New York - The City Which Couldn't Sleep
From Our Own Correspondent
BBC
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 2 May 2020
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
At the height of the Covid-19 outbreak in April, a New Yorker was dying almost every two minutes — more than 800 a day - four times the city’s normal death rate. The pandemic appears to have passed its peak and a gradual reopening is planned after more than 40 days of lockdown. Nick Bryant describes the impact of the virus on the city he loves and on his own family.
Ever since Kim Jong-un failed to show up in mid-April for the festivities marking his grandfather's birth the rumour mill has gone into overdrive. The sheer number of theories about the North Korean leader's whereabouts and state of health reflects the dearth of information about how things work inside the Hermit Kingdom says Laura Bicker.
As the coronavirus pandemic forces countries everywhere to keep people indoors, those who live with abusive partners are even more vulnerable. In Jordan, social media is providing one outlet for those unable to step outside says Charlie Faulkner.
So far Ukraine seems to be weathering the Covid-19 outbreak better than many other parts of Europe. But with an antiquated health system and an economy battered by a six year old conflict with Russian backed separatists in the east, the outlook is far from bright. Ukraine’s best known contemporary novelist , Andrei Kurkov, focuses on people living near the frontline in the war ravaged Donbas region in his latest book, which is called The Grey Bees.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:05.4 | Good morning. |
| 0:06.7 | Today the leader vanishes from public gaze, or does he? |
| 0:11.6 | But public speculation might be dangerous. We're in North Korea |
| 0:16.1 | where it's hard to divine fact from fiction. Eastern Ukraine has been |
| 0:21.6 | elbowed out of the headlines in the past few weeks, |
| 0:24.5 | but is suffering the attentions of the coronavirus |
| 0:28.0 | under sporadic shelling, as the conflict with Russian separatists drags on. |
| 0:34.0 | And it's emerging in many countries that the virus is keeping company with another problem, |
| 0:40.0 | domestic violence. |
| 0:42.0 | We hear the story of one woman in Jordan. |
| 0:45.0 | First, ambulances screaming down Fifth Avenue past the shuttered elegant stores, |
| 0:52.0 | bodies loaded onto tractor trailers outside hospitals in |
| 0:56.1 | full public view. New York has had a harsh experience. The epicenter of a country with over a million people infected with coronavirus. |
| 1:07.0 | Governor Andrew Cuomo has said that people have been to hell and back as a gradual reopening is planned. Throughout the last 40 days of lockdown |
| 1:16.7 | our correspondent Nick Bryant has been working and preparing for the birth of his child. |
| 1:22.1 | The headline seemed to be crowded. preparing for the birth of his child. |
| 1:23.0 | The headlines seem to be crowding in on us. |
| 1:26.0 | The coronavirus had reached American shores. |
| 1:28.0 | It had come to the outer suburbs of New York. |
| 1:31.0 | There were cases in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan. By now the |
| 1:35.7 | news was coming word of mouth. Someone had tested positive in our downtown office complex. |
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