Good morning.
Can the world really return to “business as usual” after the coronavirus lockdowns – and even if it can, does that mean it should? Mayors representing 33 cities that are home to more than 750 million people have signed a “statement of principles”, published on Thursday, which commits their communities to a more climate-friendly and less unequal future.
The New York mayor, Bill de Blasio, a member of the newly formed C40 economic taskforce of city leaders from across the US, Europe and Africa, said it was crucial to map out a low-carbon, sustainable recovery from the crisis:
Half-measures that maintain the status quo won’t move the needle or protect us from the next crisis. We need a new deal for these times – a massive transformation that rebuilds lives, promotes equality and prevents the next economic, health or climate crisis.
Wildlife destruction threatens future pandemics. Scientists have said humanity’s “promiscuous treatment of nature” must change if we are to avoid more deadly disease outbreaks, which often occur when civilisation clashes with natural habitats.
Trump says deaths are the price for reopening the economy
At least one person is impatient for a return to business as usual, and that’s Donald Trump, who has again suggested that a growing coronavirus death toll is simply the price that must be paid for reopening the economy. “We have to be warriors,” he told Fox News. “We can’t keep our country closed down for years.” As infections continue to mount around the US, public health experts said the president’s desire to end the lockdown prematurely represented a “death sentence” for many Americans.
Nevertheless, Trump seems to have reversed his plan to disband the White House coronavirus taskforce, saying the group would remain in place indefinitely, but with a switch in focus and some changes in personnel.
Covid parties. Health officials in Walla Walla county, Washington, say they have received increasing reports of so-called “Covid-19 parties,” where non-infected guests mingle with those who have tested positive, in hopes of catching a non-fatal case of the virus and thus acquiring immunity.
Reopening Mississippi. On the latest Today in Focus podcast, Oliver Laughland reports on his visit to Biloxi, Mississippi, to find out how residents of the nation’s poorest state have coped with the lockdown and its gradual lifting.
Indian chemical factory springs fatal gas leak
At least nine people have died and hundreds more are in hospital in southern India following a styrene gas leak at a chemical factory in the port city of Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. The leak came from two 5,000-tonne tanks, beginning in the early hours of Thursday morning, at a facility owned by the Korean firm LG Polymers. The facility had reportedly been left unattended since late March owing to India’s coronavirus lockdown.
Elsewhere in the world…
…The EU is to put forward proposals for a mechanism to process the lessons learned from the pandemic, which would look into the origins of the virus without the aggressive investigation of China that is being demanded by the US.
…New Zealand is “halfway down Everest” in its fight against Covid-19, says the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, whose government is set to decide whether the country’s strict lockdown can be lifted next week.
…Mexico is facing a nationwide beer drought, after domestic beer production was deemed “non-essential” work and halted more than a month ago.
Amazon’s sick leave ‘doesn’t cover warehouses’
At least four Amazon warehouses in southern California’s Inland Empire have recorded cases of the coronavirus. But workers say the company is refusing to comply with a state paid sick leave law designed to prevent Covid-19 outbreaks, forcing sick employees to continue working or risk losing their income.
Meanwhile, a new crowdsourced tracking tool released by a worker advocacy group will enable Amazon employees to report and monitor the growing number of Covid-19 cases in at their workplaces. An Amazon spokesman told the Guardian the firm was “doing all that we can to protect” its workers, adding: “Our top concern is ensuring the health and safety of our employees.”
In other news…
A US mercenary says he planned to abduct Nicolás Maduro. Luke Denman, one of two Americans seized by security forces in Venezuela this week, has claimed in a video confession that he was part of a bungled plot to snatch the Venezuelan leader on the orders of Donald Trump.
Anger is mounting over the death of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old unarmed black man shot dead by a white father and son while on his regular jog through Brunswick, Georgia, in February. The case earned national attention after a video of the shooting emerged, prompting the creation of a grand jury.
Facebook has named its new oversight board. The first 20 members of the independent panel, which will have final say over certain content moderation decisions on the site, were announced on Wednesday, including a former prime minister of Denmark and a former editor of the Guardian.
Great reads
Julie Andrews wants to read your children stories
Julie Andrews hopes her new podcast of children’s stories can bring respite amid the lockdown. In her own childhood, Andrews experienced the “bonding” of Britain under the Blitz, and she tells Hadley Freeman: “I feel the same feelings in America here at this moment.”
How is life under lockdown for a seven-year-old?
Photographer Matt Eich was already accustomed to snapping his family, but the lockdown has given the project a new urgency. He asked his youngest daughter about the experience, in hopes of seeing it from her perspective. “When it’s over I will probably play with my friends for two hours,” she says.
Opinion: The world of 2020 has uncanny parallels to 1945
Friday marks the 75th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany. Our current crises are not armed conflicts, writes Simon Tisdall, but there is something strangely familiar about living under the leadership of Trump, Putin and Johnson.
Victory in Europe was made possible by a remarkable military collaboration between the main anti-Axis powers – the US, Russia and Britain. But the three-way relationship, between Franklin D Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill, was never easy, and it set a pattern of national rivalry, suspicion, fear and distrust that persists to this day.
Last Thing: the beachgoing Grim Reaper
As people returned to Florida’s beaches last week, they were stalked by the spectre of Death. Or, more specifically, by local attorney Daniel Uhlfelder, dressed as the Grim Reaper. “I had a bathing suit on underneath and flip-flops, so I felt great.”
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