SYDNEY/JERUSALEM/MONTREAL — From Air Canada to China’s CDB Aviation, airlines and leasing firms are rushing to permanently convert older passenger jets into freighters, betting on a boom in e-commerce as the value of used planes tumbles amid the pandemic.

CRUISE SHIP singer Harry G. Bayona was home for a two-month holiday, which has since dragged on for more than half a year, and counting. 

THE KISSING SCENE is mandatory for certain types of drama, but became forbidden overnight because of work safety rules imposed during the pandemic. The US TV network Lifetime got around the prohibition by having actors kiss through plexiglass, and then digitally removing the barrier in post-production. These adjustments, some small and many large, all of them disruptive in some way, paint a picture of an industry having to frantically make up new rules as fresh problems arose.

MARCH is a distant memory now, the last time many of us did things that we would deem non-essential. But as the lockdown weeks stretched into months, keeping people trapped at home, the dividing line between things that were vital to survival and those that were merely nice to have began to blur. And it’s fair to say that somewhere along the way, online content creators cemented a place in the homebound routines of a population starved for entertainment and connection. 

HARD TIMES require most people to strip down to bare essentials. With work-from-home arrangements and mask mandates rendering make-up more or less superfluous, it’s hard to imagine how the cosmetics industry could possibly have survived. But contrary to expectations, it did, with the help of clever adaptations, like positioning the product as a small luxury, or a reassuring remnant of the user’s pre-pandemic life.

THE INITIAL panic that set in during the beginning of the March lockdown has become something else altogether in the months we have spent indoors.

MILAN/COPENHAGEN  — Denmark’s coronavirus-driven mink cull has put the fur business in a spin, with industry officials expecting fashion houses such as Louis Vuitton, Dior and Fendi to snap up fox and chinchilla to fill the gap.

SPORTS FANS will long remember 2020 as a year like no other, with cancelled tournaments, empty stadiums, and the Olympic year moving to 2021 after the Tokyo Games were lost to the pandemic.

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