Christian Etchebest’s Parisian bistro is a shadow of its usual bustling self. Five lunch specials sit in neat paper bags on the bar awaiting takeout customers — a tiny fraction of his normal midday business before the coronavirus. A skeleton staff rotates in daily at La Cantine du Troquet near the banks of the Seine River, just blocks from the Eiffel Tower. One day they packaged a streamlined version of his Basque menu: sausages with a celery and beetroot remoulade, mashed potatoes and a dessert of strawberries with lemon sauce. Yet Etchebest isn’t facing bankruptcy — not yet anyway — thanks to a French government program that lets him put staff on reduced hours and makes up most of their lost salary, on the condition they are not fired. That is giving him a chance to keep his team together, awaiting the day when restrictions are lifted and sit-down meals are again allowed at this restaurant and his six others across Paris.  Similar programs are keeping hard-hit businesses across Europe afloat, preventing millions of workers from losing their jobs  and income for now, and thousands of bosses from seeing their trained staff scatter. Some 11.3 million workers in France are getting up to 84% of net salary. The government estimates the cost at 24 billion euros ($26 billion), with half of all private sector employees expected to take part. FILE – Femke Zimmerman, manager of Brasserie Berlage, a cafe and restaurant nestled in the manicured gardens of The Hague’s historic art deco Kunstmuseum, poses for a portrait as she prepares the restaurant for reopening, April 24, 2020.Femke Zimmermann, manager of Brasserie Berlage in The Hague in the Netherlands, has her eye on re-opening even as she spends most days at home looking after her 1-year-old and 5-year-old sons while the restaurant’s owners pay her with government help.  For now, she is not overly worried about losing her job. She stays in contact with her team and asked them to come in to give the restaurant a two-day spring clean.  “They hate sitting at home. They want to do something for the business,” she said. Athens waiter George Sakkas, 26, is getting by on a Greek government program that lets businesses suspend workers’ contracts and replaces their pay with a flat stipend of 800 euros ($870). Businesses that take the help cannot fire staff.  “The stipend definitely helped,” he said, noting the amount was roughly what he would make anyway.  “In the beginning we didn’t know about the stipend, so [the closing] hit us very badly,” he said. “When the stipend arrived it gave us some breathing space.” 
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Russia’s top diplomat on Thursday angrily dismissed media reports alleging a Russian plot to poison the mayor of Prague and another official in the Czech capital. Prague’s mayor Zdenek Hrib and Zhanna Nemtsova, daughter of Russian opposition figure Boris Nemtsov smile after unveiling a sign renaming the square where the Russian Embassy is located in Prague, Feb. 27, 2020.Respekt weekly said in its latest edition published on Monday that Czech intelligence services suspected a Russian agent was sent to Prague three weeks ago to poison Prague Mayor Zdenek Hrib and Prague 6 mayor Ondrej Kolar. The story was based on anonymous sources.  Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov ridiculed the claims, saying that the notion that Czech authorities spotted a Russian man with powerful poison ricin and let him through doesn’t make any sense. Czech officials didn’t comment, but Kolar said in a television interview Tuesday that he has been under police protection because of “some facts that have been found, the fact that there’s a Russian here whose goal is to liquidate me.” He added that the alleged assassin was also targeting Hrib and Pavel Novotny, Prague’s Reporyje district mayor. Lavrov scoffed at the allegations. “They found a deadly poison and let him into the country?” he said at Thursday’s briefing. “Would any sound person believe in these fabrications.” Moscow and Prague have been at loggerheads for weeks after Kolar’s district removed the statue of Soviet World War II commander Ivan Konev whose armies liberated Prague from Nazi occupation. Officials in Prague 6 said the statue will be moved to a museum and a new monument honoring the city’s liberation will be installed in its place. The statue’s removal caused outrage in Russia, which has angrily lashed out at any attempts to diminish the nation’s decisive role in defeating the Nazis. Lavrov charged Thursday that the Prague authorities’ action violated a 1993 friendship treaty that carried a Czech pledge to protect memorials to Russian World War II heroes. 
 
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The world’s economic pain was on full display Thursday as Europe and the United States were releasing more evidence of the devastation wrought on jobs and economies by coronavirus lockdown measures.  In Europe, where over 132,000 people with the virus have died so far, fears about new infection spikes were tempering hopes that economies now on government-funded life support will regain their vigor as workers return to factories, shops and offices.  New unemployment figures Thursday covering the 19 European countries that use the shared euro currency underscored how massive job-protection programs are temporarily keeping millions of Europeans on payrolls, sparing them the record-setting flood of layoffs battering tens of millions of Americans.  The European economy shrank a record 3.8% in the first quarter as hotels, restaurants, construction sites and manufacturing were frozen by coronavirus shutdowns. It was the biggest drop in the eurozone since statistics began in 1995 and compares to a 4.8% contraction in the United States.Lockdowns that turned major European cities into ghost towns are plunging nations into recession. France’s economy shrank an eye-popping 5.8% in the first quarter, the biggest quarterly drop since 1949, and the Spanish economy shrunk 5.2% in the same period.Italy’s government debt rating was cut this week to just above junk bond status, with the Fitch ratings agency expecting the Italian economy to shrink 8% this year. Germany, the eurozone’s biggest economy, is projecting a 6.3% drop in GDP this year.No region in the world is being spared. A new report from the Paris-based International Energy Agency projected an unprecedented plunge in the global demand for energy this year that will be equivalent to losing the entire energy demand of India, the world’s third-largest energy consumer.The pain of coronavirus lockdowns has piled huge pressures on governments to ease them. The World Health Organization said nearly half of the 44 countries in Europe that put partial or full restrictions on movement have started easing them and 11 more will do so in the coming days.  But as economies splutter back to life and workers adapt to the strangeness of new barriers designed to keep them apart, governments are watching infection rates and public behavior like hawks, wary of a second wave of deaths.  German Health Minister Jens Spahn said his government wants to take “small steps, rather than risk a big step back.”California’s governor planned to close all beaches and state parks starting Friday after people thronged the seashore during a sweltering weekend, ignoring social distancing orders. Nevada’s governor was extending his directive asking people to stay at home until May 15 but on Friday eased restrictions on some outdoor activities and businesses.  In Sweden, authorities spread stinky chicken manure on a city park in Lund to discourage people from celebrating there on Thursday, a traditionally festive day.The promise of an effective treatment against the coronavirus — an experimental drug that can speed the recovery of COVID-19 patients — raised hopes Thursday for faster progress in battling the pandemic and restoring wrecked economies and livelihoods.  FILE – A man wearing a face mask to protect against the coronavirus walks past shuttered businesses on the boardwalk in Atlantic City, New Jersey, April 28, 2020.The U.S. government and others are working to make the medication available to patients as quickly as possible. News of the medical advance lifted world markets, outshining gloomy economic data showing the U.S. economy contracted nearly 5% in January-March in the worst downturn since the Great Recession.  California-based biotech company Gilead Sciences and the U.S. government reported in a major study run by the U.S. National Institutes of Health that the drug remdesivir shortened the time it takes for COVID-19 patients to recover by four days on average — from 15 days to 11.  The study, involving 1,063 coronavirus patients, also showed a trend toward fewer deaths among those on the drug, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s top infectious diseases expert.  “What it has proven is that a drug can block this virus,” he said. “This will be the standard of care.”Even though a vaccine is perhaps a year or more away, experts say an effective treatment could have a profound effect on the outbreak. Stocks surged Wednesday on the news, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average gaining more than 530 points. Asian markets rode the same wave of optimism on Thursday but eurozone numbers weighed on markets in Europe.The virus has killed nearly 228,000 people worldwide, including more than 60,000 confirmed deaths in the U.S., according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. Confirmed infections globally have reached 3.2 million, including 1 million in the U.S., but the true numbers are likely much higher because of limited testing, differences in counting the dead and concealment by some governments.The latest figures on Americans applying for unemployment benefits come out Thursday, with economists estimating perhaps 1 in 6 workers, or nearly 30 million people, have lost their jobs over the past six weeks.Mario Franco, who worked at a McDonald’s at a highway rest stop in Darien, Connecticut, for 26 years, rising to night manager, was laid off in late March. The 50-year-old said he has little savings and now relies on a food bank and union donations.”They didn’t give us any notice,” he said. “Just suddenly the night shift ended and that was it. There was no more work.”The U.S. unemployment rate for April is due late next week, and economists say it could range as high as 20% — a level last seen during the Depression.Worldwide, the International Labor Organization forecast the pandemic has left 1.6 billion people who depend on day labor, gig jobs or other informal work in immediate danger of losing their livelihoods. That’s nearly half the global workforce of 3.3 billion. It expects 305 million full-time jobs to be wiped out in April-June.  Pushing to reopen the country, President Donald Trump was allowing federal social distancing guidelines to expire Thursday and was even planning to travel to Arizona next week.But many economists are skeptical that the U.S. economy will bounce back quickly, noting that the virus could flare up again or consumers and employees might be too worried to return to business as usual.”The virus has done a lot of damage to the economy and there is just so much uncertainty now,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. 
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Russia is warning that any U.S. attempt to use a low-yield nuclear weapon against a Russian target would set off a massive nuclear response.The Russian foreign ministry was reacting to a State Department paper released last week that says placing low-yield nuclear weapons on ballistic missiles launched from submarines would counter what it sees as possible new threats from both Russia and China.Experts describe a low-yield weapon as the kind the United States dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II.The State Department asserts that the low-yield weapons “reduce the risk of nuclear war by reinforcing extended deterrence and assurance.”It alleges Russia is considering using such nonstrategic nuclear arms in a limited war.  Russia denies it is a threat to the U.S. and accuses Washington of “lowering the nuclear threshold.”“Any attack involving a U.S. submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), regardless of its weapon specifications, would be perceived as a nuclear aggression,”  Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Wednesday. “Those who like to theorize about the flexibility of American nuclear potential must understand that in line with the Russian military doctrine such actions are seen as warranting retaliatory use of nuclear weapons by Russia.”Russia says it wants to extend the 2010 New START treaty limiting the number of deployed nuclear missiles, warheads, and bombers along with strict inspection regimes. The pact is set to expire next year.The Trump administration says it wants a new arms control agreement that also includes China — which Russia calls impractical. 
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British people love to talk about the weather. Never more so than when they’re locked in their houses, it seems. With perfect irony, the sun hasn’t stopped shining since the coronavirus lockdown began on March 23 – and everyone’s talking about it. It’s been unseasonably warm, with temperatures in London topping 25 degrees Celsius. For those with gardens or with easy access to the countryside, the fine weather has been a perfect antidote to the mind-spinning news headlines; nature, at its finest in spring, has been a tonic for many. For those living in cities, particularly in high-rise apartments, the sunshine has only underlined the claustrophobia of confinement. Staff work at a the COVID-19 testing facility at Ikea near the Wembley stadium in London, April 29, 2020.Across Britain, the skies have never been clearer. I live not far from Gatwick, London’s second biggest airport, and normally the sky is crossed with vapor trails. But there are just a few high cirrus clouds amid the deep blue. There are far fewer cars on the roads too. Instead, families cheerfully cycle past, enjoying their daily hour of exercise. The air smells cleaner. You can hear more birdsong. There are countless stories of wildlife slowly re-colonizing towns and cities as humans enter their own hibernation.All these might seem like trivial observations in the face of a devastating global pandemic. But it’s inevitable that people will look for positives after such disruption to their lives. And it has a lot of people talking about what kind of country we all want to emerge from this crisis.Millions of people are working from home. Can commuting be cut down to save carbon emissions and allow workers to spend more time with families? Are those international business meetings really necessary when it’s all being done by video link? With scientists warning repeatedly that climate change is an even bigger imminent threat to humanity, can we afford to go back to life as it was before? There are other changes to life on a more personal level. Out of concern, I’ve been in touch with family and friends whom I haven’t spoken to for many years. We’ve set up a weekly video chat with close family. Everyone is talking about the parties and reunions we’ll have when this is all over. After years of relationships being conducted through social media, the world is craving human company. Maybe we’ll value those close bonds even more in the post-coronavirus world. And in Britain, which has been torn apart by Brexit in recent years, many people crave some kind of healing. There are clouds on the horizon. Another Brexit deadline looms at the end of the year as the transition period ends, with the threat of even more economic disruption. And it’s quite possible, perhaps justifiable, that the world will rush back to its old ways after the lockdown to recover the vast economic losses. But in my neighborhood, and in communities across Britain and beyond, the same question is being raised: what sort of world do we want to emerge when this is all over? 
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