| Thursday, April 16, 2020 | | | | We’re covering criticism of President Trump’s decision to cut funds to the World Health Organization, South Korea’s unusual elections and a Wuhan diary. | | | President Trump announced his intention to review funding to the World Health Organization during a briefing at the Rose Garden in the White House. Doug Mills/The New York Times | | | The head of the World Health Organization expressed dismay over President Trump’s declaration that he would halt U.S. funding to the agency as the number of cases of coronavirus worldwide neared two million. | | | “W.H.O. is not only fighting Covid-19,” said its director general, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, on Wednesday. “We’re also working to address polio, measles, malaria, Ebola, H.I.V., tuberculosis, malnutrition, cancer, diabetes, mental health and many other diseases and conditions.” | | | Mr. Trump, facing building criticism in the U.S. over a response to the pandemic seen as slow and ineffective, lashed out on Tuesday night, claiming that it was the W.H.O. that had made devastating mistakes and saying that he had ordered the funding frozen pending a review. | | | In the U.S., the virus has killed more than 25,000 people and infected at least 600,000. | | | Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, sharply denounced Mr. Trump’s announcement, promising to “swiftly challenge” the move and calling it “dangerous” and “illegal.” Congress had already appropriated the W.H.O. funds, but the Trump administration has previously diverted allocated funds to other programs without lawmakers’ approval. | | | What is the W.H.O.: Founded after World War II as part of the United Nations, the Geneva-based organization alerts nations about threats, fighting diseases, developing policy and improving access to care. Here’s a look at what the organization does and how American funding cuts could affect it. | | | ■ U.S. retail sales plunged 8.7 percent in March, by far the largest drop in the nearly three decades the government has tracked the data, and U.S. stocks tumbled. Stocks in Europe were also lower. | | | ■ New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, said he would require residents to wear face coverings in public settings where they could not keep six feet away from others, making a federal recommendation mandatory. | | | ■ Children returned to school in Denmark on Wednesday as a handful of European countries began lifting constraints on daily life for the first time since the start of the coronavirus crisis. | | | South Korean election officials sort out ballots at a polling station in Seoul. Ahn Young-Joon/Associated Press | | | Results are expected within hours after South Koreans voted on Wednesday to choose the 300 members of the country’s National Assembly, one of the first national elections in a country with a severe outbreak of coronavirus. | | | The election pits President Moon Jae-in’s Democratic Party against the main conservative opposition group, the United Future Party. Mr. Moon and his party got a boost in recent weeks as South Korea appeared to bring the outbreak under control with a fast and effective operation to isolate infected people. | | | The country has reported fewer than 50 new cases a day in the past week. | | | Precautions: Voters wore masks, used hand sanitizer and gloves, and everyone had to get their temperature taken before casting their ballot. | | | Those with signs of fever were led to separate voting booths. People already in mandatory quarantine, currently more than 13,000, were allowed to vote later in the day, after the polls closed to the general public. | | | Fishing by the Yangtze River in Wuhan, China, on Monday. Roman Pilipey/EPA, via Shutterstock | | | An online diary by the writer Fang Fang became vital reading for tens of millions of Chinese readers — a window into the fears, frustrations and hopes of Wuhan residents during their 11 weeks under lockdown. | | | It also drew condemnation from zealous nationalists who saw it as an effort to malign the government and undermine the heroic image of Wuhan. | | | Response: Ms. Fang has called herself a witness to history, highlighting the bravery of doctors and others. “If authors have any responsibilities in the face of disaster, the greatest of them is to bear witness,” she said. | | | The Super-Kamiokande Neutrino Observatory, located more than 3,000 feet below Mount Ikeno near the city of Hida, Japan. Kamioka Observatory, Institute for Cosmic Ray Research, University of Tokyo | | | A just-published study offers something completely different to think about. Researchers believe they have a bead on one of the deepest scientific mysteries of existence: why the matter and antimatter created in the Big Bang didn’t cancel each other out. | | | Neutrinos and their mirror images in antimatter, the researchers found, don’t behave with absolute symmetry. And that may be why matter won over nothingness, our Science desk’s cosmic affairs correspondent, Dennis Overbye, explains in an essay that also mentions the engines of the Starship Enterprise, cites a number of Nobels and calls humanity “the beauty mark of the universe.” | | | PAID POST: A MESSAGE FROM CAMPAIGN MONITOR | | TEST: Email Marketing 101: Never Sacrifice Beauty for Simplicity | | A drag-and-drop email builder, a gallery of templates and turnkey designs, personalized customer journeys, and engagement segments. It's everything you need to create stunning, results-driven email campaigns in minutes. And with Campaign Monitor, you have access to it all, along with award-winning support around the clock. It's beautiful email marketing done simply. | | | Learn More | | | | U.S. presidential elections: Senator Elizabeth Warren endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden, the latest in a string of prominent endorsements for the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. The show of unity is designed to quash the narrative of a fractured Democratic Party ahead of the November elections. | | | Stephen Hiltner/The New York Times | | | Snapshot: Above, Indigenous children in Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. The photograph was taken by a Travel editor for The Times during the difficult trek to the ancient city of Ciudad Perdida in February, just before the pandemic suspended tourism. | | | What we’re reading: This Chicago Reader article about a doughnut shop parking lot that was once central to the city’s counterculture. “It’s a great reminder of the history buried beneath every street corner,” says Michael Roston, a Science editor. | | | Cook: A frittata for lunch, or dinner. The onion and potato dish can be served with a salad for a light dinner, or you can tuck slices of it between bread for a satisfying lunch. | | | Nurses give Covid-19 nasal swab tests at a drive-through site in Paramus, New Jersey. Ryan Christopher Jones for The New York Times | | | Jonathan: Why did you zero in on New Jersey? | | | Rukmini: It started with a press conference that I watched last week by the governor of New Jersey, where he said that the testing was going to get worse, not better. He said that the barrier before was not enough specimen kits, but now the entire supply chain is riddled with bottlenecks. | | | And so I thought, let’s follow a nasal swab from beginning to end, if we can, and let’s see exactly what the human constraints are. And the constraints are everything from not enough kits, to not enough personnel, not enough chemicals, not enough lab space, and not enough scientists for what has become a crisis in this country. | | | Is this the story of testing nationwide? | | | It seems to be what’s happening. Initially, there weren’t enough specimen kits. But what happened is that as each new hot spot has popped up, there’s now a backlog throughout the entire supply chain. | | | What surprised you the most in your reporting? | | | Seeing Americans lining up the night before to get a very important test for their health done. When I showed up, there was a mile-long line of cars. The engines had been cut off. The windows were fogged up. Drivers were basically asleep in their cars. I showed up at 6:30 in the morning when the center was going to open at 8. And, you know, I’ve covered wars all over. And these are conditions that I’m used to seeing in the developing world, not in America. | | | That’s it for this briefing. See you next time. | | Thank you
To Melissa Clark for the recipe, and to Theodore Kim and Jahaan Singh for the rest of the break from the news. You can reach the team at briefing@nytimes.com. | | P.S.
• We’re listening to “The Daily.” Our latest episode is about a day in the life of a Brooklyn hospital during the coronavirus pandemic.
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• Lindsay Crouse, an editor with Times Opinion video (and a sub-elite marathoner), speaks with two Olympic track athletes on how coronavirus has affected professional athletes. R.S.V.P. here for the call, at 4 p.m. Eastern today (4 a.m. Friday in Hong Kong). | | | Were you sent this briefing by a friend? Sign up here to get the Morning Briefing. | | |
