Paris on maximum virus alert, closing bars, not restaurants
PARIS — French authorities placed the Paris region on maximum virus alert Monday, banning festive gatherings and requiring all bars to close but allowing restaurants to remain open, as numbers of infections increased rapidly.
Paris police prefect Didier Lallement announced the new restrictions would apply at least for the next two weeks.
“We are continuously adapting to the reality of the virus. We are taking measures to slow down (its spread),” he said.
French authorities consider bars to be major infection hot spots because patrons don’t respect social distancing rules as much as they do at restaurants.
Starting Tuesday, bars will be closed in Paris and its suburbs. Student parties and all other festive and family events in establishments open to the public will be banned.
Restaurants will remain open under strict conditions. They include a minimum 3-foot distance between each table, groups limited to six people instead of 10 previously and a request to register customers’ names and phone numbers to help alert those who may have been exposed to someone with the coronavirus.
Indoor sport facilities, including swimming pools, will be open only to children under age 18. Gyms are already closed.
Cinemas, theaters and museums will remain open with strict sanitary rules, but fairs and professional shows won’t be allowed.
Authorities have maintained the limit of 1,000 spectators per day at big sports events, allowing the Roland-Garros tennis tournament to continue as planned this week.
France, one of the hardest hit in Europe, has reported over 32,300 virusrelated deaths since the beginning of the pandemic.
Mayor enters plea: Mayor Lovely Warren of Rochester, New York, who has faced calls to resign over her city’s handling of the suffocation death of Daniel Prude at the hands of police, pleaded not guilty Monday to campaign f i nance charges dating to her 2017 reelection campaign.
A lawyer for the secondterm mayor, a Democrat, entered the plea on her behalf. Warren had been indicted Friday by a grand jury on charges of scheming to defraud and violating election laws.
Warren’s lawyer, Joseph Damelio, says she did not intentionally break any law and is ready to fight the charges.
Warren left the court without speaking reporters. She stopped briefly to hug a couple of the few dozen supporters outside the building who chanted, “We still believe.”
Warren is not planning to resign, Damelio said, and “her ability to govern has not been impaired.”
California wildfires: The staggering scale of the state’s wildfires reached another milestone Monday: A single fire surpassed 1 million acres.
The new mark for the August Complex in the Coast Range between San Francisco and the Oregon border came a day after the total area of land burned by California wildfires this year passed 4 million acres, more than double the previous record.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said the amount of land scorched by the August Complex is larger than all of the recorded fires in California between 1932 and 1999.
“If that’s not proof point, testament, to climate change, then I don’t know what is,” Newsom said.
Numerous studies have linked bigger wildfires in America to climate change from the burning of coal, oil and gas. Scientists say climate change has made California much drier, meaning trees and other plants are more flammable.
New York schools: Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Monday ordered schools in certain New York City neighborhoods closed within a day in an attempt to halt flare-ups of the coronavirus.
The governor took the action a day after the city’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, asked the state for permission to reinstate restrictions on schools and businesses in nine ZIP codes in Brooklyn and Queens where the virus was spreading more quickly than in other parts of the city.
Cuomo said the closings would take place by Tuesday, a day ahead of when the mayor wanted.
“These clusters have to be attacked,” Cuomo said.
The mayor’s plan would close about 100 public schools and 200 private schools, including religious schools.
Mexico infrastructure:
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador announced a program of 39 joint publicprivate infrastructure projects Monday worth about $14 billion to help revive the economy, which has been pummeled by the coronavirus pandemic.
Lopez Obrador said Mexico has lost about a million jobs due to the pandemic.
The announcement made Monday by Lopez Obrador and a group of business leaders is part of a plan that hopes to start projects worth as much as a quarter of the nation’s GDP by 2022 and create as many as 185,000 jobs.
The current round of projects mostly focuses on building oil refinery plants and highways, but also includes a passenger train project to link Mexico City and the nearby city of Queretaro, as well as some dock and port facilities.
Europe storms: Three more bodies were discovered Monday on the French side of the border with Italy after severe mountain flooding ravaged parts of both countries, leaving at least 12 dead. Hundreds of rescue workers were searching for up to 20 other people still missing.
Flooding devastated mountainous areas in France’s southeastern AlpesMaritimes region and Italy’s northwestern regions of Liguria and Piedmont after a storm swept Friday and Saturday.
The prefect of France’s Alpes-Maritimes region told the Nice Matin newspaper that some bodies found in Italy were apparently corpses from coffins that had been swept across the border by the raging floodwaters.
Houston building collapse: Three workers were killed Monday when a stairwell collapsed inside a highrise building under construction, according to fire department officials.
The Houston Fire Department said one injured worker was taken to a hospital and was listed in stable condition.
A Fire Department rescue team was on the scene, but authorities were still assessing the building as it was “too unstable” to enter and recover the victims, said Assistant Fire Chief Ruy Lozano.
The 15-story office building, located on the city’s west side, is set to be the new headquarters of Marathon Oil. Employees were set to move into the building in the second half of 2021.