AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EDT
Trump, Congress agree on $2 trillion virus rescue bill
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House and Senate leaders of both parties announced agreement early Wednesday on unprecedented emergency legislation to rush sweeping aid to businesses, workers and a health care system slammed by the coronavirus pandemic.
The urgently needed pandemic response measure is the largest economic rescue measure in history and is intended as a weeks- or months-long patch for an economy spiraling into recession and a nation facing a potentially ghastly toll.
Top White House aide Eric Ueland announced the agreement in a Capitol hallway shortly after midnight, capping days of often intense haggling and mounting pressure. It still needs to be finalized in detailed legislative language.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are done. We have a deal,” Ueland said.
The unprecedented economic rescue package would give direct payments to most Americans, expand unemployment benefits and provide a $367 billion program for small businesses to keep making payroll while workers are forced to stay home.
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India's 1.3 billion locked down as US reaches virus aid deal
NEW DELHI (AP) — The world's largest democracy went under the world's biggest lockdown Wednesday, with India's 1.3 billion people ordered to stay home in a bid to stop the coronavirus pandemic, while in the U.S., lawmakers and the White House agreed on a massive $2 trillion domestic aid package to help those impacted by the outbreak.
India's unprecedented move was aimed at keeping the virus from spreading and overwhelming its fragile health care system as it has done in parts of Europe, where infections were still surging. New York, meanwhile, scrambled to set up thousands of new hospital beds, and organizers delayed this summer's Tokyo Olympics until next year.
Financial markets continued their wild swings, with Asian benchmarks gaining Wednesday after Wall Street posted its best day since 1933 in anticipation of the economic rescue package. The deal would give direct payments to most Americans, expand unemployment benefits and provide a $367 billion program for small businesses to keep making payroll.
In India, everything but essential services like supermarkets were shuttered. Normally bustling railway stations in New Delhi were deserted and streets that just hours before were jumbled with honking cars were eerily silent with just a trickle of pedestrians.
“Delhi looks like a ghost town,” said Nishank Gupta, a lawyer. “I have never seen the city so quiet before.”
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The Latest: Russia orders preparation for virus patients
The Latest on the coronavirus pandemic, which has infected more than 425,000 people and killed over 18,000. The COVID-19 illness causes mild or moderate symptoms in most people, but severe symptoms are more likely in the elderly or those with existing health problems. More than 109,000 people have recovered so far, mostly in China.
TOP OF THE HOUR:
— Provincial governors in Russia ordered to prepare for virus patients.
— Palestinian Authority tells workers to return from Israel.
— Albania declares state of natural calamity.
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Of America and sacrifice: Is the country ready to step up?
WASHINGTON (AP) — For most Americans alive today, the idea of shared national sacrifice is a collective abstraction, a memory handed down from a grandparent or passed on through a book or movie.
Not since World War II, when people carried ration books with stamps that allowed them to purchase meat, sugar, butter, cooking oil and gasoline, when buying cars, firewood and nylon was restricted, when factories converted from making automobiles to making tanks, Jeeps and torpedos, when men were drafted and women volunteered in the war effort, has the entire nation been asked to sacrifice for a greater good.
The civil rights era, Vietnam, the Gulf wars, 9/11 and the financial crisis all involved suffering, even death, but no call for universal sacrifice. President George W. Bush encouraged people to buy things after the terrorist attacks to help the economy — “patriots at the mall,” some called it — before the full war effort was underway. People lost jobs and homes in the financial crisis, but there was no summons for community response.
Now, with the coronavirus, it's as though a natural disaster has taken place in multiple places at once. Millions will likely lose their jobs. Businesses will shutter. Schools have closed. Thousands will die. Leaders are ordering citizens into isolation to stop the virus' march.
Suddenly, in the course of a few weeks, John F. Kennedy’s “ask what you can do for your country” injunction has come to life. Will Americans step up?
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Tokyo soars 8% as US stimulus deal lifts world markets
BANGKOK (AP) — Japan's Nikkei 225 surged 8% and other world markets also jumped Wednesday after Congress and the White House reached a deal to inject nearly $2 trillion of aid into an economy ravaged by the coronavirus.
The advances followed the best day since 1933 for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which rocketed 11.4% higher on Tuesday.
Tokyo logged its biggest daily gain since 2008. Share prices there were lifted also by the decision to postpone the 2020 Olympics to July 2021 in view of the coronavirus pandemic, which has brought travel almost to a standstill and is leaving many millions of people ordered to stay home to help contain the outbreaks.
The postponement alleviated fears the event might be cancelled altogether.
Shares were moderately higher in early European trading. Germany's DAX climbed 2.6% to 9,953.60 and the CAC 40 in Paris picked up 2.3% to 4,339.67. Britain's FTSE 100 added 2.7% to 5,591.41.
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Survivors of world conflicts offer perspective amid pandemic
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — As Western countries reeling from the coronavirus pandemic awaken to a new reality of economic collapse, overwhelmed hospitals, grounded flights and home confinement, it's tempting to think the end of days is at hand.
But for millions across the Middle East and in conflict zones farther afield, much of this is grimly familiar. The survivors of recent wars, too often dismissed as the pitiable victims of failed states, can offer hard-earned wisdom in times like these.
Few have more experience with lockdowns and closures than the Palestinians. During the uprising known as the Second Intifada in the early 2000s, Israel shut down parts of the occupied West Bank and Gaza for weeks on end, using checkpoints and curfews to try to quash it.
In 2002, Israel imposed an around-the-clock curfew in Bethlehem for weeks as troops battled Palestinian militants holed up in the Church of the Nativity, built on the site revered by Christians as Jesus' birthplace.
Jamal Shihadeh remembers being stuck in his home for 25 days before he slipped out and fled to a nearby Jewish settlement in order to work. He ended up sleeping in the factory until the closures were lifted.
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Virus causes surge in WW II references, but is it merited?
LONDON (AP) — In the first week of June 2019, World War II was on many people's minds.
It was the 75th anniversary of D-Day, a week filled with events honoring the sacrifice and blood of tens of thousands of Allied soldiers that was spilled on the French beaches. Leaders from the United States, Britain, Canada, France — and then-foe and now ally Germany — gathered in a rare show of unity in Normandy, where the tide of the war was so decisively turned.
Now, nine months later, World War II references are once again being heard daily — because of the coronavirus.
The comparison is everywhere in recent days: The world is facing the most serious threat and challenge since the last truly global war. Various leaders have cited World War II in their virus-related remarks. There is pervasive fear that an ‘’invisible enemy'' could cause a severe escalation in deaths, ravage the global economy, hamper food supply and spark social unrest.
And there's pushback, too — that the World War II reference is unhelpful and only adds to the fear.
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In pandemic, rumors of martial law fly despite reassurances
NEW YORK (AP) — Millions of Americans have been ordered to stay home. Businesses and schools are shuttered. And National Guard units have been activated in more than half the states.
Yet despite what you may have read in a text message or on social media, there are currently no plans for a national quarantine, let alone martial law. Those National Guard units? They're busy distributing food and medical supplies.
Rumors of a military-enforced national lockdown have been debunked repeatedly by state and federal authorities who say their recurrence shows just how persistent false claims can be during an emergency, and why it's vital to find reliable sources of information.
“I hear unfounded rumors about National Guard troops supporting a nationwide quarantine,” said Air Force Gen. Joseph Lengyel, chief of the National Guard Bureau. "Let me be clear: There has been no such discussion."
NATIONAL GUARD ACTIVATED
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Out of vital medication, US woman among those stuck in Peru
For Anna, a 33-year-old American woman stranded in a Peruvian hotel room and out of life-saving medication to treat her auto-immune disease, the clock is ticking.
After Peru ordered its borders closed March 15 in an effort to hinder the spread of the new coronavirus, she and her husband tried to charter a plane to leave Cusco. They even planned to take with them other Americans trapped in the city nestled high in the Andes near the ancient ruins of Machu Picchu.
But the Peruvian government refused to give the plane permission to land, according to the couple, the U.S. government and airline officials. And when they asked the U.S. State Department for help, they said they were told the agency was working on the situation.
“There are other foreign governments that are able to take out their citizens, but it seems that with the U.S. there is some gridlock in the Peruvian government granting those airplanes permission to land,” Anna said. “But there are many citizens here that are just desperate to go home.”
The couple’s plight is the latest in a series of problems facing thousands of U.S. citizens trapped all over the world because of the COVID-19 pandemic. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last week that he has been working to repatriate Americans. But like others, Anna and her husband say they have gotten little help.
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AP Photos: India's vast railway system closes to passengers
NEW DELHI (AP) — India's colossal passenger railway system has come to a halt as officials take emergency measures to keep the coronavirus pandemic from spreading in the country of 1.3 billion.
The railway system is often described as India's lifeline, transporting 23 million people across the vast subcontinent each day, some 8.4 billion passengers each year.
India’s rail network, the world’s fourth largest, operates more than 12,100 trains carrying passengers and cargo along 67,415 kilometers (41,890 miles) of track. With more than 1.2 million employees, it is the country’s largest employer.
The lifeline was cut Sunday, leaving hundreds of people stranded at railway stations, hoping to be carried onward by buses or taxis that appeared unlikely to arrive.
The New Delhi Railway Station — usually populated 24 hours a day with railway staff, shops selling snacks and newspapers, passengers crammed into waiting rooms and indigent people sleeping on the platform — was barren.