Erin Ironsides has felt the economic impact of the pandemic first-hand after recently being laid off from the airline she worked for.

Coronavirus roundup: Developments in India and rest of world  Times of IndiaView Full coverage on Google News

Two Indians flown back from Gulf to Kerala test Covid-19 positive  Hindustan TimesView Full coverage on Google News

1. Coronavirus roundup: Developments in India and rest of world  Times of India
2. Mint Covid Tracker: Fresh infections, deaths rising faster in India than most countries  Livemint
3. Vikram Chandra decodes geographical concentration of Covid-19 in India  Hindustan Times
4. Coronavirus India Live Updates | Covid-19 Tracker: Total corona cases in India Today Latest News | Maharashtra, Delhi, Gujarat, Telangana  The Indian Express
5. Coronavirus update: COVID-19 cases in India nears 60,000; over 3,000 fresh cases for third day. State-wise tally  Livemint
6. View Full coverage on Google News

Clashes erupt after people complain about a perceived failure to help the poor during the pandemic.

President Trump has made several claims about coronavirus testing in the US - is he right?

Ottawa Fire says a garage three vehicles were destroyed Saturday morning after a fire broke out on Carp Road.

Facebook? It's a well known fact that those guy..

Price: $19.95

Written by N.K. Jemisin and illustrated by Jamal Campbell, the comic book's superhero is breaking barriers in secret.

Showrunner Damon Lindelof and his writers and producers have finally solved the show's biggest mystery.

In a year without industry-shaking trends, this year's list leans toward the titles with forward-thinking aesthetics, challenges to convention or a sheer ability to dazzle.

Darth versus Luke. A levitating Yoda. And the greatest duel of them all.

The game doesn’t celebrate winners but those who persevere and endure.

The black comics audience should be more demanding after seeing what the HBO series accomplished.

The game teeters over the line between childlike and childish.

DC's "Joker" may have the edge on Marvel.

The Democratic presidential candidate gets a shout-out in the new film.

"Onward" and "Soul" deal with the eternal and the ethereal.

A group of coronavirus patients staged a protest outside an isolation centre in northern Nigeria to demand increased medical attention and food, officials and residents have said.

A record number of migrants crossed the English Channel on Friday.

Police made a number of arrests and issued fines as they broke up a small anti-lockdown protest in central London.

Starsky Robotics has begun testing unmanned, remotely operated trucks on highways. The vehicles are being pitched as a solution for the industry's massive driver shortage.

A newly opened Delaware seafood restaurant has a unique item on its menu: robot servers. The machines are the latest example of intelligent machines working in the restaurant industry.

Loon — an Internet-providing balloon service owned by Alphabet, Google’s parent company — will give “mountain villagers” in Kenya the opportunity to purchase 4G service.

A Japanese temple has settled on a new plan for connecting with the masses, one that channels ancient wisdom through the technology of the future.

To help law enforcement officers resolve emergency situations, one company has created empathy training based in virtual reality.

The SeaBubble is a new form of urban transportation that could offer Parisians a watery alternative to hailing a taxi, driving a car or hopping on an electric scooter.

How do you help millions of passengers navigate one of the world's largest airports? In Turkey, the answer is a fleet of humanoid robots.

Researchers at Caltech have unveiled a complex new robot with the ability move between flight and walking on two legs. The machine unique design was inspired by birds.

NBC has rolled out a new feature that allows people to shop while they watch television, but a question remains: will anybody use it?

As fires tear across California, a Silicon Valley technology company believes artificial intelligence could be the key to preventing them in the future.

Expectations were high for Jacksonville heading into the season. The game charters at Pro Football Focus ranked them as the league’s top secondary, the second-best pass rush and the seventh-best run-stopping unit in 2018.

The Boston Red Sox won 108 games in 2018, the most in franchise history.

The Patriots put their stamp back on the AFC East after throttling the Miami Dolphins 38-7 on Sunday. The Colts are next.

Houston’s defensive front, featuring one-man wrecking crew J.J. Watt, has the sixth-highest adjusted sack rate.

Colts have the the fifth-best run-stopping unit per PFF and the fourth-highest stuff rate per Football Outsiders.

Pittsburgh is stuffing 25 percent of rushers in 2018, eighth-most in the NFL.

Since 1969, only 12 teams have recorded baseball’s best record and gone on to win a championship that same year. Just seven of those 12 won 108 or more games during the regular season. The Red Sox are two wins away from joining that elite company.

Against No. 1 receiver types like Mike Evans, the Panthers rank fourth-best per Football Outsiders' Defense-adjusted Value Over Average.

This year’s Classic, a 1¼-mile race for 3-year-olds and up, will be held at Churchill Downs and features several strong entrants.

Kansas City's opponent, Arizona, is scoring slightly more than a point per possession, making it the NFL's second-worst offense.

The Chargers are scoring 2.4 points per drive, the sixth-most this season, and are only forced to go three-and-out once out of every four drives.

This week’s opponent, the Arizona Cardinals, gives Aaron Rodgers and the Packers a great chance to break their losing skid.

Thursday night matchups are historically difficult on road teams like Jacksonville. Since 2016, the road team is 17-33 in these games, and that includes a 3-12 record in 2018.

The two teams in control of the NFC's wild-card slots battle head-to-head, while the rest of the NFL playoff picture got much clearer despite four of the AFC’s top teams losing.

Atlanta is on a five-game losing streak but their offense is scoring 2.3 points per drive in 2018, the fifth-highest rate in the NFL. That should be more than enough against Arizona's awful offense.

The Redskins need two more victories to close out the season, including one against the Eagles in the regular-season finale, just to get their playoff chances to 80 percent.

• Facebook has been in negotiations for months to lease over 700,000 square feet at the Farley Building on Manhattan's West Side. 
• Office leasing activity in the city has plummeted, giving the blockbuster deal even more importance as a sign of life in a suddenly lethargic market.
• The coronavirus has spurred a deep downturn in the economy that is already being felt in the city's commercial real-estate market, prompting a big slowdown in leasing activity.  
• The rapid expansion of tech in recent years has propelled the city's office market. Real estate execs say that Facebook's big deal is a key barometer. 
• The crisis also raises questions whether tenants will ever occupy office space the same way as companies and their workforces around the world grow familiar with remote work. 
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Leasing activity in New York City's multi-billion-dollar commercial office market has dropped precipitously as the coronavirus has battered the market and raised questions of when — and even if — tenants can return to the workplace in a post-Covid world.

Amid the growing concerns the crisis will smother what had been robust demand for office space, eyes in the city's real estate industry have turned to a pending blockbuster deal on the West Side that could offer a signal of confidence to the market.

Facebook is in talks to take over 700,000 square feet of space in the Farley Building, a block-long property across Eighth Avenue from Penn Station.

"If that deal happens, then this market will be just fine," said Peter Riguardi, the New York area chairman and president of JLL. "If the deal happens but it's renegotiated, it will be fine, but it will be a trend that every tenant can follow. And if it doesn't happen, I would be very concerned about the market."

Read More: Inside the drama over control of the iconic Chrysler Building: A real-estate tycoon and a prestigious college are renegotiating a critical $150 million deal.

Facebook's NYC real-estate footprint

Last year, Facebook signed on for 1.5 million square feet in the Hudson Yards mega-development just west of the Farley Building, taking space in three new office towers at the project.

For months the $600 billion Silicon Valley-based social media giant has been in negotiations for even more space at the nearby Farley Building, whose interior landlord Vornado Realty Trust is redeveloping to include newly built office and retail space.

Vornado had originally expected to complete the deal with Facebook in early March, according to a source familiar with the negotiations. The talks have continued on as the virus pandemic has brought commerce and social life to a virtual halt. The source expected the lease, which will commit Facebook to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in rent for the space over the life of the lease, to soon be completed.

In a conference call with investors and analysts on Tuesday to discuss Vornado's first-quarter earnings, the company's CEO Steve Roth also hinted that the Facebook deal was still on track.

"There's another large tenant that has been rumored to be that we've been in dialogue with," Roth said, not directly naming the company. "That conversation is going forward aggressively and hopefully maybe even almost complete."

Rapid growth in Big Tech leasing before coronavirus

Recent real-estate decisions by Facebook and other tech companies have worried real-estate executives that they may reconsider their footprint after years of dramatic growth. Facebook on Thursday revealed that the bulk of its over 40,000-person workforce will be asked to work remotely for the remainder of the year, a timeline that appears to show the company is using caution in returning to its footprint.

Read More: Neiman Marcus just filed for bankruptcy, and it could mark a major blow to NYC's glitzy Hudson Yards — one of the most expensive mega-malls in US history. Here's why.

Real-estate executives have expressed concern that tenants may become accustomed to offloading a portion or even the bulk of their workforce to a remote-working model, leading them to drastically reduce their office commitments.

At a minimum, the economic upheaval has appeared to spur a newfound sense of caution in tech companies that have grown rapidly in recent years. Alphabet called off negotiations to expand its San Francisco offices by over 2 million square feet in recent weeks, according to a report from The Information.  

Tech has been a big driver of demand for office space

In recent years the tech industry had become one of the most voracious takers of space in the city, helping to push up commercial rents and spur the construction of new office space.

In 2019, tech firms accounted for 24.5% of the 31.6 million square feet of leasing activity in Manhattan, eclipsing the financial industry as the city's biggest space-taking sector for the first time, according to data from the real estate services and brokerage firm CBRE.

In 2010 tech leasing comprised just 4% of the 24.2 million square feet that was leased in the Manhattan market that year, CBRE said.

"Nothing has buoyed the confidence of landlords more in recent years than tech tenants," said Sacha Zarba, a leasing executive at CBRE who specializes in working with tech firms. "It didn't matter where your building was. If it was attractive to tech, you would stand a good chance to lease your space. If that industry retrenches a bit, it removes a big driver of demand."

The Manhattan office market has slowed rapidly in recent weeks as the virus crisis has battered the economy and shut down daily life.

About 844,000 square feet of space was leased in Manhattan in April, according to CBRE, 64% lower than the five-year monthly average. In the first four months of the year, nearly seven million square feet was leased, a decline of 30% for the same period a year ago. 

So far, however, there are signs that tech continues to snap up space.

After scuttling plans to develop a 25,000 person second headquarters space in Long Island City last year, Amazon purchased 424 Fifth Avenue, a former flagship department store for Lord & Taylor, for nearly $1 billion in March. That property totals about 660,000 square feet. Late last year, before the pandemic hit U.S. shores but had flared in China, Amazon also leased 335,000 square feet at 410 Tenth Avenue.

The commitments of major tech companies absorb millions of square feet in the city, but they also help fuel a larger ecosystem of tenants that occupies an even larger footprint. That means that a decrease in the real estate of just a few big tech players could be multiplied across the market as smaller players in the sector follow suit.

"Those big tech firms do a fantastic job of training and credentialing tech talent on the city," said Matt Harrigan, a co-founder of Company, a space incubator at 335 Madison Avenue that provides offices and community for both startups and more established tech firms. "Google and Facebook spin off talent who start or join other tech ventures that take space. That's what's so important about having the large presence of those companies here."

Have a tip? Contact Daniel Geiger at dgeiger@businessinsider.com or via encrypted messaging app Signal at +1 (646) 352-2884, or Twitter DM at @dangeiger79. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.

SEE ALSO: What to expect when you're back in the office: 7 real-estate experts break down what the transition will look like, and why the workplace may never be the same

SEE ALSO: Major tenants are delaying big leases in NYC as they re-think their office space needs for the post-coronavirus world

SEE ALSO: As WeWork and flex-space rivals stumble, 18 million square feet of space in NYC is at risk. Here's what that means for the real-estate market.

SEE ALSO: BI Prime Edit in Viking Neiman Marcus just filed for bankruptcy, and it could mark a major blow to NYC's glitzy Hudson Yards — one of the most expensive mega-malls in US history. Here's why.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: We tested a machine that brews beer at the push of a button

• Colombian delivery app Rappi is testing pilot robot deliveries in Colombia.
• Rappi operates in several Latin American countries, and last year SoftBank invested one billion dollars into the startup.
• Deliveries are made using Kiwibot, a delivery robot from a Colombian owned company in California.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Colombian delivery app Rappi is yet another company turning to robots to reduce reliance on human workers during the coronavirus pandemic. 

In addition to Colombia, Rappi operates in Mexico, Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil. Last spring, SoftBank invested $1 billion — one-fifth of its Innovation Fund for Latin America — in the startup. It was founded in 2015, and other investors include Sequoia Capital, Andreesen Horowitz, and Y Combinator.

Colombia is currently under a lockdown set to end in May, though it may be extended again. Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported on the lack of coronavirus testing throughout Latin America, making it difficult to assess how widespread the virus is in the region.

Like in other countries, the Colombian delivery app is using robots to complete orders at a time when people are at risk of catching the virus from interacting with others. So far, the robots are part of a pilot in Medellin, with potential to expand.

Here's what it looks like. 

SEE ALSO: Nonprofits, truck drivers, food banks, and others are turning to a little-known Google Maps feature to navigate life amid the coronavirus pandemic

Rappi is using robots for deliveries in Medellin, the capital of Colombia.

Typically, Rappi works similarly to GrubHub or DoorDash, with delivery drivers picking up orders and bringing them to customers' doors.

As the coronavirus spread between people, options for contactless delivery became more popular.

Deliveries in the pilot program use Kiwibot robots, from a California company with a Medellin office.

The four-wheeled delivery robots have orange flags to call attention from walkers, drivers, and bikers.

Customers stuck at home because of the coronavirus can order and pay for meals digitally, and then last mile delivery is completed by the robots.

Robots can carry deliveries up to five square inches in size, and are disinfected between orders.

Source: The Star

Kiwibots have a stereo camera system to sense its surroundings as it moves.

The sensor system allows it to react to lights and obstacles.

Kiwibots are equipped with corner recognition, which allows them to create safe paths on sidewalks.

Kiwibot emphasized its robots ability to "seamlessly mesh into the fabric of urban landscapes," with technology like street crossing mode.

Source: Kiwibot

Rappi says it completes about 120 deliveries each day with the 15 robots in the pilot area.

Source: The Star

It plans to run the program until July, and then potentially expand to other cities.

Kiwibots have previously been used for deliveries at colleges including UC Berkeley, and Kiwibot says it has made more than 30,000 deliveries since it started in 2017.

Source: The New York Times