Lebanon faces threat to stability

TRIPOLI, Lebanon (AP) — Living in a slum built precariously on the banks of a sewage-tainted river in Lebanon, Faiqqa Homsi feels her family being pushed closer and closer to the edge.

A mother of five, she was already struggling, relying on donations to care for a baby daughter with cancer. The coronavirus shutdown cost her husband his meager income driving a school bus. She hoped to earn some change selling carrot juice after a charity gave her a juicer. But as Lebanon’s currency collapsed, carrots became too expensive.

“It is all closing in our face,” Homsi said.

Lebanese are growing more desperate as jobs disappear and their money’s value evaporates in a terrifying confluence of events. An unprecedented economic crisis, nationwide protests and coronavirus pose the biggest threat to stability since the end of the civil war in 1990, and there are fears of a new slide into violence.

Nowhere is the despair deeper than in Tripoli, Homsi’s hometown and Lebanon’s poorest city. Overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim and home to over 700,000 people, Tripoli has suffered years of neglect and is stigmatized with violence and extremism. Mounting poverty is turning it into a powder keg.

Shanghai Disneyland reopens

SHANGHAI (AP) — Visitors in face masks streamed into Shanghai Disneyland as the theme park reopened Monday in a high-profile step toward reviving tourism that was shut down by the coronavirus pandemic.

The House of Mouse’s experience in Shanghai, the first of its parks to reopen, foreshadows hurdles global entertainment industries might face. Disney is limiting visitor numbers, requiring masks and checking for the virus’s telltale fever.

China, where the pandemic began in December, was the first country to reopen factories and other businesses after declaring the disease under control in March even as infections rise and controls are tightened in some other countries.

“We hope that today’s reopening serves as a beacon of light across the globe, providing hope and inspiration to everyone,” the president of Shanghai Disney Resort, Joe Schott, told reporters.

Tourism has been hit especially hard by controls imposed worldwide that shut down airline and cruise ship travel, theme parks and cinemas. Disney blamed a 91% plunge in its latest quarter profit on $1.4 billion in virus-related costs.