AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EDT

Front-line work during pandemic falls on women, minorities

NEW YORK (AP) — As America tentatively emerges from weeks of lockdowns, the pandemic has taken its toll on workers who have been on the front lines all along.

They have been packing and delivering supplies, caring for the sick and elderly, and keeping streets and buildings clean.

They have also watched their co-workers fall ill. Thousands have gotten sick themselves. Many have died.

The burden has been borne unevenly across gender, racial and socioeconomic lines, according to an Associated Press analysis of census data in the country's 100 largest cities. They are mostly women, people of color and more likely to be immigrants.

Workers deemed “essential” are also more likely to live below the federal poverty line or hover just above it. They are more likely to have children at home, and many live with others who also have front-line jobs.

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Virus worries haunt workers demanding rights on May Day

ATHENS (AP) — No job at all, or a job without enough virus protections — millions of workers around the world are marking international labor day trapped between hunger and fear, as more countries and states reopen for business even though the pandemic is far from vanquished.

Beijing’s Forbidden City cracked open its doors and shopping malls from Texas to Indiana are set to do the same Friday, as world leaders try to find a way to salvage virus-battered economies without unleashing new waves of infections.

With traditional May Day marches curtailed by confinement, Turkish protesters tried a wildcat protest, California activists plan strikes, Czechs will honk car horns and French workers are singing from balconies to plead their causes: workplace masks, health insurance or more government aid for the jobless.

It’s a melancholy May Day for millions of garment industry workers across southeast Asia like Wiryono, a father of two in Indonesia’s capital who was laid off last month as retailers slashed orders. His side gig delivering coffee dried up, too, amid the virus lockdown. So he set up a clothing repair business to make ends meet.

“I don’t earn as much as I got from the clothing factory. But I have to feed my wife and kids every day,” said Wiryono, who goes by only one name.

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AP PHOTOS: Virus-era glimpses of a world without humans

Being human, the world of human beings is the one we tend to notice most. The crowds. The interplay of people. The buzz and bustle of what we call daily life.

But sometimes, behind that daily life, another variety of daily life exists. Now it is starting to reveal itself.

For weeks in some places, months in others, swaths of humanity have zipped themselves into hibernation, trying to ride out a viral storm that has killed some and sickened many more. As humans have disappeared into that coronavirus cocoon, though, other things have asserted themselves.

Animals, for one. And emptiness. And, counterintuitively, the majesty of some of the structures that humans have created for themselves.

This past week, Associated Press photographers documenting the era of COVID-19 were dispatched to chronicle a single theme: “Our Majestic World.” The goal: Capture a changing landscape that contains few — if any — humans and showcase the things that, for this moment in history, have taken their place. “Take your time,” these often in-the-moment photojournalists were told. “Work the light.”

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Trump speculates that China released virus in lab 'mistake'

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has speculated that China could have unleashed the coronavirus on the world due to some kind of horrible “mistake,” and his intelligence agencies said they are still examining a notion put forward by the president and aides that the pandemic may have resulted from an accident at a Chinese lab.

Trump even suggested Thursday that the release could have been intentional.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the clearinghouse for the web of U.S. spy agencies, said it had ruled out the virus being man-made but was still investigating the precise source of the global pandemic, which has killed more than 220,000 people worldwide.

Though scientists suggest the likeliest origin of the pandemic remains natural, that it spread from an infected animal to a human, Trump claimed to have seen evidence to support the theory that the origin was an infectious disease lab in Wuhan, the epicenter of the Chinese outbreak.

He said the U.S. now “is finding how it came out."

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Biden expected to publicly address sexual assault allegation

WASHINGTON (AP) — Joe Biden on Friday was expected to give his first public comments on a sexual assault allegation that has roiled his presidential campaign.

The presumptive Democratic nominee will appear on MSNBC's “Morning Joe” to address the allegation by his former Senate staffer Tara Reade that he assaulted her in the basement of a Capitol Hill office building in the 1990s. His campaign issued a statement in early April denying the allegation, and a number of former Biden staffers have defended their boss in interviews.

Biden himself has yet to face any questions or weigh in on the accusation, even as it's taken on fresh attention this week after two of Reade’s associates said she previously told them about elements of her allegations.

Republicans worried about President Donald Trump's increasingly precarious political standing are seizing on the allegation to portray Democrats as hypocrites who only defend women who allege wrongdoing against conservatives. They are digging in despite the fact that it could renew attention on the multiple sexual assault allegations lodged against Trump.

Democrats, meanwhile, are in an awkward position of vigorously validating women who come forward with their stories while defending the man who will be their standard-bearer in what many in the party consider the most important election of their lifetimes.

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'Everyone's watching': Biden's VP audition process begins

WASHINGTON (AP) — Gov. Gretchen Whitmer wore a T-shirt on television emblazoned with the words “that woman from Michigan,” a cheeky reference to President Donald Trump's dismissal of her. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar joined her onetime nemesis, Pete Buttigieg, for a friendly virtual chat on a late-night show. And Stacey Abrams speaks of her political ambition to almost anyone who will listen.

The audition to become the next vice president has begun.

And while the coronavirus has upended virtually every aspect of American life, there's one constant: The veepstakes competition that unfolds every four years is one of the most unpredictable, often awkward, rituals of politics. That's especially true this time as the pandemic has overtaken the presidential campaign, forcing those thought to be in the running for the No. 2 spot to be even more creative in getting noticed.

Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden began the process of selecting a running mate in earnest on Thursday by announcing a committee to vet potential candidates. The panel's work will likely last through July, he said, meaning months in which some candidates will appear up one day only to fade and potentially be replaced with someone who isn't on anyone's radar the next.

Scott Reed, who managed Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign, said the search for a running mate often takes twists and turns because it's one of the few things a nominee can control after a primary spent largely reacting to surrounding political forces. He said reverberations from the choice can last for years.

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Lives Lost: Virus silences angelic voice of WWII evacuee

LISBON, Portugal (AP) — After Adolf Hitler annexed his native Austria and Allied bombs laid waste to Vienna, Hannelore Cruz traveled to Portugal without her parents as a refugee from hunger, cold and postwar deprivation. She arrived with a group of other children when she was 5 years old.

A Portuguese family raised her and she later married. Eventually, she could only speak a few words of German. She told people she was born in Vienna, but only went back to Austria a couple of times to visit.

Cruz, despite becoming completely Portuguese herself, nonetheless stood out in the country that adopted her, according to the oldest of her five grandchildren.

Her grandson lovingly describes her flamboyant style and vanity. His face lights up when he recalls an outstanding singing voice that “lent magic” to the weddings and church recitals where she performed.

“She had an angelic voice, an angelic voice,” José Miguel Cruz da Costa, 35, said of his grandmother. “It was an extraordinary thing.”

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5 things to know today - that aren't about the virus

Your daily look at nonvirus stories in the news:

1. BIDEN EXPECTED TO ADDRESS SEXUAL ASSAULT ALLEGATION The presidential candidate will appear on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” to address the allegation by his former Senate staffer Tara Reade that he assaulted her in the 1990s.

2. ‘EVERYONE’S WATCHING’ To see who will be Joe Biden’s running mate, with Amy Klobuchar, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Gretchen Whitmer and Stacey Abrams believed to be potential picks.

3. WATCHDOG: US NIXES TALIBAN ATTACKS DATA Washington is eager for the U.S.-Taliban agreement to be viewed as successful so that Trump can meet his commitments on pulling troops out of Afghanistan.

4. START YOUR ENGINES NASCAR will resume its season without fans starting May 17 at Darlington Raceway in South Carolina and then race three more times in a 10-day span.

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Hairstylist gives free haircuts to Thai health frontliners

BANGKOK (AP) — Scrubs may be in fashion during the coronavirus crisis, but split ends — never. That's where Pornsupa Hattayong comes in.

The 43-year-old hairstylist is boosting the morale of frontline medical workers by dispensing free haircuts at Bangkok hospitals.

Pornsupa says she was almost embarrassed to offer her service, thinking it was too trivial. But she’s been overwhelmed by the response it drew from desperate, shaggy-haired doctors, nurses and support staff wrapped up in the fight against COVID-19.

Thailand’s hair salons have been closed for more than a month, to help stop the spread of the virus.

On her first hospital visit, Pornsupa had counted on cutting the hair of six health workers, but 30 turned up. On her second visit, 20 customers turned into 50.

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Socked by virus, comic book industry tries to draw next page

The pandemic has transformed Christina Blanch, owner of Aw Yeah Comics, into a nightly TV host.

Nine times a week, Blanch leads a livestream from the store she lives above in Muncie, Indiana, to sell some comics and interact with regulars. She holds up issues one by one, usually for $5 or $10, and takes down addresses from buyers. It’s a way to get by but helps keep the shop's community spirit alive. The show has a warm, thank-God-we-have-each-other feel to it. Sometimes Blanch sips a Modelo or vents about a difficult day. She calls it “What We Do in the Comic Shop.”

Long a repository for tales of world-threatening cataclysms and doomsday dystopias, the comic shop in the coronavirus era now finds itself drawn into a fight for its very survival. The crisis, felt across retailers, poses a particular threat to comic book shops, a pop-culture institution that has, through pluck and passion, held out through digital upheaval while remaining stubbornly resistant to corporate ownership.

Even as the pandemic era takes on the appearance of a comic — desolate urban centers, masks everywhere — the ink-and-paper industry is at a standstill that some believe jeopardizes its future, casting doubt on how many shops will make it through and what might befall the gathering places of proud nerds, geeks and readers everywhere.

It won’t go — insert “POW!” bubble — without a fight.