Live updates: GOP unveils coronavirus relief bill; Fauci ‘cautiously optimistic’ about vaccine progress

LONDON — British retailer Selfridges announced Tuesday it would eliminate 450 jobs across its chain of luxury department stores in Britain following a sharp decrease in sales amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The chain’s managing director, Anne Pitcher, said in an email to staff that the decision to cut about 14 percent of the company’s workforce was the “toughest decision” bosses had ever made and that the impact of the global health crisis on sales combined with a projected slow recovery had left the family-run business with no other option but to reduce roles within the company.

“The speed and magnitude of what is happening right now and the impact on trading means we must make some more fundamental changes to our organisation to stay ahead,” Pitcher wrote in the email, according to British media reports.

The announcement follows that of rival luxury store Harrods, which announced earlier this month that 700 jobs would be lost as a result of lockdown measures and the loss of international visitors to the flagship London store — which was forced to close its doors for months at the height of the pandemic.

The British government’s furlough program, which has helped millions of affected workers during the outbreak by funding 80 percent of their salaries, is set to continue until October, although starting this weekend, employers will be asked to begin making salary contributions.

From Aug. 1, furloughed employees are asked to return to their workplaces on a part-time basis.

The National Football League’s chief medical officer acknowledged Monday that “this is going to be hard” as the league attempts to fulfill its long-stated goal of having an uninterrupted season amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.

But as teams prepared to open their training camps fully and NFL leaders eyed the Major League Baseball outbreak that raised new doubts about the ability of professional sports leagues to operate successfully outside a bubble environment, Allen Sills said he remained hopeful the league’s health protocols will enable the NFL to stage its season.

Belgium will hit pause on its coronavirus reopening plans, the country’s prime minister said Monday, as a climbing number of infections in the northern province of Antwerp threatens to undo its progress in containing the pandemic.

For four weeks, every household will be allowed to interact with only five people, Prime Minister Sophie Wilmes said in announcing a restriction that echoes the country’s response during the peak of the pandemic.

Previously, Belgians could meet with 15 different people weekly, and members of a single household could consider these so-called “social bubbles” separately. But not anymore.

“Our aim is clear — avoid another full lockdown,” Wilmes said, according to the Associated Press.

With confirmed cases jumping by more than 70 percent from July 10 to 23, Belgian officials tightened some restrictions last week. Face masks are now mandatory in many outdoor public areas, and bar and restaurant owners must keep detailed records of their customers, the AP reported.

In Antwerp, which reported almost half the new cases, all nonessential employees must return to working from home, and a curfew was instituted from 11:30 p.m. to 6 a.m.

“I fully realize that everyone has already made heavy sacrifices in recent months,” the province’s governor, Cathy Berx, told the Gazet van Antwerpen. “That is why it is also a great pity that we, our strong region, are now facing a very strong increase in the number of infections.”

Wilmes, the prime minister, said that while she may place a cap on large gatherings, Belgians must also hold themselves responsible individually.

“If we cannot contain the coronavirus,” she said, “it will be a collective failure.”

Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) on Monday tore into members of the state GOP who urged her to lift travel restrictions for tourists from Massachusetts and Rhode Island, accusing them of “a Donald Trump-style assault” on public health.

“For the life of me, I cannot understand why Republicans care more about Massachusetts money than the life of a Maine person,” Mills said in a strongly worded statement. She added that the proposal “amounts to a Republican invitation for a resurgence of the virus, which not only would sicken more people but would damage our economy for years to come.”

Maine requires most out-of-state visitors to either quarantine for 14 days or present a negative covid-19 test taken in the past 72 hours. Only residents of a handful of states — New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey — are exempt. As a result, Maine is one of the few states where case numbers aren’t surging, but many businesses that typically rely on summer visitors are facing collapse.

On Monday, Republican state legislators introduced a plan to “salvage” the rest of the tourist season, which called for lifting quarantine requirements for visitors from states where the seven-day positivity rate is less than 5 percent. That would translate to allowing residents of Massachusetts and Rhode Island — who usually make up a large percentage of summer visitors — to freely enter Maine, the Bangor Daily News reported.

“We know that we need to get folks from Massachusetts to come up here, because they’re day trippers and they spend a lot of money,” Assistant Senate Minority Leader Jeff Timberlake told the paper.

Mills insisted Monday that keeping the current policy in place was crucial for safeguarding public health, while Republicans argued that having stricter rules than other New England states guaranteed that Maine would continue to lose out on tourism dollars.

New England is one of the few regions of the country that has not witnessed a dramatic rise in coronavirus cases over the past two months.

LONDON ­— Newspaper front pages in Britain warned Tuesday of “a stampede to cancel” vacations overseas and reported widespread confusion among Britons following the government’s decision to quarantine travelers returning from Spain, a top British holiday destination.

For the millions across the country seeking sunshine and relaxation after months of stay-at-home measures, scheduled vacations remain under a cloud of uncertainty as families wait to find out how the new rules will impact their travel plans and where they can take a vacation this summer — if at all.

The Daily Mirror called the government’s decision a “quarantine shambles,” splashing the headline “Holiday Chaos: 14M Brits to stay at home” on its front cover. The Daily Mail declared: “Summer holidays hang in balance,” adding that the newly announced restrictions would dent both the Spanish and British tourism industries during what has already been a catastrophic year for both economies.

“All travel is now a risk, holidaymakers are told,” read the front page of the Times, highlighting fears that the quarantine measures could affect other countries in the coming weeks as fears of a second wave of the virus continue to swirl.

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said Monday that conversations were taking place with British officials in a bid to encourage the government to rethink its new policy.

With at least 45,844 deaths from the virus, Britain is the worst-hit country in Europe. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has frequently been attacked for his handling of the global health crisis, with critics saying lockdown measures were implemented too late, advice regarding the wearing of face masks wasn’t clear, and front-line workers were not adequately protected from infection.

Google won’t bring its 200,000 employees back to the office until July 2021, pushing past its January timeline as coronavirus cases surge across the country and a vaccine remains months away.

That makes the parent company, Alphabet, the first major U.S. company to push its office comeback into the second half of next year. Google spokesman Jason Post confirmed the decision, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, on Monday.

The move illustrates how corporate America is writing its own guidebook for managing the social, economic and public health byproducts of the pandemic — from enforcing mask mandates to retaining employees to mitigating the safety risks for consumers and staff. But each decision contingent on the nation’s return to normalcy, or what passes for it now, is tentative.

If you’re having trouble identifying people behind their masks, don’t think computers have it any easier.

Some of the strongest facial recognition systems used by the federal government have failed to identify as many as half of all masked faces, a U.S. agency found in a study on Monday.

The preliminary findings from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which is housed under the Commerce Department, confirm an unsurprising reality of the pandemic: One of the best defenses against the coronavirus also poses a major obstacle to security and surveillance.

Protesters have speculated that the widespread use of masks at recent demonstrations have made it harder for authorities to identify specific individuals. Some bar owners have argued that it is impossible to identify the age of someone with their face covered. And banks, meanwhile, worry that masks could act as handy disguises for would-be robbers.

NIST, which is working with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and scientists at the Department of Homeland Security to examine this issue, only studied software created before the virus outbreak.

Using about 90 algorithms and more than 6 million images, the agency drew masks on about 1 million photographed faces. The images came from databases of border crossings and visa applications and other parts of the U.S. immigration system.

But with the tech world trying to keep up, NIST said it will continue investigating. Many of the tech companies whose software is used by law enforcement have altered their algorithms to focus on the eyes and eyebrows, the Associated Press reported.

They are nonetheless a few steps behind China. In March, Hanwang Technology, which also goes by Hanvon in English, said it had devised technology to identify people even when they were wearing masks.

Major League Baseball’s first existential crisis in a season unlike any in its history came on the fifth day of its 2020 schedule, before half its 30 teams could even hold their home openers. It arrived in a way that would not surprise an epidemiologist: with a coronavirus outbreak focused on a team whose home city is a hot spot. And it has placed the remainder of the season in a precarious position.

For now, the outbreak among members of the Miami Marlins — with 11 players and two coaches testing positive by Monday, according to an official familiar with the testing — has not brought down the entire MLB season, and MLB officials hoped the outbreak would be limited to the Marlins, allowing the season to go forward.

The Vietnamese city of Danang entered a state of lockdown on Tuesday after 15 new locally-transmitted coronavirus cases were detected.

The popular tourist destination reported that a 57-year-old man had tested positive for covid-19 on Saturday, bringing Vietnam’s 99-day run with no local infections to an end. Yesterday, the Vietnamese government announced that more than 80,000 visitors were being evacuated from the city.

All flights in and out of Danang have now been suspended for 15 days, state-run newspaper Chinhphu reported. Entering the city by land is also off-limits, with exceptions for patients seeking health care and people delivering food and other essential goods.

Aside from emergencies, residents of six of Danang’s central districts are only allowed to leave their homes to buy food, pick up medicine or work in a factory. During those trips, they must remain at least six feet away from others. Gatherings of more than two people are banned in public settings.

Vietnam has reported only 435 coronavirus infections to date, and zero deaths. Experts have said that the country’s quick early response to emerging outbreaks — and willingness to impose lockdowns when only a relatively small number of cases have been detected — have been responsible for its success.

As Chinese airlines bend over backward to fill flights once emptied out by the coronavirus, many are offering passengers an unusually bountiful deal: “All you can fly.”

China Southern Airlines became the latest carrier to unveil the promotion Tuesday, following the lead of at least seven other cash-strapped companies looking to make up for massive losses during the pandemic’s peak.

With a bevy of terms and conditions but months of unlimited flights for only a few hundred dollars, these deals have boosted bottom lines and put passengers in seats that could otherwise go empty, according to Reuters. Last month, daily flights in China returned to about 80 percent of their levels before the virus outbreak.

Since launching its “Fly as you wish” deal in June, China Eastern Airlines has sold over 100,000 passes, state media reported. At about $475 each, the passes allow passengers to travel anywhere on weekends. The offer has helped jack up the carrier’s weekend business, according to Reuters, with passenger loads on the carrier’s domestic routes up more than 75 percent.

Hotels have followed suit, too, with the Marriott chain saying it would offer hotel guests unlimited buffet breakfasts in any of its nearly 150 hotels in China for about $84.

Although many analysts expect the rest of the global aviation industry to follow China’s lead, it may be a while before similar offers reach the United States and other parts of the world.

Luya You, a transportation analyst at BOCOM International, told Reuters that special offers with unlimited flights can only boost demand if virus risks are low. China has almost entirely reopened after managing to bring the pandemic under control.

“While these packages may work in domestic markets, we do not expect similar rollouts for outbound routes anytime soon,” she said.

With coronavirus caseloads rising in some parts of Canada, British Columbia premier John Horgan is suggesting that people with license plates from outside the province should consider riding the bus to avoid harassment.

“I would suggest, perhaps, public transit,” Horgan said at a Monday news conference. “I would suggest that they get their plates changed. I would suggest they ride a bike.”

High-profile incidents involving American tourists who defy quarantine rules or make illegal sightseeing trips to destinations like Banff National Park have led to growing tensions in Canada. For months, drivers with U.S. license plates have complained about getting mean looks and rude gestures, while others say they’ve been accosted by angry strangers or had their cars vandalized. Many are Canadian citizens who work for American companies or own vacation properties in the United States, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported.

People with plates from Alberta, which is witnessing its own surge in cases, have also become targets in neighboring British Columbia. In June, the mayor of one popular resort town urged residents to welcome visitors with “the grace of humanity” after a local man with Alberta plates found an expletive-filled note on his car. The waterfront community of Sicamous similarly encouraged people to start spreading the message that “we’re people, not plates.”

Though Americans are largely banned from entering Canada, traveling between different provinces is legal, Bonnie Henry, B.C.’s top health official, stressed on Monday.

“We do not know everybody’s story, and I think we need to pay attention to the fact that we all are in this together, whether our license plate is from somewhere else, whether it’s from Alberta or whether it’s from California,” she said.

The coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 10,000 children a month — not by infecting them or attacking their lungs, but by depriving them of food, a team of experts warned Monday.

Writing in the influential Lancet medical journal, an international coalition said the pandemic has released a tidal wave of childhood hunger and malnutrition that will have long-lasting consequences for education, growth and risk of disease.

As the virus and related lockdown orders have disrupted trade routes, closed markets and isolated millions from food and medicine, about 128,000 additional children under 5 will die over the outbreak’s first year, their analysis shows.

Modeling food supplies in 118 countries, the experts found that measures to contain the virus — from social distancing and school closures to lockdowns and closed borders — have pushed communities already stricken with hunger and other woes over the edge. More than half of all deaths, they said, were in sub-Saharan Africa and in war-torn Yemen.

Their study was accompanied by an urgent call to action from the heads of several U.N. agencies, including the World Health Organization and UNICEF, who urged global leaders to contribute at least $2.4 billion immediately to address hunger.

“We must step forward together with sustained action and investments on nutrition today and deny the COVID-19 crisis and intergenerational legacy of hunger and malnutrition in children,” they wrote.

The U.N. agency leaders said governments worldwide must do more to safeguard access to fresh, nutritious food and scale up services for the detection and treatment of a phenomenon known as “wasting.”

The condition, a form of malnutrition that results in spindly limbs and distended bellies, can cause permanent damage to children’s mental and physical health. Since the outbreak’s start, wasting is affecting more than 550,000 additional children each month.

If the name of the Paycheck Protection Program didn’t make its purpose clear, its key sponsors spelled it out.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) explained that the program “was designed as an alternative for unemployment and to prevent unemployment.” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and the director of the Small Business Administration announced that the “overarching focus” of the effort was “keeping workers paid and employed.”

But a closer look at three large companies that received millions from the $517 billion program shows that some companies have not retained most of their staff on the payrolls.

Under intense White House pressure, Senate Republicans agreed Monday to allocate $1.75 billion in their coronavirus relief bill toward the construction of a new D.C. headquarters for the FBI.

But top Senate Republicans immediately began distancing themselves from the provision after it was made public, saying they weren’t sure why the White House repeatedly insisted on putting it in the bill.

In calling for a new “Washington, DC headquarters facility,” the provision reflects President Trump’s ongoing interest in building a new headquarters for the FBI downtown, rather than a secure campus in the suburbs that was envisioned before he took office.

At a news conference Monday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) initially denied that the FBI money was in the bill, but then was notified by reporters that the language was in fact included.