Your Wednesday Evening Briefing

April 15, 2020

Your Wednesday Evening Briefing

By Remy Tumin and Marcus Payadue

Good evening. Here’s the latest.

Salvatore Di Nolfi/EPA, via Shutterstock

1. President Trump’s decision to halt U.S. funding to the World Health Organization was met with widespread condemnation.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised to “swiftly challenge” the move and called it “dangerous” and “illegal” — Congress has already appropriated nearly $500 million. António Guterres, the U.N. secretary general, said now was not the time to cut funding. The German foreign minister also criticized the decision.

“W.H.O. is not only fighting Covid-19,” Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, above, the W.H.O.’s director general, said. “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.”

The pandemic has infected more than two million people worldwide, according to official counts.

But U.S. officials said there was near-unanimous agreement among the president’s advisers that the W.H.O., the U.N.’s public health arm, was too heavily influenced by the Chinese government and was too slow to sound the alarm about the coronavirus.

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Note: Seasonally adjusted; Source: U.S. Department of Commerce; Credit:The New York Times

2. U.S. retail sales have suffered the biggest plunge on record, offering a bleak snapshot of the coronavirus outbreak’s effect on consumer spending.

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Total sales dropped 8.7 percent in March as the pandemic shuttered stores and closed wallets. That number is expected to only get worse — most states didn’t shut down nonessential businesses until late March or early April.

The S&P 500 dropped more than 2 percent. Stocks in Europe were also lower, and Asia had a downbeat day.

Ritzau Scanpix/Via Reuters

3. Some European countries are gingerly moving forward.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany announced plans for a gradual and cautious loosening of stringent coronavirus measures with some shops allowed to open starting Monday, but with restrictions. The nationwide lockdown will remain largely in place for an additional 20 days, she said.

And in Denmark, above, children returned to school on Wednesday after five weeks of coronavirus closings. The country is providing an early litmus test for other Western democracies that hope to restart their economies without seeing new spikes of infection.

Italy, Spain and Finland are also taking small measures to lift constraints on daily life.

Emily Rose Bennett for The New York Times

4. The somber reality — and burden — of essential workers is coming into focus.

In Detroit, many people have only one way to get to their jobs: the bus. The riders and drivers have to put themselves in harm’s way to keep the city going.

Front-line health care workers, in particular, face a high risk of contracting the coronavirus, and uncounted numbers have become sick across the country. This is the story of the final days of Madhvi Aya, who died of the virus after working long days in a Brooklyn hospital.

And an emergency-room doctor in New York has kept a diary since the beginning of March. Her takeaway: No one who does this work will ever be the same. Read or listen to her words here.

Jeff Chiu/Associated Press

5. College campuses may still be empty come fall.

Some colleges are already considering the possibility that remote classes will have to continue — and worrying whether students will return if so. A trade group has predicted a 15 percent drop in college enrollment nationwide because of the coronavirus, amounting to a $23 billion revenue loss.

Digital versions of the SAT and ACT are being developed for high school students to take at home this fall if schools stay closed. A growing number of colleges and universities is already waiving standardized test requirements for admissions.

Erin Schaff/The New York Times

6. President Trump recently told aides he wanted to start a daily radio show. One thing stopped him: He didn’t want to compete with Rush Limbaugh.

Mr. Trump said he envisioned a show running two hours a day, according to White House officials. But he has decided against encroaching on the territory of Mr. Limbaugh, a conservative host, whose show offers a real-time metric of how the president’s decisions are playing with his supporters.

Mr. Limbaugh, above, who has late-stage lung cancer, received a Presidential Medal of Freedom during Mr. Trump’s State of the Union address in February.

In other politics news, Senator Elizabeth Warren endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden, after Senator Bernie Sanders and former President Barack Obama did. It was the latest announcement designed to signal party unity.

Lalo de Almeida for The New York Times

7. Climate change could cause the collapse of many animal species suddenly and sooner than expected.

A study looked at more than 30,000 land and sea species to predict how soon climate change would affect population levels and the rate of loss. The researchers were surprised that the collapses appeared across almost all regions and all species — fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds and mammals.

Abrupt collapses in tropical oceans could begin in the next decade if fossil fuel emissions remained high. The die-offs would be a catastrophic loss for wildlife and for humans, the study found.

Vincent Tullo for The New York Times

8. You’re stuck at home, but your mind can wander.

Michael Kimmelman, our architecture critic, chatted with the historian (and former Times public editor) Daniel Okrent about how Rockefeller Center became a beloved emblem and symbol of New York City’s glory. It’s the latest in Michael’s series of “architectural walks” around town.
Ciudad Perdida, an ancient city that predates Machu Picchu, is stunning in its scale and complexity. But to explore Colombia’s “Lost City,” first you have to hike nearly 30 miles through the rainforest. Stephen Hiltner, an editor on the Travel desk, did — back in February, before tourism was suspended.
And when we published our list of 52 Places to Go in 2020 three months ago, no one could have guessed how much our world would change. Here’s how to “visit” each of those places now.

9. Scientists announced that they were one step closer to understanding why the universe contained something rather than nothing.

The short answer: neutrinos, subatomic particles that stream from cosmic catastrophes like the Big Bang and the sun. Above, a neutrino observatory in Japan.

The long(er) answer: An international team of 500 physicists from 12 countries led by Kyoto University revealed an anomaly in the behavior of neutrinos that suggested that these particles could have tipped the balance between matter and antimatter.

As a result, writes our cosmic affairs reporter, Dennis Overbye, the universe wound up with stars, black holes, oceans and us.

Jones & Shimlock/Danita Delimont, via Alamy

10. And finally, it’s all in the fin.

The yellow boxfish may look like a storage box with fins, but on a coral reef, you’ll find these cuboid creatures darting in and out of tight spaces. For decades, scientists have wondered: What makes them so nimble?

By using three-dimensional plastic models of yellow boxfish, with fins and without fins, researchers determined that by opening, closing and turning its tail fin, the boxfish could, in fact, “control the unstable system that is the body” — leaning into some turns and course-correcting others.

Have an agile night.