ARE NOT COUNTED EVEN AS MILLIONS JOB …...2020/05/01 · WEEKEND ARTS C1-16 Five Artists to Follow...
Transcript of ARE NOT COUNTED EVEN AS MILLIONS JOB …...2020/05/01 · WEEKEND ARTS C1-16 Five Artists to Follow...
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She was just 12 when shedropped out of school and beganclocking in for endless shifts atone of the garment factoriesspringing up in Bangladesh, hop-ing to pull her family out of pov-erty.
Her fingers ached from stitch-ing pants and shirts destined forsale in the United States and Eu-rope, but the $30 the young wom-an made each month meant thatfor the first time, her family hadregular meals, even luxuries likechicken and milk.
A decade later, she was provid-ing a better life for her own childthan she had ever imagined.
Then the world locked down,and Shahida Khatun, like millionsof low-wage workers around theworld, found herself back in thepoverty she thought she had leftbehind.
In a matter of mere months, thecoronavirus has wiped out globalgains that took two decades toachieve, leaving an estimated twobillion people at risk of abject pov-erty. However indiscriminate thevirus may be in its spread, it hasrepeatedly proved itself anythingbut that when it comes to its effecton the world's most vulnerablecommunities.
“The garment factory helpedme and my family to get out ofpoverty,” said Ms. Khatun, 22, whowas laid off in March. “But the co-ronavirus has pushed me back in.”
For the first time since 1998, theWorld Bank says, global povertyrates are forecast to rise. By theend of the year, 8 percent of theworld’s population, half a billionpeople, may be pushed into desti-tution, largely because of the pan-demic, the United Nations esti-mates.
Ms. Khatun was among thou-sands of women across South Asiawho took factory jobs and, as theyentered the work force, helped theworld made inroads against pov-erty.
Now those gains are at graverisk.
“These stories, of women enter-ing the workplace and bringingtheir families out of poverty, ofprograms lifting the trajectoriesof families, those stories will beeasy to destroy,” said AbhijitBanerjee, a professor at the Mass-achusetts Institute of Technologyand a winner of the 2019 NobelPrize for economics.
While everyone will suffer, the
Billions Slide DownLadder That TookDecades to Climb
By MARIA ABI-HABIB
Homeless people in Bangkok waiting for free meals. The global lockdown is most ruinous to the economies of developing countries.ADAM DEAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Continued on Page A7
New York has long prided itselfon its 24-hour subway, one of theworld’s few round-the-clock tran-sit systems and a symbol of thecity’s relentless energy. But sincethe coronavirus outbreak began,the subway has reflected the city’sdeterioration: Ridership hasplummeted by more than 90 per-cent, thousands of sick workershave hobbled the ability to runservice, and the number of home-less people on trains has grown.
On Thursday, Gov. Andrew M.Cuomo and transit officials tookthe extraordinary step of trying torestore the system by shutting itdown from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m., hopingto provide more time for the disin-fecting of trains, equipment andstations during the pandemic.
The decision to halt regularlyscheduled overnight service for
the first time in the MetropolitanTransportation Authority’s his-tory demonstrates the stark stepsstate officials are taking to pre-serve a system that is critical toreviving New York’s economywhen businesses begin to reopen.
“We’ve never been here be-fore,” said Mr. Cuomo, who thisweek instructed the M.T.A. to de-vise a plan to clean more fre-quently. “This is going to be one ofthe most aggressive, creative,challenging undertakings that theM.T.A. has done.”
Shutting down the systemovernight is crucial for the transitagency to test and explore disin-fecting techniques, including ul-traviolet lights and antimicrobialagents, M.T.A. officials said. Still,groups representing riders raised
In a First, New York Will Shutter The Subway for a Nightly Scrub
By CHRISTINA GOLDBAUM
Continued on Page A17
MIAMI — The salty breeze andocean waves have beckoned stir-crazy residents of the coast backto their beloved beaches, socialdistancing norms be damned.
But how to prevent beach blan-kets and lawn chairs from becom-ing new founts of coronavirus in-fection has become a flash point
for governors in Florida, Califor-nia and other coastal states, whomust balance demands from con-stituents for relief from the esca-lating spring heat against the hor-rified reaction of the general pub-lic to photos of sweaty, swimsuit-clad bodies packed towel to towel.
Gov. Gavin Newsom of Califor-nia stepped in on Thursday to shutdown the beaches in OrangeCounty, rolling back earlier at-tempts at giving people there a
chance to stroll along the shorewhile staying a safe distance awayfrom one another. Broad swaths ofsand were packed over the week-end with crowds, with many peo-ple flocking from neighboring Los
Angeles and San Diego Counties,where the beaches remained off-limits.
“This disease isn’t going away,”Mr. Newsom said at a news con-ference, noting that the pandemichad claimed at least 95 lives in thestate in the past 24 hours.
The county-by-county ap-proach in California and Florida,perhaps the two states most de-fined by their iconic coastlines,
As Beaches Grow Irresistible, States Scramble for Sensible LimitsThis article is by Patricia Mazzei,
Shawn Hubler and Thomas Fuller.Teeming Ocean Shores
Spur Anger Online
Continued on Page A8
WASHINGTON — SeniorTrump administration officialshave pushed American spy agen-cies to hunt for evidence to sup-port an unsubstantiated theorythat a government laboratory inWuhan, China, was the origin ofthe coronavirus outbreak, accord-ing to current and former Ameri-can officials. The effort comes asPresident Trump escalates a pub-lic campaign to blame China forthe pandemic.
Some intelligence analysts areconcerned that the pressure fromadministration officials will dis-tort assessments about the virusand that they could be used as apolitical weapon in an intensifyingbattle with China over a diseasethat has infected more than threemillion people across the globe.
Most intelligence agencies re-main skeptical that conclusive ev-idence of a link to a lab can befound, and scientists who havestudied the genetics of the coro-navirus say that the overwhelm-ing probability is that it leapt fromanimal to human in a nonlabora-tory setting, as was the case withH.I.V., Ebola and SARS.
Mr. Trump’s aides and Republi-cans in Congress have sought toblame China for the pandemic inpart to deflect criticism of the ad-ministration’s mismanagement ofthe crisis in the United States,which now has more coronaviruscases than any country. More thanone million Americans have beeninfected, and more than 60,000have died.
Secretary of State Mike Pom-peo, a former C.I.A. director andthe administration’s most vocalhard-liner on China, has taken thelead in pushing American intelli-gence agencies for more informa-tion, according to current and for-
U.S. Asks SpiesTo Trace VirusTo Wuhan Lab
This article is by Mark Mazzetti,Julian E. Barnes, Edward Wong andAdam Goldman.
Continued on Page A11
The 40-foot trailer has beenthere for weeks, parked outsidethe Leo F. Kearns Funeral Homein Queens. Its refrigerator humsin an alley next to a check-cashingestablishment. Thirty-six bodies,one atop the other, are stacked onshelves inside.
The funeral director, PatrickKearns, has barely slept since theday he took charge of them. As helies awake in the middle of thenight, he knows there will bemore.
“It weighs on you, having somany cases in your care,” he said.“The death rate is just so high,there’s no way we can bury or cre-mate them fast enough.”
With more than 18,000 an-nounced fatalities and a totaldeath toll that is almost certainlyhigher, the coronavirus crisis isthe worst mass casualty event to
hit New York since the Spanish flupandemic a century ago.
At the height of the outbreak inApril, a New Yorker was dying al-most every two minutes — morethan 800 per day, or four times thecity’s normal death rate. Andthough the daily toll has recentlyslowed, hundreds of bodies arestill emerging each day from pri-vate homes and hospitals.
While hospitals bore the initialbrunt of the crisis as sick peopleflooded emergency rooms, thesheer volume of human remainshas pushed the system for caringfor the dead to its limits, too: Hos-pital morgues, funeral homes,cemeteries and crematories are
all overflowing and backed up.The scale of the problem was
brought into sharp relief onWednesday afternoon, when thepolice found dozens of decompos-ing bodies stashed inside twotrucks outside a funeral home onUtica Avenue in Brooklyn. Theowner, Andrew T. Cleckley, said hehad nowhere else to put them,adding simply: “I ran out ofspace.”
What happened in Brooklyn ap-pears to be an extreme case, andstate health officials said onThursday they would investigatethe matter. But in the last twomonths, funeral home directorshave begun to store bodies inviewing rooms and chapels, turn-ing up their air-conditioning sys-tems to avoid decomposition.Some are transporting bodies toother cities and states to be cre-mated.
Some hospitals ran out of body
Too Many Bodies, Too Fast, Put New York in BindBy ALAN FEUER
and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUMA Backlog at Morgues,
Funeral Homes andCemeteries
Patrick Kearns of Leo F. Kearns Funeral Home at the entrance of a makeshift morgue in Brooklyn.SARAH BLESENER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Continued on Page A14
The pandemic, the latest of many hard-ships, has left scenes of eerie beautyand abandonment in Rome. PAGE A18
INTERNATIONAL A18-20
Sacked Again, but by a VirusA look at some Instagram accounts onour critic’s feed. Above, Farah AlQasimi’s “Dyed Pastel Birds.” PAGE C13
WEEKEND ARTS C1-16
Five Artists to Follow
The woman who says Joseph R. Biden Jr.assaulted her has been silenced by TVnews shows, Ben Smith writes. PAGE A22
NATIONAL A21-24
What About the Accuser?Specialists at the London start-up Be-nevolentAI helped identify the arthritisdrug baricitinib, which is now part of aclinical trial. PAGE B1
BUSINESS B1-8
How A.I. Assisted Virus FightA woman of many words, most unspo-ken, Madeline Kripke collected nearly20,000 lexicons. She was 76. PAGE A28
OBITUARIES A25, 28
Doyenne of Dictionaries
The president revived his attacks on theF.B.I. after lawyers for Michael T. Flynncited newly unsealed documents asevidence of misconduct. PAGE A24
Trump Backs Flynn Again
Multinational corporations with fac-tories in Mexico have remained open,even after some workers fell ill. PAGE A7
TRACKING AN OUTBREAK A4-17
Pressure to Keep Plants Going
A nearly 8 percent drop in emissions,driven by the Covid-19 crisis, is likelythis year, a new report said. PAGE B7
Emissions Set for a Record Fall
The endurance brand believed its globalracing schedule minimized its risk.Then the pandemic struck. PAGE B10
SPORTSFRIDAY B9-10
Ironman’s World Is Not EnoughAlexis Soloski and her family are findingboard games to be a particularly sooth-ing way to pass the time now. PAGE C1
Trapped at Home? Your Move
David Toren, 94, recovered a relative’sstolen painting amid a large cache ofworks discovered in Germany. PAGE A25
Pursuer of Nazi-Looted Art
Abiy Ahmed PAGE A27
EDITORIAL, OP-ED A26-27
Despite trillions in stimulusspending and a rush to reopenshuttered businesses in somestates, the American economycontinues to stagger under theweight of the coronavirus pan-demic, with a further 3.8 millionworkers filing for unemploymentbenefits last week.
The figures announced Thurs-day by the Labor Departmentbring the number of workers join-ing the official jobless ranks in thelast six weeks to more than 30 mil-lion, and underscore just how direeconomic conditions remain.
The depth of the chill was evi-dent when the Commerce Depart-ment reported that consumerspending in March fell by 7.5 per-
cent from February’s level, a stun-ning decline that helps explainwhy the overall economy is soweak. Consumer activity ordinari-ly accounts for more than two-thirds of the country’s output.
The flood of unemploymentclaims continues to overwhelmmany state agencies, leaving mil-lions with dwindling resources topay the rent or put food on the ta-ble.
If anything, according to manyeconomists, the job losses may befar worse than government talliesindicate.
A study by the Economic PolicyInstitute found that roughly 50percent more people than countedas filing claims in a recent four-week period may have qualifiedfor benefits — with the differencerepresenting those who werestymied in applying or didn’t even
JOB LOSSES SPIKEEVEN AS MILLIONSARE NOT COUNTED
Added Worries Overa Stunning Decline
in Spending
This article is by Nelson D.Schwartz, Tiffany Hsu and PatriciaCohen.
Source: Labor Dept. THE NEW YORK TIMES
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6 million
’12 ’16 ’20’08 ’09
Initial jobless claims, per weekSeasonally adjusted
30,307,000Claims were filed in
the last six weeks
RECESSION
Continued on Page A10
The new government outlawed femalegenital mutilation, an often dangerousbut widespread practice. PAGE A20
Victory for Sudan’s Women
Late Edition
VOL. CLXIX . . . No. 58,680 © 2020 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, FRIDAY, MAY 1, 2020
Today, mostly cloudy, showers, high67. Tonight, mostly cloudy, low 54.Tomorrow, periodic sunshine,slightly warmer afternoon, high 70.Weather map appears on Page B11.
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