Arts & Life

At a time when millions of Americans are losing jobs at restaurants, hotels and airlines because of the coronavirus pandemic, a few large companies are on a hiring spree.

That's because despite mass shutdowns and lockdowns, Americans still need food and medicine. And that means a new hiring push at supermarkets such as Kroger and Albertsons, pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens, convenience and discount stores like Dollar General and 7-Eleven, and retail giants like Amazon and Walmart.

It seemed like the perfect day for viewing the stunning flower-filled trees.

With warm temperatures and the sun out, crowds of people strolled under the cherry blossoms and spread out picnic blankets in Tokyo's Yoyogi Park last weekend, all but ignoring the posted signs warning of the dangers of COVID-19 spreading.

Near one of the tall white signs, two pairs of young women stood together and took selfies under the canopy of flowers, oblivious to the warnings.

One of the pioneers of Afro-funk music, the saxophonist Manu Dibango, has died of COVID-19. He was 86 years old, and died in Paris. Internationally, he was best known for his 1972 song "Soul Makossa," though his entire oeuvre could have been the soundtrack to a cooler 1970s than most people lived. But that one, funk-drenched hit, lit by Dibango's burning saxophone, went on to influence the sound of American disco — and its hooky spoken intro helped power songs by Michael Jackson and Rihanna.

Updated at 4:17 p.m. ET

The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 2,112.98 points, a record for a single day, as negotiations continued over a massive stimulus package to help the crippled economy deal with the coronavirus pandemic. The Dow gained nearly 11.4%, the most since 1933.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Monday a decision to slash $1 billion in U.S. aid to Afghanistan, saying that Washington is "disappointed" in the country's rival leaders, who have been unable to form a government following last year's disputed presidential elections.

I remember, I was sitting on the floor of my friend's bedroom, staring up at his tiny silver box of a TV. It was 2003, and I was in the second grade. He was playing a game — piloting a cute little character through a bubbly, dreamy cartoon town filled with randomly selected animal villagers, flowers and fruit trees (that occasionally yielded money bags). That was my first encounter with Nintendo's Animal Crossing. I went home and begged my parents for the game.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 marked the United States' official entrance into World War II. It also pushed the U.S. government's legacy of anti-Asian sentiment to its most extreme.

Ruling unanimously in favor of states' rights on Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court said that a videographer who spent two decades documenting the salvaging of Blackbeard's ship cannot sue the state of North Carolina in federal court for using his videos without his permission.

Although the decision had more to do with mundane copyright law than the law of the high seas, it was a victory for states claiming immunity from copyright infringement lawsuits.

More than half a dozen states have pushed back presidential primaries because of the coronavirus outbreak. Wisconsin, which has a primary on April 7, hasn't. State leaders are holding on tightly to that date, despite Monday's stay-at-home order issued by Gov. Tony Evers.

Evers urged voters to cast mail-in ballots, saying he and his wife have already done so.

"It's very easy," Evers said Monday. "If we can do it, you can do it."

One of the members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force said she had a "little low-grade fever" over the weekend and stayed home from work that day.

Dr. Deborah Birx, the task force response coordinator, said she went to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center late Saturday night and got tested. The test came back was negative.

"So actually [it was] probably a [gastrointestinal] thing," she said at a task force briefing with President Trump looking on. "But, you know, I'm meticulous. I'm a physician. I looked it up."

President Trump has drawn repeated comparisons between the novel coronavirus outbreak and the flu season.

"We have a lot of people dying from the flu on top of everything else," he said Monday. "It's very bad. It looks like it could be over 50,000."

The reality so far for the current flu season is still emerging. There have been at least 23,000 deaths from flu during the 2019-2020 season, according to estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The upper range of the estimate for deaths is 59,000.

The Trump administration announced Monday that the federal government was making it much easier to collect samples to test people for the coronavirus.

A new "self swab" technique would enable people to collect their own samples, making the process much simple, quicker and possibly safer, officials said at a White House briefing.

People with disabilities are asking the federal government to stop what they say are policies by states and hospitals that will ration care — and deny them treatment for the coronavirus.

On Monday, several disability groups filed a complaint against the state of Washington, one of the states hardest hit by the pandemic.

A former oil supertanker that became the U.S. Navy's lead floating hospital set sail late Monday from its home port in San Diego. The white-hulled USNS Mercy's next stop: the Port of Los Angeles, where it is to help relieve the strain being put on that city's hospitals by the coronavirus pandemic.

Canada is conducting a massive airlift, bringing thousands home at no cost in cooperation with Canada's commercial airlines. As domestic routes are cut back, repatriation flights are increasing, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in a live broadcast on Monday.

Bailout is a dirty word.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines bailout as "a rescue from financial distress."

So it is accurate to call the $1 trillion-plus package being debated in Congress a bailout.

But let's not call it that this time.

More than 8,100 members of the U.S. National Guard have been mobilized across the U.S. to help communities deal with the coronavirus. In some states, they're moving supplies and people. In California, they're working at food banks; in Arizona, some members are restocking shelves.

On Monday, NPR's Ailsa Chang interviewed Gen. Joseph Lengyel, chief of the National Guard Bureau. Here are two questions she posed to him, and his responses, which have been edited for length and clarity.