 8, 2020, in Ferndale, Mich.Religious gatheringsSome churches also have become embroiled in fights about whether they can stay open in states that have restricted gatherings. Some states’ stay-at-home orders have specifically exempted some level of religious activity, but that hasn’t necessarily prevented clashes.In Kansas, leaders of the Republican-controlled legislature overturned Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s executive order limiting the size of religious gatherings during the virus outbreak. “It appears to be out of line and extreme and clearly in violation, a blatant violation, of our fundamental rights,” said state Senate President Susan Wagle of Wichita, an abortion opponent, who questioned why clinics were still being allowed to perform abortions while restrictions were being placed on churches.  Three Houston-area pastors sued over potential fines for holding religious services amid the virus outbreak.”We believe the government’s power stops at the church doors,” said Jared Woodfill, a lawyer who represents the pastors and said he’s working on three other pandemic-related church lawsuits in Texas, even though Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s executive order deems religious services essential. He said it’s ironic that Wisconsin held elections. “You had elections but you can’t have church?” he asked. Chase Strangio, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer, took to Twitter to offer a different take on the same set of facts. “COVID-19: just dangerous enough to block abortion but not dangerous enough to hold elections by mail,” Strangio wrote.  
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In Italy, one of the countries hardest hit by the coronavirus, the debate is growing on whether it is time to downgrade the emergency and start easing restrictions after a strict five-week lockdown, now that the virus spread is showing what some see as signs of slowing down.On top of that, there is pressure to reopen industries and businesses in the face of what could be a massive economic meltdown.  The daily death toll has been dropping steadily – as have admissions to intensive care units. But with about 500 people still dying each day, the country’s prime minister is resisting calls to relax strict social distancing and other measures.
 
Giuseppe Conte is urging caution and says any decision to downgrade the emergency must be taken gradually and together with scientists.FILE – Medical staff in full protective gear move a patient on a stretcher down a street in Naples, as the spread of the coronavirus continues, Italy, April 2, 2020.He also warned of dire consequences yet to come for the whole of Europe if the EU does not come together and agree on a rescue package.  
 
Conte said the future of the European Union is at stake in a challenge he has compared to that of World War II. 
 
In an interview with the German newspaper Bild, Conte, said Europe must unite and deliver a solid response to head off a devastation of the European economy. He said the sooner financial instruments are created that will allow countries to deal with this crisis, the sooner everyone will emerge from this situation and enjoy economic and social advantages.Divisions between southern European nations, led by Italy, and northern ones, mainly Germany and the Netherlands, have so far stalled plans for a massive package to help the hardest-hit economies recover from the effects of the pandemic.
 
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Europe’s major stock indexes were mostly trading in positive territory Thursday, continuing the upswing enjoyed earlier in the day in Asia. London’s FTSE and the DAX index in Frankfurt were both trading at or above one-half of one percent, while Paris’s CAC-40 was slightly lower in mid-morning trading.  A currency trader walks by the screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) at the foreign exchange dealing room in Seoul, South Korea, April 9, 2020.The good news in Europe was a spillover from Asia’s big rally, with Australia, Hong Kong, Seoul, and Shanghai all posting gains at the end of their trading sessions. Japan’s Nikkei index, however, lost a fraction of one percent as the country faces an increasing number of confirmed COVID-19 infections.   In U.S. futures trading, the Dow Jones, S&P and Nasdaq were all trading lower as investors brace for yet another report of huge unemployment claims from the U.S. Labor Department.  Oil markets improved Thursday, with U.S. crude oil gaining 3% to finish over $25 per barrel, while Brent crude oil, the international standard, rose nearly 2%, to settle at over $33 per barrel.  Investors are hopeful that Thursday’s meeting between OPEC members and Russia will lead to a deal to curb production, which has created a glut of supplies as demand has plunged due to the pandemic.     
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