Good morning. We’re covering the fate of TikTok in the middle of a U.S.-China feud, a warning from the World Health Organization about the coronavirus and spearfishing in Australia to soothe the soul. | | | President Trump reversed course after threatening to ban the app entirely from the United States. Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times | | | Mr. Trump had threatened to ban TikTok in the U.S. because of the app’s Chinese ownership, which he has called a possible threat to national security. | | | Tech on notice: ByteDance, the Chinese social media giant behind TikTok, took ample precautions in its drive to become a global company. TikTok was made unavailable in China so that the app’s users wouldn’t be subject to the Communist Party’s censorship requirements. User data was stored in Virginia and Singapore. | | | A coronavirus testing facility in the Philippines last week. Mark R Cristino/EPA, via Shutterstock | | | “A number of vaccines are now in Phase 3 clinical trials and we all hope to have a number of effective vaccines that can help prevent people from infection,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the W.H.O.’s director general, said on Monday. “However, there’s no silver bullet at the moment and there might never be.” | | | Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease expert in the U.S., last week said he was “cautiously optimistic” that a vaccine could be developed by the end of this year. The comments by Dr. Tedros seemed intended to guard against countries moving away from measures to slow the spread of the virus. | | ■ A team of W.H.O. experts has concluded a three-week visit to China to begin investigating the source of the virus — the first step in what is likely to be a monthslong inquiry. ■ President Rodrigo Duterte of the Phlippines has ordered Manila and its suburbs to re-enter lockdown for two weeks after the health department reported 5,032 new cases. ■ As the pandemic consumes global health resources, tuberculosis — the biggest infectious-disease killer worldwide — as well as H.I.V. and malaria are making a comeback. | | | Afghan security forces near the site of the attack on a jail compound in Jalalabad. Parwiz/Reuters | | | Loyalists to the Islamic State took responsibility for the attack. About a third of the prison’s 1,500 inmates were linked to ISIS, with the rest split among Taliban prisoners and common criminals. A Taliban spokesman denied any involvement in the attack. | | | The ISIS factor: The murky identity of the ISIS branch in the country has made it a spoiler threat to the peace process. While the Taliban and ISIS have fought turf wars in the east, Afghan officials have long claimed that the two groups have overlapped, sharing networks and resources for urban attacks. | | | Michaela Skovranova for The New York Times | | | Spear gear has been selling out at dive shops up and down Australia’s east coast since March, when the coronavirus pandemic began to restrict social gatherings and cause rising unemployment. | | | To understand why, our Sydney bureau chief decided to take the plunge in the hunt for wild food. He found that “spearfishing has become an increasingly popular escape for people seeking calm, control and sustenance far from the anxieties of land.” The “spearos,” as they are called, “all find something for their stomachs and souls in an act that is ancient and elemental.” | | | 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 | | | | Pakistan media: The recent abduction of a prominent journalist, Mattiullah Jan, by state security officers has renewed concerns about press freedom. Two years into Prime Minister Imran Khan’s term, journalists and activists say censorship is on the rise. | | | In memoriam: John Hume, a moderate Roman Catholic politician who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his dogged and ultimately successful campaign to end decades of bloodshed in his native Northern Ireland, died on Monday. He was 83. | | | Saul Martinez for The New York Times | | | Snapshot: Above, Tropical Storm Isaias is churning off the Florida coast. Forecasters said the storm will return to hurricane strength before reaching the Carolinas, where it could hit during a spike in coronavirus cases. | | | What we’re reading: This article in GQ on the power of the Sultans. “This story about the country’s best wedding band is what we need right now,” writes Matt Apuzzo, our reporter based in Brussels. | | | Craig Lee for The New York Times | | | Cook: This poundcake is nothing fancy, with a result equally befitting a school bake sale or a fancy dinner party. | | | Read: Stephenie Meyer’s retelling of “Twilight,” Isabel Wilkerson’s examination of American racism, a biography of the drug kingpin El Chapo — here are 13 books to watch for in August. | | | Our goal with this series is slightly different from that of our typical Travel fare. Instead of inspiring travel among our readers or describing the travels of our contributors, we’re aiming to approximate elements of travel itself — to provide a kind of virtual travel substitute that soothes, transports and distracts. | | | An aerial image taken in Vermont, at Sugar Hill Reservoir. Caleb Kenna | | | But escapism isn’t the only objective. At its best, travel can transform us: It can awaken us to the restorative power of nature; it can broaden our ability to understand and appreciate dissimilar cultures; it can help us become more empathetic to people whose lives fall outside the scope of our day-to-day routines. These, too, are things we hope the series can provide, especially at a time when such transformations aren’t available to many of us via direct experience. | | | To achieve all that, we’ve tried to create immersive visual experiences; every story in the series is driven by images. (Instead of assigning photographers to shoot new work, we are relying on photojournalists with previously shot, and unpublished, portfolios.) | | | We’ve also tried to create a more intuitive and symbiotic relationship between images and text. (In most cases, the journalist who took the pictures is also the one who wrote the copy.) And as a general rule, we’ve avoided “service” information: no hotel plugs or restaurant reviews, no recommended itineraries. The focus is on the people and the places themselves, as seen and captured by some of the best photojournalists in the world. | | That’s it for this briefing. See you next time. — Carole | | Thank you
To Theodore Kim and Jahaan Singh for the break from the news. You can reach the team at briefing@nytimes.com. | | | Were you sent this briefing by a friend? Sign up here to get the Morning Briefing. | | |
