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European airline EasyJet grounds all flights
LONDON — Popular European airline EasyJet says it is grounding its entire fleet of aircraft amid a collapse in demand because of the COVID-19 crisis.
The carrier, based in Luton, England, has parked all 344 of its planes, removing a significant cost as it copes with the impact of the virus.
EasyJet says it has a strong balance sheet and is in “ongoing discussions with liquidity providers.” The budget carrier also announced that it had reached an agreement with the Unite union on furlough arrangements for its cabin crew.
The announcement comes as Scottish regional airline Loganair said it expected to ask for a government bailout.
Britain’s government has so far demurred from creating a rescue package for aviation but has said it is ready for negotiations with individual firms once they had “exhausted other options.”
A choir decided to go ahead with rehearsal. Now dozens of members have COVID-19 and two are dead
With the coronavirus quickly spreading in Washington state in early March, leaders of the Skagit Valley Chorale debated whether to go ahead with weekly rehearsal.
The virus was already killing people in the Seattle area, about an hour’s drive to the south.
But Skagit County hadn’t reported any cases, schools and business remained open, and prohibitions on large gatherings had yet to be announced.
Louisiana church defies COVID-19 order, holds Sunday services
Pentecostal preacher Tony Spell didn’t just stand before his congregation on Sunday in defiance of the governor’s order to stay home: He leaped into the pews, paraded, hugged and laid hands on worshipers’ foreheads in prayer.
“We’re free people. We’re not going to be intimidated. We’re not going to cower,” the Rev. Spell said from the pulpit of Life Tabernacle Church in a suburb of Baton Rouge. “We’re not breaking any laws.”
‘I don’t want to get sick. But if I die, I die’: Florida retirees grapple as coronavirus cases soar
Retirees and snowbirds have long flocked to the slew of country club-like gated communities in Florida known for their communal amenities, low taxes and year-round sun. The elderly account for close to a quarter of the state’s 21 million residents.
But now, as nearly half of the U.S. adjusts to stay-at-home orders put in place to limit the spread of the coronavirus, life at many of Florida’s retirement villages has come to a standstill, with complaints from some and calls for additional safeguards from others.
Inside a Long Beach distillery churning out hand sanitizer to battle COVID-19
The floor is sticky, and the air smells like booze.
At Portuguese Bend Distilling in Long Beach, a skeleton crew in medical masks and Carhartt work shirts clambers around the copper still and stainless-steel fermenters that, in normal days, would be churning out vodka and gin.
But these aren’t normal days.
Governors shrug off Trump’s insults as they plead for federal aid
Wary of President Trump’s criticism that they were ungrateful for his management of the coronavirus crisis, governors of several of the hardest-hit states sought gingerly Sunday to avoid provoking him anew and risk losing desperately needed federal aid.
Despite the drastic shutdown of much of the country, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious-disease specialist, warned Sunday that 100,000 to 200,000 Americans might die before the pandemic eases. More than 2,400 had died as of Sunday.
Several governors made clear they fear inadvertently harming their own citizens if they are too strident in demands for desperately needed medical supplies, or if they clash too publicly with Trump over pandemic policy as the contagion spreads.
So they took a new tack, articulating their states’ needs while ignoring Trump’s insults and demands.
Former USC football player Quinton Powell hospitalized with COVID-19 symptoms
Former USC linebacker Quinton Powell has been hospitalized with symptoms of COVID-19 and is pleading for others on social media to “stay inside and stop playing with this.”
Powell, who underwent a test for the coronavirus, made his symptoms public with an Instagram post Saturday. In the photo, Powell is lying on a hospital bed, wearing a mask and gown, with medical equipment along the wall behind him.
“Been scared since yesterday man,” Powell wrote in the post. “Y’all really stay isolated. ... be all fun and games til u in the hospital getting a shot in yo ahh and Qtips stuck up your nose til it touch your brain. This isn’t a message for sympathy cause I know who really cares about me and my well being, but this is a message so everyone really stays inside and stop playing with this. Everybody stay safe. Real talk. Peace, love and happiness.”
Joe Diffie, country music star, dies at 61 from complications of COVID-19
Joe Diffie, a country music star who won Country Music Assn. and Grammy awards and charted five No. 1 country singles in the 1990s, died Sunday from complications of COVID-19. He was 61.
The news was confirmed by Adkins Publicity, which announced his death in a news release. Diffie revealed his positive coronavirus diagnosis on Friday.
Surfer who ignored beach closure is fined $1,000, Manhattan Beach police say
A man received a $1,000 citation for surfing in Manhatthan Beach on Saturday after he ignored numerous warnings by police and lifeguards cautioning him not to go in the water because of the coronavirus beach closures.
Manhattan Beach Police Sgt. Mike Sistoni said it was the only citation for failing to follow the stay-at-home orders the department had issued.
“Everybody else was in compliance,” Sistoni said. “People have been pretty good about it.”
Indie bookstore Powell’s Books rehires more than 100 employees as online orders soar
After laying off more than 300 staff members, Portland’s cherished indie bookstore Powell’s Books has rehired more than 100 of its workers on the strength of online orders, the company’s CEO announced on Facebook Sunday.
“Your kind words, messages of encouragement, ideas for perseverance and orders for books have taken our breath away,” said CEO Emily Powell in a Facebook post. She also announced that the rehired staff were all full time and receiving benefits.
“We’ve made an internal commitment to only pay for expenses that keep folks employed, and the lights on, for the time being,” she wrote. “Right now … our focus is on keeping Powell’s moving, keeping our community healthy, taking care of our wonderful customers and having as many folks working with health insurance as our sales can support.”
CBS News executive who contracted the coronavirus dies
CBS News veteran Maria Mercader died Sunday from complications of COVID-19, the first media executive to die as a result of the pandemic.
The network confirmed that Mercader, 54, died in a New York hospital. A former producer who spent her career at the network, she was director of talent strategy at the news division.
Mercader, who lived in Manhattan, had been on medical leave from CBS since late February. She was a cancer survivor who had undergone numerous treatments and surgeries that left her among the most vulnerable to the coronavirus.
California received 170 broken ventilators from feds; Silicon Valley is fixing them, Newsom says
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday said the federal government sent Los Angeles County 170 ventilators that arrived “not working,” and now a Silicon Valley company is fixing the equipment amid the coronavirus outbreak.
California and other states have been stocking up on ventilators in anticipation of a shortage at hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic. Newsom said he learned about the problem with the federal government’s ventilators when he visited Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti on Friday.
“Rather than lamenting about it, rather than complaining about it, rather than pointing fingers, rather than generating headlines in order to generate more stress and anxiety, we got a car and a truck,” Newsom said. Bloom Energy is fixing them, he tweeted Saturday.
Illinois infant with COVID-19 dies; exact cause of death unknown
CHICAGO —An Illinois infant with COVID-19 has died, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said Saturday. The cause of death is unknown, and an investigation is underway.
A state employee also was among 13 new deaths reported Saturday as Illinois Department of Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike urged people to do all they could to prevent the spread of the virus.
“If you haven’t been paying attention, maybe this is your wake-up call,” Ezike said.
The risk of death and severe illness from COVID-19 is greater for older adults and people with other health problems. In most cases, the virus causes mild or moderate symptoms, which can include fever and cough but also milder cases of pneumonia, sometimes requiring hospitalization.
Children have made up a small fraction of coronavirus cases worldwide. A letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine by Chinese researchers earlier this month reported the death of a 10-month-old with COVID-19. The infant had a bowel blockage and organ failure, and died four weeks after being hospitalized.
U.S. can expect ‘millions of cases’ and more than 100,000 deaths, Fauci says
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious-disease expert, said Sunday the U.S. could expect “millions of cases” of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and a possible death toll of “between 100,000 and 200,000.”
Fauci, who directs the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, spoke on CNN’s “State of the Union.” The death toll presently stands at more than 2,000.
The scientist, who has at times corrected President Trump’s statements about the outbreak, was careful in his wording when asked if there should be a rollback of guidelines on social distancing in less affected parts of the country.
That should happen, Fauci said, only if there is stepped-up testing in those places to ensure they are not about to become new hot spots for the virus.
“We’re going to have millions of cases” of COVID-19, Fauci said, but added that the pace of infection was a “moving target,” and that projections of cases and deaths were based on many factors.
While Trump has said he would like to see the economy reopen by Easter, which is April 12, Fauci has been much more conservative in terms of social-distancing requirements, saying they should be dependent on the widespread availability of testing with swift results.
“It’s going to be a matter of weeks,” he said. “It’s not going to be tomorrow, and it’s certainly not going to be next week.”
Also expressing caution on the easing of social distancing measures was Tom Inglesby, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Inglesby said that isolation measures already put into effect lagged behind the spread of the virus.
“We’re still at the very beginning of this outbreak,” he said. “We should expect it to continue for some time, and focus on social distancing as one of the main interventions to stop it.”
This is what it’s like to deliver food during a pandemic
With restaurants dining rooms closed, conventional wisdom would suggest that more people are ordering in. And that means better business for app-based food delivery drivers and bike couriers, right?
Wrong, says Justin Zemlyansky, a bike courier who has delivered food on and off for the last three years for delivery platforms such as Grubhub, Caviar and DoorDash.
More people than ever are turning to gigging in the food delivery space, Zemlyansky said. “They’re coming and trying to do these kinds of jobs because it’s the only money and revenue they can get,” he said.
Army vets fought to mass produce $100 ventilators. They hit roadblocks
SACRAMENTO — For the last month, Army reservist Lt. Colonel Kamal Kalsi, an emergency room doctor in New York, has been scrambling to find a way to quickly mass produce ventilators, equipment that could save the lives of thousands of coronavirus victims nationwide.
Two weeks ago, he thought he’d found a company in Sacramento with the perfect answer.
But then, as he tells it, necessity took a back seat to business.
The firm Kalsi contacted wanted tens of millions of dollars before they’d help him, he said.
No running water. No electricity. On Navajo Nation, coronavirus creates worry and confusion
CAMERON, Ariz. —Lisa Robbins runs the generator attached to her family’s mobile home for just a few hours most mornings. With no electricity, it provides heat in this rural high-desert stretch of the Navajo Nation where overnight temperatures often linger in the low 30s this time of year.
Robbins first started hearing the whispers earlier this month — the fever, that sickness, something called coronavirus — but most people in this town of about 900 didn’t seem too worried. It was far off, neighbors told her, a world away in the big cities.
So, Robbins, who rarely has access to the internet or TV news, continued with her daily routine, which includes helping her mother who sometimes suffers from side effects of a surgery years ago to remove a cancerous stomach tumor.
Then came the bang on her door and a stark warning from local leaders.
CDC urges residents of of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut to refrain from nonessential domestic travel for 14 days
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged residents of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to refrain from nonessential domestic travel for 14 days, effective immediately.
The advisory does not apply to workers for critical infrastructure industries, such as truck drivers, public health professionals and those in financial services and food supply. “The governors of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut will have full discretion to implement this Domestic Travel of Advisory.”
Earlier Saturday, President Trump said he was considering some type of enforceable quarantine to prevent people in New York and parts of New Jersey and Connecticut from traveling. He later tweeted that a quarantine would not be necessary and said he asked the CDC to issue the travel advisory, to be administered by governors.
Coronavirus patients in California’s ICU beds double overnight
SACRAMENTO — The number of coronavirus patients in California’s intensive care unit beds doubled overnight, rising from 200 on Friday to 410 on Saturday, Gov. Gavin Newsom said.
The number of hospitalized patients testing positive for the coronavirus that causes the disease known as COVID-19 rose by 38.6% — from 746 on Friday to 1,034 on Saturday, Newsom said.
“We’re blessed that we’re just at 410, devastating for the individuals there and their family members and loved ones,” Newsom said at a press conference in Sunnyvale on Saturday. “But by comparison and contrast to other parts of this country, that number seems relatively modest.”
California has reported more than 100 deaths and more than 5,500 cases of coronavirus around the state as of Saturday.
Pentagon struggles as pandemic hits bases and ships
Washington — The Pentagon was waging a two-front war against the coronavirus outbreak Saturday, ramping up military assistance in hard-hit states as commanders battled to prevent widespread infections in the ranks that could force them to curtail military operations around the globe.
The Pentagon already has canceled or curtailed several large-scale training exercises, halted the movement of troops overseas and domestically, confined the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt to port in Guam after an outbreak aboard the warship, and shuttered many of its recruiting offices around the country.
President Trump flew to Norfolk Naval Base in Virginia on Saturday to watch as the 1,000-bed Navy hospital ship Comfort departed for New York City, the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak, where it will take patients who have tested negative in an attempt to relieve overwhelmed civilian hospitals. The sister ship Mercy docked in the Port of Los Angeles on Friday to perform the same role there.
“We will win this war, and we will win this war quickly — with as little death as possible,” Trump said, standing on the pier with Defense Secretary Mark Esper.
The use of the two hospital ships highlighted the growing military role in assisting beleaguered state officials as they try to contain the contagion. As of Saturday, public health officials had confirmed more than 121,000 cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, and more than 2,000 deaths.
More than 12,000 members of the National Guard were mobilized as of Friday to help run testing sites, move supplies and build makeshift tent hospitals in dozens of states where infection numbers are rising and threatening to overwhelm civilian medical facilities.
At the same time, senior Pentagon officials and top commanders grappled with the potential effect on military operations and the potential risks to national security if thousands of U.S. military personnel become sick or need to be quarantined.
Scenes from an empty downtown Los Angeles
Vatican: Pope and his closest aides are not involved with six COVID-19 cases
The Vatican says neither Pope Francis nor any of his closest aides are involved with six cases among Vatican residents or employees who tested positive for COVID-19.
Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni has confirmed news reports earlier in the week that an official of the Holy See’s secretariat of state office tested positive for the coronavirus. Bruni also has confirmed that the official lives at the Santa Marta hotel where Pope Francis lodges, too.
The health condition of the official “doesn’t at the moment present any particular critical” aspects, according to Bruni. But as a precaution, the official has been admitted to a Rome hospital for observation.
Bruni says more than 170 COVID-19 tests have been conducted on Vatican employees and residents of the hotel. The Vatican hasn’t specified if Francis was testified. But Bruni added: “I can confirm that neither the Holy Father nor his closest collaborators are involved” with infected cases.
Italy sees a slight drop in its death rate
Italy’s COVID-19 deaths are down slightly from the previous day.
Civil Protection officials said there were 889 deaths in a 24-hour period ending Saturday evening in the country, where intensive care units have been overwhelmed at the heart of the outbreak in the north. That compares to 969 a day earlier, which was a one-day high in the country which has the world’s highest number of deaths of persons with confirmed cases of the coronavirus.
The day-to-day rise in new cases was just under 6,000, about the same as the previous day’s figure. Overall, Italy has at least 92,472 cases of COVID-19 and days ago surpassed the total of China, where the outbreak began in early 2020.
The current national lock-down decree expires on April 3, but health experts have said the need to try to contain contagion in the outbreak will likely last weeks beyond that.
Spain orders a two-week ban on commuting to non-essential businesses
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has announced his government will order a two-week ban on commuting to all non-essential businesses starting on Monday.
Sánchez says in a publicly televised address that all workers are ordered to remain at home “as if it were a weekend” to “intensify” efforts to stem the outbreak of the coronavirus.
Spain is approaching the end of the second week of stay-at-home rules and the closing of most stores, but workers were allowed to go to offices and factories if they were unable to work from home.
Spain reported 832 deaths Saturday for a total of 5,690 fatalities, to go with 72,248 infections. Its health authorities say, however, that the rate of infection growth appears to be slowing.
Kansas governor orders residents to stay home to curb virus
Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly issued a statewide order Saturday requiring people to stay in their homes to slow the spread of the coronavirus, waiting until nearly three-quarters of the state’s residents were already facing such directives.
Kansas joins nearly two dozen states in ordering residents to stay at home. The Kansas order is effective at 12:01 a.m. Monday through April 19.
“As governor I left the decision to local health departments for as long as possible,” Kelly said. She called the current “patchwork” of local orders problematic and said she believes the statewide order was necessary because Kansas “isn’t ready for the peak” of the pandemic.
Kelly, a Democrat, issued the order for Kansas’ 2.9 million residents after at least 25 counties, including all of the state’s most populous ones, issued their own stay-at-home orders. Kelly said the new order supersedes the local orders.
The order directs people to stay at home except for essential business such as trips to the grocery store or to get medical care. Outdoor exercise is allowed as long as social distancing is maintained, Kelly said.
“You can leave your house. You can still go outside. You are not under house arrest,” Kelly said.
Conservatives in the Republican-controlled Legislature said that Kelly overreached this month when she ordered all of the state’s K-12 schools closed for the rest of the semester and complained that the state’s economy was being damaged too much. Legislative leaders have the power to review — and revoke — her orders related to the coronavirus pandemic.
Kansas House Speaker Ron Ryckman, Majority Leader Dan Hawkins and Speaker Pro Tem Blaine Finch, all Republicans, said in a joint statement that the new order “will no doubt impact our families and our businesses. As members of the Legislative Coordinating Council we have a duty to carefully assess this executive order and the reasons for it. Over the coming days we will consult with the Attorney General, health care professionals, the business community, and the state’s emergency management team to make sure we are on the right path.”
For most people, the 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.
Kansas health officials reported 202 confirmed cases of the COVID-19 virus as of Friday, an increase of 34 from Thursday, and four deaths, all in the Kansas City area.
Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt said more than 100 complaints about alleged price gouging related to the coronavirus have been filed since the state’s anti-profiteering law was triggered by Kelly’s declaration of a state emergency on March 12. Some complaints have been assigned to investigators within the attorney general’s office or to local prosecutors.
Trump raises idea of quarantine in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut; Cuomo doesn’t ‘know what that means’
President Donald Trump said Saturday that he had spoken with some governors and was considering some type of an enforceable quarantine to prevent people in New York and parts of New Jersey and Connecticut from traveling.
Trump told reporters at the White House that it would be for a “short period of time, if we do it at all.” He said he had spoken with Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., and Andrew Cuomo, D-N.Y., the country’s epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic.
But Cuomo said he did not talk about any quarantine with Trump.
“I don’t even know what that means,’’ Cuomo said during a briefing in New York. “I don’t know how that could be legally enforceable, and from a medical point of view, I don’t know what you would be accomplishing. ... I don’t like the sound of it.”
It isn’t clear whether the federal government has the power to impose such restrictions on states. Under the country’s constitutional system, states have the power and responsibility for maintaining public order and safety. The federal government is empowered under the law to take measures to prevent the spread of communicable diseases between states, but it’s not clear that means Trump can order state residents to stay put.
Trump made the comments on his way to Norfolk, Virginia, to see off a U.S. Navy medical ship en route to New York City to help with pandemic response there.
As coronavirus spreads, LAX is becoming a ghost town
Using malaria drugs off-label to treat COVID-19 can be risky, doctors and experts warn
The prospect that a pair of malaria drugs will become go-to medications for treating COVID-19 before they’ve been rigorously tested is prompting new safety warnings from heart specialists and other doctors and experts.
President Trump has touted the drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as a potential “game changer” for patients sickened by the novel coronavirus, and federal officials have asked pharmaceutical manufacturers to make their stocks of these drugs available for immediate use.
But as the medications begin pouring into hospital pharmacies and physicians begin prescribing them, their potential side effects are raising alerts.
An article published this week in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings warns that both drugs could prompt dangerous and potentially deadly heart arrhythmias in the 3 million people worldwide who have a congenital cardiac condition — called long QT syndrome — that can cause the heart to beat erratically and lead to sudden death.
In addition, millions of people in the United States take medications that prolong the heart’s “QT interval,” the span of time it takes the heart’s electrical system to recharge between beats. Those people — including patients who take common antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs or any one of a wide range of antibiotics — are probably also at risk of developing a dangerously irregular heartbeat if they take one of the malaria drugs without being closely monitored by a doctor, the article’s authors said.
New York delays presidential primary
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he was delaying the state’s presidential primary from April 28 to June 23, when the state plans to hold legislative congressional and local party primaries.
“I don’t think it’s wise to be bringing people to one location to vote,” the Democrat said.
New York joins over a dozen states that have delayed some elections. A smaller group including Ohio, Georgia, Louisiana, Connecticut, Maryland, Rhode Island, Indiana and Kentucky have also postponed their presidential primaries.
The governor’s decision came as election commissioners across New York warned they were “risking” their health and safety to meet impending deadlines for testing machines and preparing ballots ahead of the April 28 date.
Local election boards have said they were facing shortages of polling places and inspectors and had called on legislative leaders and Cuomo to allow for increased use of absentee balloting for quarantined individuals and greater flexibility for elections officials to run June elections.
United Nations says 86 staffers around world reported cases
The United Nations says 86 staff members around the world have reported cases of COVID-19.
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said most of the infected staff members are in Europe, but there are also staffers in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and the United States that have the coronavirus.
To try to reduce transmission, he said the vast majority of U.N. staffers are working from home.
At U.N. headquarters in New York, where a normal day would see staffers’ passes swiped 11,000 times, the number of swipes Friday morning stood at 140, Dujarric said.
In Geneva, he said, the number of staff at the U.N. office has dropped from around 4,000 people on a regular day to just about 70 on Thursday. In Vienna, more than 97% of U.N. staff are now working remotely, he said. And, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 99% of staff are working from home.
Here’s what you can’t do this weekend
Southern California officials have one message to residents already a bit stir crazy from more than a week of unprecedented restriction on movements due to coronavirus: Stay home.
This weekend brings even more restrictions than last weekend, when officials were alarmed by crowds flocking to beaches, parks and hiking trails.
Most beaches, trails, recreation areas and other points of interest are closed, including trails in Griffith Park and Runyon Canyon Park in Los Angeles. The state has also ordered parking lots closed at dozens of state beaches and parks.
But L.A. officials said it’s fine to walk or jog in your neighborhood or through neighborhood parks as long as you social distance.
See’s Candies suspends chocolate production for first time since World War II
See’s Candies, a California chocolate institution, is suspending production because of the coronavirus. It’s only the second time in See’s 99-year history that production has been interrupted, when it was halted because of rationing during World War II.
“Given the current events with COVID-19, and our concern for the health and safety of our employees, we have made the decision to initiate an interruption once again,” the South San Francisco company said in a statement. “We will work to keep you updated as we develop plans to safely resume operations.”
The first See’s store opened in Los Angeles in 1921 by a trio of Canadian immigrants: Charles See, his wife, Florence, and his mother, Mary. That grandmotherly face on See’s trademark black-and-white boxes belongs to Mary See, and her recipes were the foundation of the operation.
In 2017, See’s Candies was expecting to sell between $400 million and $450 million of candy, and had 1,500 employees, with more workers added during the winter holidays.
Citing virus, judge orders release of two men from California immigrant detention center
A federal judge Friday ordered the immediate release of two men held in the Adelanto detention center after their attorneys cited their severe risk of contracting coronavirus.
The two — Pedro Bravo Castillo and Luis Vasquez Rueda — are among a number of detainees who have been ordered released across the country since the pandemic broke out.
“They’ve been spared a potential death sentence,” said Mark Rosenbaum, an attorney with Public Counsel, which — along with Kaplan Hecker & Fink — represented the two men. “Hopefully now ICE is going to do its part to prevent the spread of the deadly virus.”
Big L.A. restaurants ordered to pay workers two weeks’ worth of sick leave amid shutdown
Large Los Angeles restaurants will be required to pay their employees 80 hours of sick leave, part of a sweeping city effort to provide financial assistance to workers who have been affected by business closures related to the coronavirus outbreak.
City councilmembers voted on Friday evening to pass the ordinance. It applies to all employers within the city of Los Angeles that have more than 500 employees.
The 500-employee stipulation was added to the proposal just hours before it was put up for a vote, effectively sparing many owners of small restaurants from almost certain bankruptcy. That’s because with all restaurants closed to dine-in service, and many choosing to temporarily close during shelter-in-place restrictions, they’re pulling in little to no revenue.
The original version of the ordinance would have required all businesses with fewer than 500 employees to pay 80 hours of sick leave at an employee’s regular rate. It was also retroactive, and would have required paying those employed between Feb. 3 and March 4, too.
Hollywood is shut down and facing losses. Can the insurance industry bail it out?
For three decades, Brian Kingman has been helping film and television companies find insurance policies to protect them from fires, accidents or A-list stars who’ve gone rogue.
Now, instead of being in his Glendale office, Kingman is working the phones from home, video chatting with clients and colleagues around the world as cases come flooding in from production companies roiled by the coronavirus outbreak.
“We’ve seen hundreds and hundreds of claims coming in from productions shut down due to the coronavirus,” said Kingman, managing director of the entertainment practice at Illinois-based insurer Gallagher. “We’re in uncharted waters and it’s certainly an unprecedented time for everyone.”
Mississippi’s governor tries to shut abortion clinic, but won’t order residents to stay home
RIDGELAND, Miss. —Traffic was heavy in this suburb of Jackson, Miss., on Friday as residents perused department stores and auto dealerships, joined friends dining on the patio of local restaurants and dropped children at day-care centers to romp on playgrounds.
“If we’re going to do something, we should do it now to stop the expansion of the virus,” said Ethan Williams, 23, a salesman eating with a friend during their lunch break at Basil’s Café at the Renaissance at Colony Park mall here.
In Texas, bars and restaurants have been blocked from serving customers on site. In Louisiana, the deadly coronavirus is spreading, by some measures, faster there than anywhere else in the world. In Alabama, nonessential businesses — including nightclubs, gyms and barbershops — were closed on Friday.
L.A. city ordinance would reserve grocery shopping times for the elderly and disabled
The City of Los Angeles has passed an ordinance that will require retail food stores such as supermarkets and convenience stores to dedicate the first hour of business to the elderly, the disabled and those who care for them.
It’s a move many retailers voluntarily implemented last week in response to the increased demand brought on by the recent COVID-19 shutdowns, but the measure — which passed by a unanimous vote during a City Council meeting Friday — makes it standard across the board. It is now awaiting the mayor’s signature.
‘Record stores struggle to stay afloat amid coronavirus crisis
The city permit that Amoeba Music had been anticipating came on March 18: After a years-long search to finally lock in a new home for its 31,000-square-foot Sunset Boulevard location, the city’s Department of Building and Safety approved construction applications for a new space a few blocks away at the corner of Hollywood and Argyle.
Little could Amoeba have known when its owners submitted the paperwork that a pandemic of Slayer-esque proportions would prompt the company, which as the country’s largest independent record store employs about 400 workers across its three California locations, to close the same day it got the go-ahead to start work.
Across Los Angeles and the country, similarly baffled music retailers await word of how the $2-trillion relief package approved by Congress will aid their plight. In the short term, prospects seem dim. Record retail’s most profitable day, April’s annual Record Store Day initiative, has been postponed.
Nationwide, more than 120 independent shops have temporarily shuttered, according to Billboard, either out of caution or government-dictated stay-at-home orders.
Is Los Angeles going to see a New York-level coronavirus disaster? Here is what we know
Is Los Angeles going to be the next New York when it comes to coronavirus?
Coronavirus cases have risen dramatically over the last week, and officials warn that things will get much worse in the next few weeks.
“A week or two from now, we will have images like we’re seeing in New York here in Los Angeles.” Mayor Eric Garcetti said Thursday
It will be bad — but how bad remains a question.
Firearms activists sue California, L.A. County over gun shop closures tied to coronavirus
A coalition of gun owner groups filed a federal lawsuit Friday against the Los Angeles County Sheriff, Gov. Gavin Newsom and state and county health officials seeking to block the closure of gun shops during the coronavirus shutdown.
Sheriff Alex Villaneuva closed gun stores in L.A. County Thursday to everyone except police and licensed security company employees after the governor deemed that firearms sellers are considered nonessential businesses during California’s shutdown of commerce in an effort to limit and slow the spread of the coronavirus.
In the lawsuit filed in federal court in Los Angeles on Friday seeking declaratory relief, the gun owner groups characterized the closure as a clear violation of the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms.
Despite widespread shortages, Trump hasn’t come up with a plan to get medical supplies where needed
With shortages of medical supplies for hospitals and doctors treating coronavirus patients intensifying nationwide, elected officials, hospital administrators and doctors are increasingly questioning whether the administration has a plan that can assist the country’s medical providers.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has never finalized a system for getting and distributing medical supplies in an emergency, federal records indicate.
And administration officials have refused to provide answers to questions from lawmakers, governors and healthcare leaders who are desperate for federal assistance with masks, ventilators and other equipment.
How do you work from home? Send us a video
Working from home is the new normal while we try to avoid getting and spreading the coronavirus. What’s your new normal look like?
Send us a video showing us what you’re wearing to work, what you’re cooking, how you’re working out and what you’re doing to stay sane as you stay home. Submit your video via our form below or upload via social media with the hashtag: #howiWFH
We’ll be creating a video of your submissions to share with all of you, so any tips or advice you have is welcome!
How coronavirus cases hit Los Angeles differently from New York City
Los Angeles recorded its first case of coronavirus five weeks before New York City, yet it’s New York that is now the U.S. epicenter of the disease.
Public health officials are keeping a wary eye and are warning that L.A. could end up being as hard hit as New York in coming weeks, in part because a planned increase in testing may uncover a dramatic surge in cases. Testing in Los Angeles County is expected to increase from 500 per day to 5,000 by the end of the week.
“I would love to be able to say with all certainty that’s where we’re not going,” Los Angeles Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said when asked about New York’s numbers. “We would be foolish not to prepare for a similar scenario here in LA County.”
A beloved Beirut restaurant survived civil war. Now it must endure COVID-19
It was always rush hour at Barbar. The restaurant sprawls over several buildings in Beirut’s Hamra district, where you could glimpse white-clad workers at all hours slicing shawarma meat, frying up falafel or prepping smoothies with Carmen Miranda-like crowns of fruit.
Barbar never opened its doors because they were perpetually open. Now they’re closed. And a vital part of this city’s life has been forced to confront a new reality.
It’s perhaps a measure of the coronavirus threat that Barbar, famous for serving customers with no interruption for more than 40 years through some of Lebanon’s toughest times, including civil war and assassinations, must now turn customers away. It’s part of a wider evisceration of Lebanon’s famed restaurant industry, which is facing losses estimated at more than $200 million a month nationwide, according to the country’s Syndicate of Restaurants, Cafes, Clubs and Patisseries.
The recovery of Paradise was already fragile after the Camp fire. Then came coronavirus
The ribbon cutting last month was the kind of optimistic civic photo op that means a lot these days in the town of Paradise.
With a pair of oversized scissors, a grinning Mayor Greg Bolin sliced a big red ribbon outside the Building Resiliency Center, a new one-stop-shop for the hundreds of people applying to rebuild their homes after the 2018 Camp fire destroyed most of the town.
The ribbon cutting was Feb. 7. City leaders hoped to see the place bustling.
But by mid-March, as California began shutting down public life to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, the building got quiet. Visits had to be by appointment only, with calls and emails preferred to in-person trips. Staffing was reduced. Employees started wearing gloves.
Trump to use Defense Production Act to compel General Motors to produce ventilators
President Trump announced Friday that he would use the Defense Production Act to compel General Motors to produce ventilators during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The decision was made, he said, after negotiations with the company became bogged down.
“Our fight against the virus is too urgent to allow the give-and-take of the contracting process to continue to run its normal course,” Trump said in a statement.
“GM was wasting time. Today’s action will help ensure the quick production of ventilators that will save American lives.”
Critics have accused Trump of dragging his heels in utilizing the Korean War-era law to compel industries to produce vital equipment.
What does COVID-19 stand for anyway?
By now, you probably know the disease at the center of the global pandemic is called COVID-19. But perhaps you don’t know why.
The answer is that COVID-19 a shorthand for “coronavirus disease 2019.”
The World Health Organization made it official back in February, with the name written in all capital letters.
Disneyland and Walt Disney World to remain closed until further notice
If you were wondering how long the coronavirus outbreak will keep the Disneyland and the Walt Disney World resorts closed, you’ll have to keep wondering.
After closing in mid-March with the promise to reopen by the end of the month, Disney announced Friday that both parks would remained closed until further notice.
The Walt Disney Co. said it has been paying its employees since the parks closed and “in light of this ongoing and increasingly complex crisis, we have made the decision to extend paying hourly parks and resort cast members through April 18.”
Column: Nikki Haley attacks stimulus money for the arts, but culture is sick too
Nikki Haley took to Twitter on Thursday to complain about a few items in the $2 trillion stimulus bill that the Senate passed Wednesday and the House passed today.
She could have objected to the White House’s reluctance to spend $1 billion on life-saving ventilators, but that would have put her in President Trump’s Twitter cross-hairs. She commendably stepped down from the board of Boeing in protest of its coronavirus bailout bid. But she had little else to say on Twitter about the proposed $500 billion corporate slush fund that uses taxpayer dollars to bail out private companies and their exorbitantly paid CEOs.
What really offends Haley is the inclusion of a cheapskate tip for the arts and the humanities in the stimulus bill.
Mexican border state to quarantine deported migrants
MEXICO CITY (AP) — The Mexican border state of Chihuahua said Thursday it will set up a shelter to house deported migrants for a two-week quarantine.
The state said the shelter would be set up in “the next few days” to house migrants returned to the border city of Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas.
The state government says an average of 65 migrants are deported through Ciudad Juarez every day, for a total of about 5,200 so far this year.
The quarantine move is part of a series of measures announced Thursday to prevent the spread of coronavirus. The United States has over 81,000 cases, while Mexico has 585, though testing is far less frequent in Mexico.
Dirvin García Gutiérrez, the head of migrant services or Chihuahua state, said officials would also try to ease crowding at migrant shelters in Ciudad Juarez that currently hold about 1,400 people, most of whom are from Central America. The city’s 14 shelters — most of them privately run — should hold no more than 50 to 80 people apiece, he said.
L.A. County closes all beaches to deter crowds flouting coronavirus restrictions
Los Angeles County has closed all its beaches in an effort to reduce crowds as officials try to enforce social-distancing guidelines to slow the spread of coronavirus.
“The crowds we saw at our beaches last weekend were unacceptable,” said County Supervisor Janice Hahn said in a statement. “In order to save lives, beaches in L.A. County will be temporarily closed. I understand that this is a huge sacrifice for everyone who enjoys going to our beaches. But we cannot risk another sunny weekend with crowds at the beach spreading this virus. This closure is temporary and we can always reopen these beaches when it is safe to do so.”
The county’s public health officer, Dr. Muntu Davis, signed a public health order shutting down the beaches on Friday, Hahn said. The order also applies to beach bike paths, bathrooms, piers and promenades, she said.
Emmy voting schedule and some eligibility rules shift
The latest entertainment dominoes to fall before the COVID-19 pandemic affects the run-up to the 2020 Emmy Awards and screening rules for the next Golden Globes. The ceremony date for the 72nd Emmys remains unchanged at Sunday, Sept. 20.
Friday morning, the Television Academy announced some procedural and qualifying changes to accommodate for production delays caused by the outbreak, including eligibility rules and the voting timetable.
Lakers’ Anthony Davis to help Staples Center workers find jobs during shutdown
Like many Americans, Lakers star Anthony Davis has personal connections to the coronavirus pandemic. He’s consumed the news daily, but his mother also shares updates with him. She has sisters who are health care workers.
“They’re around it a lot and they’re at a high risk of being exposed to it because they’re in the hospital,” Davis said. “One of my aunties got sent home. I think they took a test and it hasn’t come back yet. … That’s the risk they’re willing to take to save so many lives.”
Davis has been thinking about the consequences of the pandemic for weeks now, both on health care workers and the economy. On Friday, he announced a partnership with Lineage Logistics, the world’s largest cold food storage company, in hopes of helping in both arenas. The first arm of the partnership will help Staples Center workers find jobs with Lineage, which has about 300 jobs to fill in the Los Angeles area as demand for frozen foods rises.
Davis and Lineage will also match up to $250,000 in dona
Patient who was first known case of community-acquired in U.S. recovering
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Northern California doctors said Thursday that a critically ill patient who was the nation’s first known case of community-acquired coronavirus infection is now recovering at home.
The woman first sought treatment last month at NorthBay VacaValley Hospital in Vacaville, a city of more than 100,000 people about 59 miles (95 kilometers) from San Francisco. She was then transported on a ventilator to UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento.
She is believed to be the first person in the U.S. to contract the highly contagious coronavirus without traveling internationally or being in close contact with anyone who had it.UC Davis Health said in a statement that “The patient has since been discharged and is recovering at home.”
Kaiser Permanente facility in San Bernardino closes
A Kaiser Permanente medical facility in San Bernardino recently closed after the medical group announced that it was temporarily closing some buildings, consolidating locations, postponing appointments and moving many to virtual visits amid an increase in COVID-19 cases.
The move came in an effort to protect staff and Kaiser members, support a potential increase in the number of people who need hospitalization, conserve personal protective equipment and protect against possible staffing shortages.
“We are at a critical moment in our fight against COVID-19. The situation is rapidly evolving, and we are doing everything we can to keep our members, staff and communities as safe as possible,” Kaiser Permanente said in a statement.
The new measures follow a recent decision to temporarily postpone non-urgent surgeries and procedures to ensure that more critically-ill patients take priority.Most urgent-care locations will remain open.
Bosses are panic-buying spy software to keep tabs on remote workers
The email came from the boss.
We’re watching you, it told Axos Financial Inc. employees working from home. We’re capturing your keystrokes. We’re logging the websites you visit. Every 10 minutes or so, we’re taking a screen shot.
So get to work — or face the consequences.
“We have seen individuals taking unfair advantage of flexible work arrangements” by essentially taking vacations, Gregory Garrabrants, the online bank’s chief executive, wrote in the March 16 message reviewed by Bloomberg News. If daily tasks aren’t completed, workers “will be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination.”
John Wayne Airport control tower closed over possible case; airport remains open
The air-traffic control tower at John Wayne Airport has been closed because of a possible case of coronavirus, the airport said Friday morning. The airport remains open to commercial aircraft.
According to the airport, the case is “suspected but unconfirmed.” No further details were released.
Celtics say guard Marcus Smart in good spirits
Boston Celtics coach Brad Stevens says guard Marcus Smart is doing well and remains in good spirits following his positive test for coronavirus last week.
Smart announced his diagnosis on March 19, seven days after Utah Jazz All-Stars Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell tested positive for COVID-19. Boston played the Utah Jazz on March 6.
Celtics players and staff were also tested as a precaution and those tests have all come back negative.
Stevens said he and team officials have been checking in with Smart and the rest of the team regularly via conference calls.
“I’m proud of how he kind of took the initiative to tell people that he had it and that he felt good and that he got online, just continued to ask people to practice social distancing and self-isolation right now,” Stevens said. “It’s just, you know, it’s a really unique, unsettling time for everyone.”
California once had mobile hospitals and a ventilator stockpile. But it dismantled them
They were ready to roll whenever disaster struck California: three 200-bed mobile hospitals that could be deployed to the scene of a crisis on flatbed trucks and provide advanced medical care to the injured and sick within 72 hours.
Each hospital would be the size of a football field, with a surgery ward, intensive care unit and X-ray equipment. Medical response teams would also have access to a massive stockpile of emergency supplies: 50 million N95 respirators, 2,400 portable ventilators and kits to set up 21,000 additional patient beds wherever they were needed.
In 2006, citing the threat of avian flu, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced the state would invest hundreds of millions of dollars in a powerful set of medical weapons to deploy in the case of large-scale emergencies and natural disasters such as earthquakes, fires and pandemics.
Burbank’s Pope puts pro basketball career in Europe on hold in wake of pandemic
Overseas in Europe, Austin Pope was been enjoying an impressive campaign for the Vaerlose Hawks basketball team when the unexpected happened.
No, the former Burbank High boys’ basketball player didn’t suffer a season-ending injury. Rather, Pope found himself scrambling after the BasketLigaen, a professional league in Denmark, canceled the remainder of the season earlier this month because of the coronavirus outbreak.
Pope suddenly had plenty on his mind and much to deal with in a short time, beginning with his well-being.
Has your favorite shop or restaurant gone out of business?
As the coronavirus outbreak spreads within the United States, some businesses in Los Angeles have made the difficult decision to close permanently. To chronicle the economic impact of the pandemic in our communities, we are compiling a list of local businesses that have shut their doors.
Have any of your favorite shops, restaurants or other businesses closed for good as a result of COVID-19? If so, we want to hear your memories of the business and what it meant to you.
Please use the following form to share your story:
San Diego County reports third death, fifth cluster
SAN DIEGO —A third San Diego County resident has died of COVID-19 and a new cluster of infected people has been identified at an assisted-living community in Rancho San Diego, local health officials reported Thursday.
“It’s obviously with deep remorse and regret that we extend our condolences to that family and that individual’s loved ones,” county Chief Medical Officer Dr. Nick Yphantides said in announcing the death of an 87-year-old woman.
As of Thursday evening, the county had reported 341 cases of infected residents, an increase of 64 in one day.
Why Goodwill is begging all of us: Stop leaving your stuff at our door!
March is normally the month when people start to think about spring cleaning, but nothing is normal right now as the coronavirus continues to spread throughout the country.
As people are forced to stay home and shelter in place, the pandemic has prompted many to tackle long-overlooked decluttering projects.
So much so, in fact, that Goodwill SoCal has been overwhelmed by dropoffs at stores and dropoff centers in Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
Patients from Norway, Spain to be enrolled in a globe-spanning trial, WHO says
Patients from Norway and Spain are being enrolled in a globe-spanning trial to test several drug treatments against the virus that causes COVID-19, according to the head of the World Health Organization.
“This is a historic trial which will dramatically cut the time needed to generate robust evidence about what drugs work,” Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director-general, said at a briefing Friday.
The Solidarity Trial tests four different drug combinations against COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus that has sickened more than half a million people and killed well over 20,000 around the globe, officials said. The trial includes Remdesivir, a failed Ebola drug; chloroquine, an anti-malarial drug; hydroxychloroquine, a drug used against lupus and other autoimmune disorders; and Kaletra, an HIV antiviral. More than 45 countries are contributing to the trial and others have expressed interest in joining, officials said.
“The more countries who join the trial, the faster we will have the results,” Tedros said.
In the meantime, the director-general warned against using treatments that haven’t been proven effective against the new coronavirus.“The history of medicine is strewn with examples of drugs that worked on paper, or in a test tube, but didn’t work in humans or were actually harmful,” he said.“We must follow the evidence,” he added. “There are no shortcuts.”
A vaccine against the coronavirus, he added, is still at least 12 to 18 months away.
House approves $2 trillion rescue package
WASHINGTON —Overriding the objection of a maverick Republican, the House approved a $2-trillion economic relief package Friday aimed at pumping money directly into Americans’ pockets while also helping hospitals, businesses, and state and local governments struggling with the surging COVID-19 pandemic.
Rep. Thomas Massie, a libertarian conservative from Kentucky, sought to delay a vote by demanding a majority of members be present to vote. His insistence came despite withering attacks by President Trump on Twitter, calling for Massie to be ousted from the party.
House leaders had hoped to hold a simple voice vote, to protect members from potentially contracting the coronavirus by traveling and gathering in the Capitol. Based on Massie’s earlier threat that he would insist on a quorum — 216 members at the moment — they summoned lawmakers back.
U.S. cases top 92,000
NEW YORK — The United States continues to lead the world in coronavirus infections even after a spike of new cases reported in Italy.
According to a running tally by Johns Hopkins University, the U.S. has more than 92,000 cases of the virus. Italy reported a total of more than 86,000 infections on Friday.
Italy has recorded the most deaths of any country, with 9,134. More than 1,200 people have died in the U.S.
Worldwide, more than 560,000 people have contracted the virus and more than 127,000 have recovered, according to Johns Hopkins.
What’s safe and open this weekend? Parks, beaches in Southern California
Southern Californians can still walk, hike and bike outdoors this weekend without violating Gov. Gavin Newsom’s stay-at-home order, but options are narrowing as public agencies move to stop many activities, including hiking in Griffith Park and the Santa Monica Mountains, golf, court sports, and parking at many beaches and state parks.
The U.S. Forest Service on Thursday closed campgrounds, picnic areas and other developed recreation sites in its forests statewide, including Cleveland, Angeles, San Bernardino and Los Padres forests, which cover a large swath of Southern California.
Masks from Mexico: On the front lines, a midnight dash across the border
WASHINGTON —Tom Banning was fielding increasingly anxious pleas from doctors across Texas when he got a call from a golfing buddy with an unusual offer.
Banning’s friend, who had connections in the oil and gas business, had 350 cases of surgical masks from a factory in Mexico. He’d managed to get the shipment over the border, navigating drug cartels and border agents demanding payoffs. Did Banning know anyone who could use them?
Banning, who heads the Texas Academy of Family Physicians, didn’t have to think twice.
“We had physicians tying bandannas around their faces,” he said. “It was like they were fortifying the big urban hospitals and leaving the front-line soldiers to fight without defenses.”
The virus can be ‘viable’ on cardboard for a day, experts say
MILWAUKEE — Tests led by U.S. government scientists found the coronavirus can remain viable on cardboard for up to a day.
Julie Fischer, a microbiologist at Georgetown University’s global health security research center, says it was a controlled lab situation and doesn’t reflect what might happen in daily life or with other materials.
“In the real-world environment, those packages and envelopes would be moving from place to place under various weather, temperature conditions that are affected by air and sunlight” that could impact viral viability, she said.
Even if virus was on the mail, it would need to make its way to the mouth or nose to cause infection.
“As long as you wash your hands thoroughly and regularly after opening it and don’t touch your nose and mouth ... that mail itself, that package, poses very little risk,” Fischer said.
She says postal workers are at risk because they are coming into contact with each other and the public. She notes “the biggest risk is still exposure to an infected person.
Chinese, U.S. leaders talk by phone about the pandemic
WASHINGTON — Chinese President Xi Jinping told President Donald Trump that China “understands the United States’ current predicament over the COVID-19 outbreak and stands ready to provide support, the official Xinhua News Agency said Friday.
The White House said only that the two leaders spoke on the phone Thursday and “agreed to work together to defeat the coronavirus pandemic and restore global health and prosperity.”
According to the Chinese news agency, Xi also urged Trump to take “substantive action in improving bilateral relations.”
Republican plans to delay House stimulus vote by demanding majority be present
WASHINGTON —A maverick Republican said he would demand that a majority of House members vote in person on a $2-trillion economic relief package Friday, which would delay passage of the bill aimed at pumping money directly into Americans’ pockets while also helping hospitals, businesses, and state and local governments struggling with the surging COVID-19 pandemic.
The move by Rep. Thomas Massie, a libertarian conservative from Kentucky, would delay a vote until Saturday when enough members have returned to Washington. His insistence came despite withering attacks by President Trump on Twitter, calling for Massie to be ousted from the party.
House leaders had hoped to hold a simple voice vote, to protect members from potentially contracting the coronavirus by traveling and gathering in the Capitol. Based on Massie’s earlier threat that he would insist on a quorum — 216 members at the moment — they summoned lawmakers back. It was unclear if enough members were present Friday, because they were told to avoid coming to the House floor before a vote.
Women in New York giving birth alone may be facing their ‘worst nightmare’
NEW YORK —Heidi Schreck spent a long time trying to get pregnant — “a very, very long time,” she says.
After years of frustration and multiple rounds of in vitro fertilization, she and her husband, who both work in the theater and put off having kids while they were establishing their careers, found out last year they were going to have identical twins. Since Schreck is in her 40s and the babies share a placenta, the pregnancy is considered high-risk. But she was lucky enough to avoid most of the numerous potential complications.
Then came the coronavirus.
“We managed to make it through all of those phases only to confront this very unexpected thing at the end,” says the playwright and actress, now 32 weeks pregnant, by phone from her home in Brooklyn. “The pandemic.”
Will the virus make permanent our diminishing need for human contact?
SEOUL —Before dawn, bags of groceries ordered online are plopped at my front door by deliverymen (-women?) whose faces I’ll never see.
I summon taxis on my smartphone, rendering unnecessary even the brief conversation to give the driver my destination or discuss an optimal route. All manners of food — from steaming stews to sushi to the seemingly most ephemeral of dishes, shaved ice — can be ordered for delivery within the hour. If I so choose, I can avoid even a split-second of face time by requesting, in an app, that the food be left outside my door.
In Seoul, one of the most densely packed metropolises in the world, I can glide through a day dining out, shopping and even singing karaoke on my own without ever interfacing with another human. My world is one of apps, tablets and self-service screens. It’s almost as if the city was girding itself for this moment in history, when each and every face-to-face interaction has come to feel like a game of Russian roulette.
American consumers, once bulwark of economy, are rapidly losing confidence
WASHINGTON —After years of riding high, American consumer confidence dropped rapidly in March in another warning sign of how punishing the coronavirus pandemic may become for the U.S. economy, according to a closely followed survey released Friday.
Consumer sentiment, as measured by the University of Michigan’s monthly survey, saw its sharpest drop since October 2008 during the Great Recession.
And even then, analysts said, the current decline significantly understated the coronavirus toll as two-thirds of the survey interviews were conducted before lock-down and physical distancing orders in mid-March shut down hundreds of thousands of shops, restaurants, offices and other large parts of the American economy.
San Bernardino reports third death
San Bernardino County reported a third death linked to the coronavirus Thursday night.
The number of confirmed cases has tripled this week to at least 55, up from 17 Monday. The increase is largely because of expanded testing, health officials say.
The three deaths include two men — a 50- and a 46-year-old — who both had underlying health conditions. The third death was of an 89-year-old woman who also had underlying health conditions, according to local reports.
Hospital ship Mercy, with 1,000 beds, arrives in L.A. to ease healthcare strain amid crisis
The hospital shp Mercy arrived at the Port of Los Angeles on Friday to offer assistance during the coronavirus crisis, which is expected to tax local hospitals.
The Mercy has roughly 800 medical staffers, 1,000 hospital beds and 12 operating rooms.
The ship will house patients who do not have COVID-19 in an attempt to free up regional hospital beds for those who do. Some patients who are already hospitalized in Los Angeles County will be transferred to the ship for ongoing treatment, port officials said Thursday.
Work-from-home ‘tips’ for those going stir-crazy avoiding coronavirus
Philippine President in quarantine after exposure
MANILA, Philippines — Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte will quarantine for more than a week after meeting officials who were exposed to people with the coronavirus.
Sen. Christopher Lawrence Go says Duterte will go into quarantine Saturday, the president’s 75th birthday, to April 7. He’ll continue working in his residence at the presidential palace in Manila.
A test cleared Duterte of the COVID-19 illness two weeks ago. But he has since had meetings with Cabinet members and other officials who have been exposed to infected people.
Health officials have reported 803 cases of the COVID-19 disease, with 54 deaths. The main northern region of Luzon, home to more than 50 million people, is on a monthlong lockdown in a drastic move to contain infections.
Italy’s infections are slowing down
ROME — The head of Italy’s National Institutes of Health says Italy’s coronavirus infections are slowing down, but it hasn’t reached the peak of the curve.
Dr. Silvio Brusafero says the infection curve began to flatten around March 20, some 10 days after Italy imposed a nationwide lockdown to contain the virus in Europe’s epicenter. He urged continued isolation measures to keep the virus from spreading.
Dr. Franco Locatelli, head of the government’s health advisory council, says he thinks it’s “inevitable” the industrial shutdown currently scheduled to last through April 3 will be extended.
Italy has reported more than 8,100 dead, more than any other country. Most have been elderly or with previous medical conditions.
Pot Heads: We’re plants. We’re stuck inside. We’re making it work
The Pot Heads are living life indoors these days, too. Just trying their best to get by.
Trump lambasts Republican congressman threatening to delay to stimulus package
President Trump on Friday lambasted Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) on Twitter, saying the congressman should be thrown out of the Republican Party for threatening to temporarily delay the passage of the stimulus package.
House leaders had hoped to hold a simple voice vote, to protect members from potentially contracting the coronavirus by traveling and gathering in the Capitol. But they recalled hundreds of members after libertarian Massie (R-Ky.) threatened to insist that a quorum — 216 members at the moment — be present, and force a roll call vote.
Democratic and Republican leaders have signed off on the bill, which passed with a 96-0 Senate vote Wednesday. After days of intense conference calls with House members, the leaders believe it would pass with an overwhelming majority. President Trump has vowed to sign the bill.
Still, the threat that a single representative might object left lawmakers hopping into cars to drive or finding last-minute flights back to Washington in case they need to be present to pass the largest single economic aid package in U.S. history.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tx) fired back at Trump’s attack, saying Massie is “one of the most principled men in Congress & loves his country.”
“Back off,” Roy added.
Erin B. Logan contributed to this report.
Stocks slide on Wall Street after big 3-day rally
Stocks on Wall Street fell Friday morning as investors waited for Congress to deliver a big financial rescue package aimed at cushioning ailing businesses and households from the coronavirus crisis.
The selling erased some of the market’s gains after a strong three-day rally that has the major stock indexes on track for their first weekly gain in three weeks. Even after the winning streak this week, the market is down about 25% from the peak it reached a month ago.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 was down 3.3% around 7:10 a.m. Pacific, but is up just above 10% for the week. The benchmark index shot up 17% over the previous three days as traders became hopeful that Congress would pass the $2.2-trillion economic aid package.
The Theodore Payne garden tour is happening this weekend -- virtually
It lives! The Theodore Payne Foundation’s native-plant garden tours are a go for this weekend as a two-day, interactive series of live virtual tours of more than 30 landscapes around Los Angeles, hosted by the people who created them.
The foundation had canceled its in-person garden tours on March 13, due to concerns about coronavirus, but coordinator Margaret Oakley set up a task force that day to see if there was some way to move the event online. The result is happening on Saturday and Sunday, with a garden tour “social,” via Zoom, that should permit participants to watch narrated tours of two gardens every 30 minutes between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. and talk to the owners and designers.
With all the distractions at home, low-income students need headphones to study
In her family’s one-bedroom home every day unfolds with one distraction after another for 17-year-old Anais Hernandez: her mother cooking and cleaning in the kitchen; her disabled father watching high-volume TV news; the bustle of her younger sister in their East Los Angeles home.
There’s no escape from the noise as Anais attempts to focus on Advanced Placement Spanish literature and English and economics. Two weeks into shelter-at-home schooling, this Mendez High School senior could use a tool that would be hard for her family to afford — sound-canceling headphones.
Before March 13, when Los Angles school district officials shuttered campuses and began a difficult transition to online learning, Anais spent a lot of time at Mendez High, where she got most of her homework done.
Here are remote jobs that could keep you working through this era
As the coronavirus continues to spread, you may be reluctant to take a people-centric job for fear of getting sick. But if you don’t want your finances to expire while you sit out the pandemic, you’ll need an alternative. Consider remote jobs for the coronavirus era.
What kind of jobs are these? They vary widely, from professional to trade positions. What they have in common is that they can be done from home — anywhere, really. And you can generally signal your availability to do them online, without ever having to meet in person. Perfect for a time when “social distancing” is trending.
What can you do from the relative safety of your own home? Naturally, the answer depends on your skills. The opportunities are decidedly better in fields that require intellect and creativity, rather than physical strength. Still, there are options for nearly everyone.
Tourism is tanking. So RV and camper companies found business fighting COVID-19
Elise Ballard had just finished lunch and was gazing at the Pacific Ocean, enjoying the solitude of the craggy coastal bluffs of Mendocino, Calif. Soon, she and partner Jeff Fernald would be on Highway 1 again, continuing home to Seattle in a rental camper van they’ve dubbed the “mobile quarantine unit.”
“It’s so uncanny; it’s so strange,” Ballard said Monday. “We are seeing some of the most beautiful sites in the world — and they are vacant. It feels like one of the safest places to be.”
The couple’s journey in the Mercedes-Benz Metris began six days earlier, after their Los Angeles vacation was upended by the coronavirus outbreak. They didn’t want to risk flying home, and realized renting a car could put them in contact with many people, including those at hotels where they’d need to stay. But they could sleep in the Metris, which also has a stove, refrigerator and freezer.
Russia’s caseload surpasses 1,000
MOSCOW — Russia’s coronavirus caseload surpassed 1,000 on Friday, reflecting growing infection rate in the country which for weeks has reported comparatively low numbers.
The Russian government registered 196 new infections in the past 24 hours, bringing the country’s total to 1,036, and the third death. Forty-five people have recovered, officials said.
Russian authorities have ramped up testing this week after wide-spread criticism of insufficient screening.
Earlier this week Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, who leads a coronavirus task force, told President Vladimir Putin that Russia’s comparatively low caseload could reflect scare testing rather than the actual scale of the epidemic. As of Thursday, health officials conducted some 200,000 tests.
16-year-old French schoolgirl, with no pre-existing illness, dies
PARIS — A 16-year-old French schoolgirl from the Essonne region has become the youngest person in the country to die from COVID-19.
The girl, called Julie and whose surname has not been revealed, was hospitalized Monday and died Tuesday evening at the Necker children’s hospital in Paris.
Her older sister, Manon, spoke to the French press to warn that “we must stop believing that this only affects the elderly. No one is invincible against this mutant virus.”
Manon said that Julie had no pre-existing illness before contracting coronavirus.
She recounted that Julie had a “slight cough” last week and when it worsened this weekend, they saw a doctor — from when the virus accelerated at a “violent” pace.
Even though the death rate from the virus among young people is low, France’s public health body has said that 35% of intensive care patients are under 60.
A 21-year-old woman died of the virus in Britain on Tuesday.
War-torn countries could be overburdened by an outbreak, WHO says
CAIRO — The World Health Organization representative in the East Mediterranean warned Friday of the repercussions of a potential spread of the novel coronavirus in the region’s war-torn countries.
“The emergence of the virus in much more vulnerable countries with fragile health systems in the Region, including Syria and Libya, is of special concern,” said WHO East Mediterranean Office Director Ahmed Al Mandhari.
On Wednesday, the count of infectious cases in Syria rose to five. A day earlier, Libya recorded its first confirmed COVID-19 case.
“A country like Syria, ravaged by conflict and displacement, and with a health system already pushed to its limits, will clearly be overburdened by an outbreak of COVID-19, and the impact could be catastrophic,” he added in a statement issued Friday.
Libya’s ongoing civil war coupled with its poor health system weakens the country’s ability to respond to the new pandemic, added Mandhari.
Spain sees 7,800 new cases
MADRID — Spain’s coronavirus cases increased by 7,800 on Friday to total 64,059 cases. There’s a total of 4,858 deaths, 769 more than a day earlier.
The day-on-day increase of infections is slightly lower for the first time since a rapid rise in early March. The country has the second-highest tally in Europe and fourth in the world.
From Wednesday to Thursday, the positives had increased in more than 8,500 cases.
Spain’s Health Ministry says nearly 10,000 people have recovered from the COVID-19 illness.
Russian official in Putin’s administration tests positive
MOSCOW — The Kremlin says an official in Russia’s presidential administration has been diagnosed with the coronavirus.
President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov says the official didn’t have contact with President Vladimir Putin. He told reporters that all precautions were being taken to protect Putin.
Peskov confirmed Russian media reports that he was at a party attended by 78-year-old Lev Leshchenko, who later tested positive for the coronavirus. The presidential spokesman says during a conference call with reporters that he didn’t meet Leshchenko there.
The Russian government registered 196 new infections in the past day, bringing the country’s total to 1,036, with three deaths. In a bid to stem the outbreak, Putin declared the next week to be non-working for all Russian except those working in essential sectors.
Here’s 24 classic Lakers games to enjoy while the team is on hiatus
After missing the playoffs the last six seasons and compiling one of the worst records in the league during that time, this was the season the Lakers fans had been dreaming about.
When the NBA season was suspended on March 11 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Lakers had a 5½-game lead atop the Western Conference and were just three games behind the Milwaukee Bucks for the best record in the league.
When or if they will be able to finish that run remains uncertain. Until then, and with everyone marooned at home, here are 24 Lakers Classics for the Quarantine. These aren’t necessarily a ranking of the greatest moments in team history but simply a list of games easily accessible in their entirety on YouTube.
Unfortunately, many complete games prior to 1980 aren’t available online so while you can look up highlights of Jerry West, Elgin Baylor and Wilt Chamberlain, their games didn’t make this list.
What’s needed for Hollywood to get back to work safely?
Entertainment is a high-touch business. Production crews consist of hundreds of individuals crowding together in enclosed spaces. Actors interact with each other in even closer proximity, as do hair and makeup. Craft services are a communal activity, while writers huddle around a table in a small room. And grips and set designers pass equipment and props back and forth.
It’s the kind of environment where if one person falls ill, their sickness passes through the entire cast and crew like a wildfire. Film and TV work is a hyper matrix of touch, sharing and interaction.
The ongoing public health crisis has shut down Hollywood in an effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus. Yet a vaccine is at least a year away. The number of cases is rising and much of the country remains under quarantine. While the Trump administration wants the country opened up by Easter despite health experts’ warnings, Hollywood has many concerns about going back to work under these circumstances.
Journaling the pandemic: ‘I’m scared.’ ‘Can we get a dog?’ ‘Everything just feels odd’
Kelly Milligan’s mind drifted back to the days after Sept. 11 and the Boston Marathon bombing. These days felt a bit like those did and, yet, completely distinct.
This moment wasn’t finite — it wasn’t one day, and it won’t be one week. Nobody knows exactly how long it will last.
But it already feels historic, so two weeks ago, Milligan, a 48-year-old graphic designer who works at a university and lives in Acton, Mass., cracked open her new black journal. She labeled one of the first pages: “CORONAVIRUS DAILY JOURNAL 2020.”
It’s not too soon to think about how to give workers consistent raises
With the massive $2-trillion coronavirus rescue package now largely done, workers and employers can briefly breathe a sigh of relief, at least at signs that Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and progressives, can work together on Capitol Hill when catastrophe is staring them in the face.
But it’s not too soon to think about what will happen after the emergency has passed — or more precisely, what happened in the American economy over the last half-century that left millions of American families without the financial resources to weather the storm.
That means examining the long, dark period of wage stagnation suffered by average households as corporate profits and the pay of top executives soar.
‘America’s governors’: Andrew Cuomo and Gavin Newsom take the lead
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo adopted the role of truth-teller as he delivered grave news Thursday during his daily coronavirus briefing: 100 more people in the state had died, bringing the death toll to 385. So far, about 37,000 New Yorkers had tested positive for the virus, and well over 1,000 were hospitalized in intensive care units.
Then he sought to console residents reeling from the enormity of the crisis.
“No one has been here before. And that’s why, look, it is going to change us,” said Cuomo, whose briefings have been aired live across the nation. “I can see it in my daughters’ eyes when I talk to them about this every night. I can see the fear.... They’re taking it all in. What does it mean? This is going to form a new generation and it will transform who we are and how we think. But you’re not alone. You’re not alone. Nobody is alone.”
A’s for all? Pass/fail? Colleges grapple with grading fairness
Zuleika Bravo, a UCLA senior and low-income single mother, has tons to worry about besides grades. The coronavirus outbreak has shut down her young daughter’s school, saddling her with new demands to home-school. Her office job has cut hours — and her income — in half.
Under pressure, Bravo wants UCLA to change grading to pass/fail for all students during the upcoming spring quarter so those with myriad pressures like her won’t be unfairly disadvantaged.
“We’re not all equal,” said Bravo, 28, a political science major. “I know I have the ability to get good grades, but given the circumstances I would have to work even harder than before to compete with my colleagues who don’t have to worry about a child.”
State Department eases bottleneck for foreign farmworkers
The U.S. State Department moved Thursday to ease a bottleneck caused by coronavirus precautions and allow more foreign agricultural guest workers to cross from Mexico to work fields in California and other states.
The emergency measures helped allay fears of a labor shortage just as the harvest of major produce crops gets underway in California, the top producer of many seasonal fresh vegetables and fruits nationwide.
Most foreign applicants no longer will need an in-person interview to obtain the H-2A agricultural guest worker permits, under the new rules announced Thursday.
Sidelined in the final days of stimulus talks, McConnell again learns the risk of getting ahead of Trump
WASHINGTON —The negotiations over the roughly $2-trillion economic rescue package had gone on for more than three days — hour after hour of haggling to shape one of the largest government economic interventions in U.S. history.
Finally, as Tuesday night changed to Wednesday morning, two men stepped forward to tell reporters they had reached a deal — the secretary of the Treasury and the minority leader of the Senate.
The majority leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, was relegated to role of announcing the deal a short time later on the Senate floor.
Why a fight over homeless people could determine how much the outbreak hurts California
Despite unprecedented attention and spending, tens of thousands of homeless people are still living on the streets of California, and they are fast becoming a hazard to the state’s ability to treat everyone who needs it as coronavirus patients begin to flood hospitals in earnest.
A new study puts the risk to the larger population in stark terms: It estimates that nearly 2,600 homeless people in the Los Angeles area alone will need to be hospitalized for COVID-19, and about 900 of them will require intensive care.
If that many homeless people do indeed stream into local hospitals in the coming weeks, it could lead to competition for what public health officials have said is an already insufficient number of beds and ventilators to meet the need. That, in turn, could further crowd out other patients in need of care.
Is the Democratic presidential contest over? Will the November election be canceled?
Just about one month and a million years ago, the Democratic presidential contest was going full tilt.
Voters in 14 states and American Samoa went to the polls — many standing less than a socially distant six feet apart — to cast Super Tuesday ballots and revive the fading presidential hopes of Joe Biden.
Today, like so much else, the contest has screeched to a virtual halt. The novel coronavirus has Biden and Bernie Sanders off the campaign trail. Political rallies — or anything, for that matter, involving large numbers of people gathered in one place — are forbidden across much of the country.
Still, the calendar moves inexorably toward summer and the Democrats’ nominating convention and, beyond that, the Nov. 3 general election. That raises a number of questions.
Pandemic meets pastoral mission: A transplanted L.A. couple’s Jerusalem sojourn
The word for a biblical pestilence — magefa — has survived down through the centuries, making its way into the slangy, buzzy Hebrew of modern-day Israel.
As a worldwide epidemic rages, there is scarcely a day when Evan Kent — a Los Angeles cantor who moved to Jerusalem seven years ago with his rabbi husband — does not hear it uttered amid the old stones. Kent, 60, first learned magefa long ago, in his liturgical studies.
For decades, he was a mainstay of the Westside’s Temple Isaiah, as well known for charisma and compassion as for the hauntingly melodious tones he brought to his role as cantor.
Now he and his husband, Rabbi Donald Goor, find themselves at the confluence of extraordinary events that would not be out of place in a scriptural parable. As do millions of others around the globe, Kent and Goor, 61, now face daily strictures meant to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus infection.
Why a fight over homeless people could determine how much coronavirus hurts California
Despite unprecedented attention and spending, tens of thousands of homeless people are still living on the streets of California, and they are fast becoming a hazard to the state’s ability to treat everyone who needs it as coronavirus patients begin to flood hospitals in earnest.
A new study puts the risk to the larger population in stark terms: It estimates that nearly 2,600 homeless people in the Los Angeles area alone will need to be hospitalized for COVID-19, and about 900 of them will require intensive care.
If that many homeless people do indeed stream into local hospitals in the coming weeks, it could lead to competition for what public health officials have said is an already insufficient number of beds and ventilators to meet the need. That, in turn, could further crowd out other patients in need of care.
“It’s a really urgent thing,” said Thomas Byrne, a co-author of the study and an assistant professor at the Boston University School of Social Work.
The quinceañera is another youthful casualty of the coronavirus
If Ashley Soltero had turned 15 in any other year, her quinceañera would have been much, much different.
She wouldn’t have waited to announce the May 2 date to her friends, her escorts — chambelánes — wouldn’t have been nervous about coming to dance practice, and her mother wouldn’t have been laid off in the midst of paying off Ashley’s $2,500 charro-style dress.
But it’s 2020 and COVID-19 has swept the globe. Now it’s a season of lost rituals: prom, grad night, walking across a stage to receive a diploma and, for Latino families in L.A. and beyond, the quinceañera. As unsettling as postponements and cancellations may be for the young, they may be even harder for parents who have invested so much of themselves in their children.
Soltero and her mother, Evelyn Yañez, have been planning her birthday celebration for a year.
“I think she’s more excited, because I’m her only child,” Ashley said. “She wants the best for me, you know?”
‘These are not numbers, these are neighbors,’ Garcetti says as coronavirus cases spike in L.A.
Californians completed their first full week under orders to stay at home Thursday, as grim statistics mounted in the coronavirus outbreak: Confirmed cases in Los Angeles County rose by more than half in a single day, reaching 1,200. Nine new deaths were reported in the county, bringing the virus’s toll to 21.
“Even more disturbingly, we see that if this rate of increase continues, in six days, we will be where New York is today, the same number of cases per capita as they are struggling through,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said during a somber online briefing Thursday evening.
That is not a record any city wants to break. And it is, he said, more than just a figure.
“These are not numbers, these are neighbors,” Garcetti said. “There is no projection in which a couple weeks from now, we’re doing fine. This will be tough.”
China urges cooperation with U.S. in virus fight
Chinese leader Xi Jinping has told President Trump that China “understands the United States’ current predicament over the COVID-19 outbreak and stands ready to provide support within its capacity.”
The official Xinhua News Agency said Xi delivered the message in a call to Trump on Friday, in which he also urged the U.S. to “take substantive action in improving bilateral relations.”
Even before the virus outbreak, the U.S. and China were in the midst of a trade war and in sharpening conflicts over intellectual property, human rights, Taiwan and Beijing’s policies in Hong Kong and the South China Sea.
In the phone call, Xi “suggested that the two sides work together to boost cooperation in epidemic control and other fields, and develop a relationship of non-conflict, non-confrontation, mutual respect and win-win cooperation,” the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
The virus outbreak was first reported in China in December and now appears to have peaked in the country, even while the government remains on guard against imported cases.
Beijing has been particularly annoyed by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s repeated references to the outbreak as the “Wuhan Flu,” after the Chinese city where it was first detected, saying that politicizes the issue and promotes bias against China and Chinese Americans.
Women in New York giving birth alone may be facing their ‘worst nightmare’
Heidi Schreck spent a long time trying to get pregnant — “a very, very long time,” she says.
After years of frustration and multiple rounds of in vitro fertilization, she and her husband, who both work in the theater and put off having kids while they were establishing their careers, found out last year they were going to have identical twins. Since Schreck is in her 40s and the babies share a placenta, the pregnancy is considered high-risk. But she was lucky enough to avoid most of the numerous potential complications.
Then came the coronavirus.
“We managed to make it through all of those phases only to confront this very unexpected thing at the end,” says the playwright and actress, now 32 weeks pregnant, by phone from her home in Brooklyn. “The pandemic.”
Social distancing rules: People, 6 feet. Bison, at least 75 feet
In these days of social distancing, the National Park Service is reminding people that 6 feet between humans is now the rule. But for wildlife, it’s much farther. For example, if you’re less than 75 feet from a bison in the wild, you’re too close.
Yellowstone National Park, which hosts a herd of more than 5,000 bison, is now closed to visitors because of the coronavirus outbreak. On Wednesday, the park tweeted a video of Montana TV reporter Deion Broxton who quickly cut short his broadcast when he saw a herd coming toward him.
“A perfect example of what to do when approached by wildlife! Thanks Deion for putting the #YellowstonePledge into action!” the park’s tweet said.
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