Well-off Brazilians have brought the coronavirus back home with them from their travels. Many of them also employ domestic workers from the country's favelas - who they're apparently unwilling to protect by telling them to stay home. Brazil's poorest class could make easy quarry for the disease.

The Chinese metropolis of Wuhan spent weeks in complete lockdown to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus. Now, it is reopening its shops and restaurants. But the people remain fearful and cautious.

We estimate valuations of time using detailed consumer choice data from a large European ride hail platform, where drivers bid on trips and consumers choose between a set of potential rides with different prices and waiting times. We estimate consumer demand as a function of prices and waiting times. While demand is responsive to both, price elasticities are on average four times higher than waiting-time elasticities. We show how these estimates can be mapped into values of time that vary by place, person, and time of day. Regarding variation within a day, the value of time during non-work hours is 16% lower than during work hours. Regarding the spatial dimension, our value of time measures are highly correlated both with real estate prices and urban GPS travel flows. A variance decomposition reveals that most of the substantial heterogeneity in the value of time is explained by individual differences as opposed to place or time of day. In contrast with other studies that focus on long run choices we do not find evidence of spatial sorting. We apply our measures to quantify the opportunity cost of traffic congestion in Prague, which we estimate at $483,000 per day.

We study the trade-offs faced by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that serve as platforms through which consumers access both television and internet services. As online streaming video improves, these providers may respond by attempting to steer consumers away from streaming video toward their own TV services, or by attempting to capture surplus from this improved internet content. We augment the standard mixed bundling model to demonstrate the trade-offs the ISP faces when dealing with streaming video, and we show how these trade-offs change with the pricing options available to the ISP. Next, we use unique household-level panel data and the introduction of usage-based pricing (UBP) in a subset of markets to measure consumers' responses and to evaluate quantitatively the ISP's trade-offs. We find that the introduction of UBP led consumers to upgrade their internet service plans and lower overall internet usage. Our findings suggest that while steering consumers towards TV services is possible, it is likely costly for the ISP and therefore unlikely to be profitable. This is especially true if the ISP can offer rich pricing menus that allow it to capture some of the surplus generated by a better internet service. The results suggest that policies like UBP can increase ISPs' incentive to maintain open access to new internet content.

Dominican Yankees and Mets stars are working with Pedro Martinez to respond to the coronavirus pandemic in their homeland.

Banks usually hold large amounts of domestic public debt which makes them vulnerable to their own sovereign’s default risk. At the same time, governments often resort to costly public bailouts when their domestic banking sector is in trouble. We investigate how the interbank network structure and the distribution of sovereign debt holdings jointly affect the optimal bailout policy in the presence of this "doom loop". Rescuing banks with high domestic sovereign exposure is optimal if these banks are sufficiently central in the network, even though that requires larger bailout expenditures than rescuing low-exposure banks. Our findings imply that highly central banks can use exposure to their own government as a strategic tool to increase the likelihood of being bailed out. Our model thus illustrates how the "doom loop" exacerbates the "too interconnected to fail" problem in banking.

How should the design of incentives vary with agent time preferences? We develop two predictions. First, “bundling” the payment function over time – specifically by making the payment for future effort increase in current effort – is more effective if individuals are impatient over effort. Second, increasing the frequency of payment is more effective if individuals are impatient over payment. We test the efficacy of time-bundling and payment frequency, and their interactions with impatience, using a randomized evaluation of an incentive program for exercise among diabetics in India. Consistent with our theoretical predictions, bundling payments over time meaningfully increases effort among the impatient relative to the patient. In contrast, increasing payment frequency has limited efficacy, suggesting limited impatience over payments. On average, incentives increase daily steps by 1,266 (13 minutes of brisk walking) and improve health.

Public schooling systems are an essential feature of modern states. These systems often developed at the expense of religious schools, which undertook the bulk of education historically and still cater to large student populations worldwide. This paper examines how Indonesia’s long-standing Islamic school system responded to the construction of 61,000 public elementary schools in the mid-1970s. The policy was designed in part to foster nation building and to curb religious influence in society. We are the first to study the market response to these ideological objectives. Using novel data on Islamic school construction and curriculum, we identify both short-run effects on exposed cohorts as well as dynamic, long-run effects on education markets. While primary enrollment shifted towards state schools, religious education increased on net as Islamic secondary schools absorbed the increased demand for continued education. The Islamic sector not only entered new markets to compete with the state but also increased religious curriculum at newly created schools. Our results suggest that the Islamic sector response increased religiosity at the expense of a secular national identity. Overall, this ideological competition in education undermined the nation-building impacts of mass schooling.

Tesla and SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk publicly corrects girlfriend Grimes on Twitter after she explains the origin of their newborn son's unusual first name, X Æ A-12.

The former captain of the USS Theodore Roosevelt was relieved from his duties in response to his concerns about coronavirus spreading on his ship.

They don’t want people bugging out.

Over half a billion euro of prize bonds were sold last year, according to the latest report from the Prize Bond Company.

Eurozone ministers have formally approved €240 billion in credit lines to help European countries meet the crippling costs of fighting the coronavirus outbreak.

This paper takes an early look at the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), a large and novel small business support program that was part of the initial policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We use new data on the distribution of PPP loans and high-frequency micro-level employment data to consider two dimensions of program targeting. First, we do not find evidence that funds flowed to areas more adversely affected by the economic effects of the pandemic, as measured by declines in hours worked or business shutdowns. If anything, funds flowed to areas less hard hit. Second, we find significant heterogeneity across banks in terms of disbursing PPP funds, which does not only reflect differences in underlying loan demand. The top-4 banks alone account for 36% of total pre-policy small business loans, but disbursed less than 3% of all PPP loans. Areas that were significantly more exposed to low-PPP banks received much lower loan allocations. As data become available, we will study employment and establishment responses to the program and the impact of PPP support on the economic recovery. Measuring these responses is critical for evaluating the social insurance value of the PPP and similar policies.

As physicians who work in New York City hospitals, we are witnessing how COVID-19 is ravaging the communities we serve. The only way to slow this pandemic is to stop the transmission of the disease. Yet despite everything we know about how the virus spreads and the unprecedented sacrifices workers have made to slow the spread, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) continues to endanger the lives of over 40,000 immigrants in more than 200 jails and prisons nationally. Most people in immigration detention have committed no criminal offense and have been deemed by ICE to pose no danger, yet they are held arbitrarily pending disposition of their asylum claims or deportation orders.

Early May weather finally brought spring relief to my family weary from weeks of dreary weather and sheltering in place. Inexplicably a dance party had broken out; the boys, giddy from the arrival of two rabbits — pandemic pets — were dancing with their grandmother as my wife and I looked on, sipping evening cocktails. Then an absentminded Twitter check confronted me with the shocking video of Ahmaud Arbery, a young black Georgian, being hunted down and killed by two white men.

Hall of Famer and 12-time All Star Mike Piazza buys a three-bedroom condominium at The Ritz-Carlton Residences, Miami Beach for $5.6 million. The 3,838-square-foot condo has views of Surprise Lake and Biscayne Bay.

Switzerland paid $3.48 million for a four-bedroom, 5,300-square-foot condo in the Pinnacle building in downtown Chicago.

Out of nearly 20 bids at a public auction for the Norman Lykes House, the winning bid came from a man who lives out of state, Heritage Auctions told The Associated Press.

In a report published Sunday, the Tampa Bay Times said that it discovered the extent of Scientology property purchases by reviewing more than 1,000 deeds and business records and then interviewed more than 90 people to reconstruct the circumstances surrounding the transactions.

According to a new report from real estate database PropertyShark, California has accounted for roughly 73% of the country’s priciest ZIP codes for home buyers this year.

With the current trend toward de-cluttering and downsizing, there are plenty of books about how to winnow down possessions to the few that are truly necessary and loved. This book shows how you can live well once that's done.

We develop a multi-risk SIR model (MR-SIR) where infection, hospitalization and fatality rates vary between groups—in particular between the “young”, “the middle-aged” and the “old”. Our MR-SIR model enables a tractable quantitative analysis of optimal policy similar to those already developed in the context of the homogeneous-agent SIR models. For baseline parameter values for the COVID-19 pandemic applied to the US, we find that optimal policies differentially targeting risk/age groups significantly outperform optimal uniform policies and most of the gains can be realized by having stricter lockdown policies on the oldest group. For example, for the same economic cost (24.3% decline in GDP), optimal semi–targeted or fully-targeted policies reduce mortality from 1.83% to 0.71% (thus, saving 2.7 million lives) relative to optimal uniform policies. Intuitively, a strict and long lockdown for the most vulnerable group both reduces infections and enables less strict lockdowns for the lower-risk groups. We also study the impacts of social distancing, the matching technology, the expected arrival time of a vaccine, and testing with or without tracing on optimal policies. Overall, targeted policies that are combined with measures that reduce interactions between groups and increase testing and isolation of the infected can minimize both economic losses and deaths in our model.

Attorney Javier Solano, in his final jury address Friday, insisted there was a “piece that didn’t fit” in the prosecution’s presentation against murder suspect Andres Fernandez in the June 30, 2016, shooting of Louis Barbati.

Yousef Selassie, 19, pleaded not guilty to first-degree grand larceny, identity theft and other charges at his Manhattan Supreme Court appearance for the lucrative scheme that operated from January through May this past year.

A Brooklyn woman discovered a wayward rooster living on the streets in Park Slope, and took it home in hopes of finding out who he belonged to.

The new law requires prosecutors to hand over most evidence in criminal cases to defense lawyers within 15 days of suspects’ arraignments. Because of the law, lawyers who once clocked out in the early evening are now working late into the night, say multiple sources in the Brooklyn DA’s office.

The renowned tough guy did his prison time without ever turning on his mob associates following a 1967 conviction that was widely considered both inside and outside organized crime as a set-up.

The teen victim was chased to the corner of Utica Ave. and Sterling Place around 4:10 p.m. Thursday before being knocked to the ground. Video then shows a horde of teens descending upon her.

Rona Phillips, the principal of KAPPA V High School in Brownsville, is in intensive care with pneumonia, officials said. “Our thoughts are with Principal Phillips and her family for a speedy recovery, and we’ll support the school community in every way we can,” said Education Department spokeswoman Miranda Barbot.

Suspect Donte West, 28, broke into a side door of the shoe store on Pitkin Ave. near Bristol St. in Brownsville about 8:45 a.m. Saturday and loaded up a Chevy Trailblazer with more than three dozen pairs of sneakers and nearly 40 baseball caps as cops arrived, police said.

Wilfredo Cervantes, 52, an artist and poet from Puerto Rico, was found dead inside his second-floor apartment on Jefferson Ave. near Ralph Ave. in Bedford-Stuyvesant on Wednesday evening.

The fourth-year DA told the Daily News in an interview that his focus has shifted dramatically during the crisis, as trials and grand juries have been put on hold across the state.

Two thousand workers from the Amalgamated Transit Union’s Local 1181 voted overwhelmingly to authorize the strike against their employer, which operates about 900 of the city’s more than 8,000 school bus routes.

Carranza made an early exit from a community meeting in Bayside last week after two parents demanded answers about violent incidents at Marie Curie Middle School. “I in no way want to show disrespect to any parent that wants to be heard, and I apologize because as a parent myself, I can only imagine the pain parents are feeling when their children have been hurt,” he said.

A fast-growing New York state program that funds math and science teacher salaries at private schools paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars to some of the city’s priciest private schools that can charge over $50,000 a year for tuition, the Daily News has learned.

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza, whose outspoken style and aggressive proposals on school diversity have made him a lightning rod in charged city schools debates, is traveling with two body guards after receiving menacing messages.

At Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, the city’s most selective public high school, only 10 black students and 20 Latino students got admissions offers, out of nearly 800 students accepted, data shows.

The proposal comes as city officials announced that only 11% of students admitted to specialized schools this year were black or Latino, compared to 70% of all city students, a figure virtually unchanged from years past.

Rona Phillips, the principal of KAPPA V High School in Brownsville, is in intensive care with pneumonia, officials said. “Our thoughts are with Principal Phillips and her family for a speedy recovery, and we’ll support the school community in every way we can,” said Education Department spokeswoman Miranda Barbot.

The United Federation of Teachers tested security camera technology from a company affiliated with Clearview AI