| Wednesday, Aug 12, 2020 | | | Good morning. We’re covering Joe Biden’s vice president pick, the latest on Russia’s vaccine strategy and students in Thailand bringing pop culture to their rallies. | |  By Melina Delkic | | | Senator Kamala Harris in January. Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times | | | Ms. Harris, 55, had sharply criticized Mr. Biden in the Democratic Party primaries, but after ending her presidential campaign, she emerged as one of his vocal supporters. A career prosecutor, Ms. Harris is known as a pragmatic moderate. | | | Her supporters argued that she could reinforce Mr. Biden’s appeal with Black voters and women. She is only the fourth woman in U.S. history to be chosen for a presidential ticket for a major political party. | | | The Russian vaccine is developed by the Gamaleya institute. Russian Direct Investment Fund, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images | | | The Russian move to fast-track a vaccine has raised international concerns. Last week, the World Health Organization cautioned that Russia should not stray from the usual methods of testing a vaccine for safety. | | | “It works effectively enough, forms a stable immunity and, I repeat, it has gone through all necessary tests,” President Vladimir Putin told a cabinet meeting on Tuesday. He also said that one of his daughters had taken the vaccine. | | | The Russian scientific body that developed the vaccine, the Gamaleya Institute, has yet to conduct Phase 3 tests on tens of thousands of volunteers in highly controlled trials. The health minister said Russia was going ahead with a mass vaccine campaign starting soon. | | | Experts are less enthusiastic. Several who talked to our reporter said it was a dangerous move. “I think it’s really scary. It’s really risky,” said Daniel Salmon, the director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins University. | | ■ The coronavirus has now sickened more than 20 million people worldwide, a number that has doubled in about six weeks, according to a New York Times database. ■ New Zealand confirmed its first locally transmitted cases of the virus in more than 100 days. ■ Vietnam, which did not record its first Covid-19 death until July 31, reported four on Tuesday, its highest daily number since the start of the pandemic. | | | A protester near the Parliament building in Beirut on Tuesday. Agence France-Presse — Getty Images | | ■ A new government does not necessarily mean new elections, though protesters are calling for them. A new cabinet can be appointed by President Michel Aoun in consultation with Parliament, without new elections. Many are bracing for months of political paralysis. ■ Aid and rescue operations are up in the air. The explosion caused billions of dollars in damage, amid an economic crisis. Many worry that dysfunction and corruption will slow the process of getting money from donors to those who need it. ■ Protests continue. Activists say that the resignations did not meet their demands that the political elite cede power. It feels like déjà vu: Prime Minister Saad Hariri was pushed to resign in October, while many of the top politicians stayed in power. | | | Related: An American contractor spotted and reported the potential danger of storing a large cache of chemicals in Beirut’s port at least four years ago, our reporters learned. U.S. officials denied they were aware of the findings until last week, after the blast. | | | Alexandre Da Veiga for The New York Times | | | When Dr. Onyeka Otugo, above, was doing her training in emergency medicine, in Cleveland and Chicago, she was often mistaken for a janitor or food services worker even after introducing herself as a doctor. | | | Her experience with microaggressions, subtle and stunning racist exchanges, is all too common among Black women doctors. Our reporter spoke to doctors across specialties about the long-lasting toll of these encounters. “They ask you if you’re coming in to take the trash out — stuff they wouldn’t ask a physician who was a white male,” Dr. Otugo said. | | | 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 | | | | SoftBank: The company on Tuesday announced that it had swung back into the black, posting a $12 billion net profit for the three-month period that ended in June. It came after one of its biggest losses ever earlier this year. | | | Belarus: The main opposition presidential candidate, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, left the country early Tuesday. Her associates said she was pressured by the authorities to leave for Lithuania. | | | Indian women: Zomato, one of the country’s largest food-delivery firms, announced a new paid period leave policy for up to 10 days a year. The company’s chief executive described it as an attempt to minimize the “shame or stigma” around the topic of menstruation in India. | | | Adam Dean for The New York Times | | | Snapshot: Above, students at a Bangkok protest last month flashing a salute from the “Hunger Games” movies. For weeks now, thousands of students, many dressed in school uniforms or borrowing from Harry Potter and other pop culture icons, have staged rallies across the country, urging the army and their allies to get out of politics. | | | What we’re reading: This article in The New Yorker on rethinking the science of skin. “It taught me a lot of fascinating stuff about the soap industry and made me reconsider my relationship with the skin care products that we are constantly being peddled and told will improve our lives,” wrote Sanam Yar, from the Briefings team. | | | Bryan Gardner for The New York Times | | | Watch: The documentary “A Thousand Cuts” profiles Maria Ressa, a journalist who has fearlessly chronicled abuses in the Philippines under the Duterte government. It’s a critic’s pick. | | | Do: So you’ve put on some weight during lockdown. You, too, can shrug off minor or moderate weight gain or the loss of your pre-pandemic fitness level. Here’s how. | | | Blowing out the candles on your cake. This tradition could fade. And the singing of “Happy Birthday” poses an even greater risk when it comes to spreading droplets, said Melissa Nolan, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. It’s best to take the singing outside, she said, and to spread out, too. | | | Letting your kid jump into a ball pit. Swimming around in a pool of plastic — a material experts say is especially good at harboring germs — could become a thing of the past, at least at McDonald’s. “There’s probably some good public-health reasons not for us to be doing a lot of ball pits,” said the company's chief executive. | | | Plastic makes a good carrier for germs, health officials warn. Sergei Petrov\TASS, via Getty Images | | | Getting a quick makeover. Once upon a time, if you wanted to try new makeup — or give yourself a free makeover between the office and after-work drinks — you could head for the testers or samples at Sephora, Ulta or department stores. Just don’t think too hard about who used the brush or lipstick sample before you. Some stores, though, are replacing the reusable samples with single-use, disposable items. | | | Bumping elbows at a crowded bar. After months of distancing, mask wearing and nixing small talk in public, will we be shouting in one another’s faces at bars or clubs again? Experts hope not. Your behavior in social situations will be shaped by how people around you act, said Jeanine Skorinko, a social psychology professor at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. | | That’s it for this briefing. See you next time. — Melina | | Thank you
Carole Landry helped write this briefing. Theodore Kim and Jahaan Singh wrote the rest of 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. | | |
