GLOBAL: A reporter-friend noted to me, “There’s no place to go for outside perspective. Everyone is in this.” So true, and it’s a unique moment in my three decades of journalism, and we’ll try to keep you abreast of some of the too many latest events related to the coronavirus (including some heavenly perspective), plus the usual mix of mayhem and redemption. What it looks like when the world empties.

The intensive care team at Cremona Hospital passed its limit days ago. Nurses and doctors no longer can say how long they’ve been working. When they do go home to sleep, said nurse Carla Maestrini, they wake every hour with nightmares.

GLOBAL: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a 30-day restriction on non-essential travel to the European Union, informing leaders in the Group of Seven of the travel ban in a video conference call on Monday—as Europe and the United States become the center of the

NIGERIA: Gunmen abducted the wife of the Anglican bishop of Bari diocese in Kano State, the latest in a string of violent attacks by Islamic extremists on Catholic and Protestant clergy and lay members in the region.

Iran’s rapidly expanding coronavirus outbreak threatens not only Iranians but also a uniquely vulnerable population—the Middle East’s millions of refugees. 

By early March Iran’s coronavirus death toll was the second highest outside China. A surge in cases across the Middle East—including Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, and the Gulf states—traces back to Iran. Neighboring states quickly moved to close borders and cut off travel to the country, while aid workers turned their attention to protecting the region’s victims of war and displacement.

TURKEY: “Europe will never allow itself to be blackmailed,” said European Commission Vice President Margaritis Schinas after Turkey reneged on a 2016 agreement, and opened its borders to allow Syrian refugees and other migrants to leave the country for Europe.

In 2009 Victor Bet Tamraz received a call at his home from an officer with Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security summoning him to the church he pastored. When he arrived at Tehran Pentecostal Assyrian Church, officers told him: Stop holding services in Farsi or we close the church.