| We’re covering new coronavirus cases in Hong Kong, calls to shut down wildlife markets in Indonesia and a reporter’s four times (yes, four!) in quarantine. | | | Walking in the streets of Hong Kong on Wednesday. Anthony Wallace/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images | | | After 23 days without any locally transmitted coronavirus infections, Hong Kong reported two new cases on Wednesday. A third case recorded on the same day was imported from Pakistan, bringing the city’s total number of infections to 1,051. | | | The new cases show the challenges of eradicating a community outbreak. | | | Hong Kong had begun to cautiously restart some previously restricted activities. Since last week, civil servants and other office workers have returned to their workplaces, and public venues like museums and libraries have partially reopened. Schools are slated to reopen in stages. | | | ■ New Zealand on Wednesday reported no new coronavirus infections for the second day in a row, and Thailand recorded no new cases in a day for the first time in more than two months. | | | ■ In the U.S., the Federal Reserve chairman, Jerome Powell, said the central bank’s efforts to stem the damage to the nation’s economy wouldn’t be enough to address a downturn that is “without modern precedent.” Wall Street stocks tumbled after his statement. | | | Subaru cars at a warehouse storage in Richmond, Calif. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images | | | The auto industry was bracing for a brutal year even before the coronavirus idled factories, closed dealerships and sent sales into a free fall. Now, it’s a battle for survival. | | | The big question: Will the crisis change the kinds of cars that buyers want? Gas is cheap, so S.U.V.s might be attractive. But buyers may also want to keep the cleaner air they’ve experienced. Much will depend on government incentives and regulations. Europe and China are doing more than the U.S. to promote electric cars. | | | Bay Ismoyo/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images | | | Environmentalists have repeatedly urged Indonesian officials to close the Tomohon Extreme Market, where butchers cut up bats, rats, snakes and lizards taken from the wilds of Sulawesi Island. Now, the coronavirus pandemic is putting fresh pressure on the officials to take action. | | | “The market is like a cafeteria for animal pathogens,” said Wiku Adisasmito, the lead expert on Indonesia’s coronavirus task force. “Consuming wild animals is the same as playing with fire.” | | | 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 | | | | Pompeo in Israel: With Israel preparing to annex territory in the occupied West Bank, the U.S. secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, is in Jerusalem for talks on the American proposal to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and on efforts to stop Iran’s nuclear project and fight the coronavirus. Friction over Chinese investments in Israel is also on the agenda. | | | U.S. presidential campaign: Former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has unified the party and is leading in the polls. But our team of political reporters finds that he has yet to prove himself as a formidable nominee, and his campaign has so far not solved the challenges of running for the White House from the seclusion of his home. | | | Noah Throop/The New York Times | | | Featured video: Above, enjoying a sprinkled cone from an ice cream truck in New York City. Godfrey Robinson has driven his Fun-Time Frostee truck along the same route for 26 years, and the pandemic hasn’t stopped him. | | | What we’re listening to: Slate’s “Working” podcast. “Listening to Rumaan Alam and Isaac Butler address productivity in creative work is extremely relevant to my interests right now,” writes Taffy Brodesser-Akner, a feature writer on the Times Magazine. “This is my favorite episode so far, with the crime novelist Megan Abbott talking process of writing across platforms and about ‘Michael Clayton,’ one of my favorite screenplays.” | | | Melissa Clark/The New York Times | | | Cook: Melissa Clark’s easy, crunchy baked mac and cheese comes together directly in the pan, without having to boil the macaroni first. | | | Amy Qin, one of our China correspondents, was crowned the Quarantine Queen by her friends after going through four rounds of self-isolation in four cities on both sides of the Pacific. Each offered a window into the different ways governments were grappling with the virus. | | | Quarantine #1: San Diego, after arriving on the last State Department-arranged flight to evacuate Americans from Wuhan, China. | | | Face masks were not required. And though we were confined to one area of a military base, we were still permitted to mingle. After having seen the frenzied rush to procure masks in China, the lax guidelines struck me as odd. | | | Amy in Wuhan in early February, during the city’s second week in lockdown. Amy Qin/The New York Times | | | Quarantine #2: Beijing, after returning to China via South Korea. | | | The local authorities knew about my Seoul layover and wanted to put me in state-supervised quarantine, possibly at a government site, but I completed this round of self-confinement at home. I only left a few times to walk the dog — always with a mask on. | | | I never heard back from the authorities. To me, it was China’s response to the epidemic in a nutshell: effective if heavy-handed, and not always fail-safe. | | | Quarantine #3: Los Angeles, after being expelled along with a number of other American journalists. | | | The official guidance on masks was all over the place. Testing was in a shambles. Discrimination against Asian-Americans was on the rise. Though I had my temperature checked at Los Angeles International Airport, someone forgot to collect the form that I had filled out with my local contact information and health status. I didn’t realize it until later. | | | For days, I holed up in a lovely Airbnb cottage in Venice. | | | Quarantine #4: Taipei, my new reporting base. | | | After multiple heath checks at the airport, I went straight to my hotel, where I was met outside by a worker in a protective suit, mask and goggles who disinfected my suitcases. He was the last human being I saw for two weeks. | | | Every day, I reported my temperature to the hotel and my health status to the Taiwanese government. Three times a day, a hotel employee came by to hang a takeout meal on a plastic hook that had been affixed to the door. After two weeks, I was finally released. | | | That’s it for this briefing. See you next time. | | Thank you
To Melissa Clark for the recipe, 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 the debate at the Supreme Court over Trump’s financial records and presidential power.
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• Elizabeth Paton, our London-based reporter on fashion and the luxury industry, was the focus of an extended interview in Fashionista about how she became such a power player in the field. | | | Were you sent this briefing by a friend? Sign up here to get the Morning Briefing. | | |
