Good morning. A massive container ship that had been stuck in the Suez Canal is free. But the disruption isn’t over. |
 | | Ever Given, one of the world’s largest container ships, floating along the Suez Canal yesterday.Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters |
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‘Not just like flipping a switch’ |
After almost a week of dredging, drigging and tugging — and with some help from the moon — salvage teams yesterday freed the giant container ship that had been stuck in the Suez Canal, one of the world’s most important shipping lanes. |
As a result, traffic has resumed for the hundreds of ships waiting on both ends of the canal. And while estimates have varied wildly, the delay is also expensive. “The disruption has caused the canal authorities in Egypt losses of $95 million in revenue,” The Times’s Peter Goodman told me. |
“It’s not just like flipping a switch,” Vivian Yee, the Times’s Cairo bureau chief, told me. Now that the ship is out of the way, the backlog will take at least a few days, maybe even weeks, to resolve. |
High winds from a sandstorm caused the ship, the Ever Given, to turn sideways in the canal and get stuck, its operators said. But shipping experts have suggested that while the wind probably had a role in the crisis, human error might have, too. |
Last year, almost 19,000 ships traveled through the canal without an accident, according to the chief of the Suez Canal Authority, the Egyptian agency that operates the waterway. And high winds aren’t unusual in the area. “We’ve seen worse winds,” Ahmad al-Sayed, a security guard, told The Times, “but nothing like that ever happened before.” |
The crews working to dig out the ship were largely dependent on forces beyond their control: the moon and the tides. The full moon on Sunday offered a few extra inches of tidal flow and gave workers the boost they needed to set the ship free. |
It’s rare that a maritime disruption makes international news. But this was not your average mishap. For one, the Suez Canal isn’t like other waterways. “It is a vital channel linking the factories of Asia to the affluent customers of Europe, as well as a major conduit for oil,” Peter writes. |
And the Ever Given is one of the world’s biggest container ships. “From a distance, it’s hard to comprehend how big it is,” Vivian told us. “From land, all the containers on top look like Legos — and then you realize each one of those Legos is 20 or 40 feet long.” |
 | | An aerial view of ships stranded in the Red Sea on Saturday.Mahmoud Khaled/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
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In addition to shipping delays, the traffic jam has also affected manufacturing. There are a finite amount of big containers in the world, and many of them have been stuck at sea — creating a backlog of goods sitting in factories, waiting to be put in boxes, Vivian says. |
The crisis highlights a vulnerability of our interconnected world, Peter told us: “We have built a global distribution network that relies on goods getting where they are needed just as they are needed, with little margin for error.” |
 | | Healthcare professionals administering vaccines in Houston yesterday.Go Nakamura for The New York Times |
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| | The Death of George Floyd |
 | | Protesters gathered outside the courthouse on the first day of Derek Chauvin’s trial in Minneapolis yesterday.Joshua Rashaad McFadden for The New York Times |
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- The trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer charged in the killing of George Floyd, began yesterday.
- The prosecution argued that Chauvin acted with excessive force, and played a video that showed him kneeling on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes. “You can believe your eyes that it’s homicide,” a prosecutor told the jury.
- The defense argued that Floyd’s death was caused by underlying medical conditions and a drug overdose, and urged jurors to consider evidence beyond the video.
- This two-minute video shows key moments from the first day of the trial.
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After the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, does the U.S. need a domestic terrorism law? |
- Yes: Making domestic terrorism a federal crime would help law enforcement punish violent extremists, says Elizabeth Neumann, a former Trump administration official. It would also deter future violence, Mary McCord and Jason Blazakis write in Lawfare.
- No: “The problem is not lack of laws. It is a lack of will” to pursue extremists using existing law, the A.C.L.U.’s Hina Shamsi argues. And some progressives fear that the government could exploit the law to limit Americans’ rights or target minority communities, Vox’s Nicole Narea explains.
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Makeover: The beauty industry has entered a phase of total pop-culture domination. Celebrities, social media stars and lifestyle influencers are changing the way the sell works. |
Lives Lived: A fierce advocate for New York’s disabled, Edith Prentiss fought to make the city she loved more navigable for everyone. She died at 69. |
 | | Jing Fong, the largest restaurant in Manhattan’s Chinatown, this month.Andrew Seng for The New York Times |
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Chinatowns are struggling |
Chinese restaurants have suffered more during the pandemic than most other U.S. restaurants. |
Their business began declining sooner — in January of last year, when news broke that a new virus was circulating in Wuhan, China. The restaurants have also had to cope with a rise in anti-Asian racism — “vandalized, robbed, attacked online in racist Yelp reviews,” as The Washington Post reported. Xi’an Famous Foods in New York began closing early after two employees were punched in the face while commuting to and from work. |
For anyone who wants to help Chinese restaurants, Francis Lam, the host of “The Splendid Table,” offered a suggestion: “If you can, order yourself some Chinese takeout. Get extra. Leftovers are your friend.” In The Times, Bonnie Tsui has more tips for supporting restaurants. — David Leonhardt |
 | | Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Monica Pierini. |
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See a short opera film starring the drag queen Sasha Velour, a “RuPaul’s Drag Race” winner and lip-syncing legend. |
Young artists are bypassing art schools and student loans, quitting their day jobs and pursuing careers as full-time artists on TikTok. But what happens when viewership plummets and copycats arrive? |
The Morning now includes a bonus game from the team that creates Spelling Bee and the Crossword. The current game is Bee Plus. Your goal is to solve an additional riddle, using only the letters below. |
The pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was untucked, and the answers to yesterday’s Bee Plus were duct and deck. Here is today’s puzzle and Bee Plus — or you can play online. |
BEE PLUS: Find two chemical elements that are next to each other on the periodic table. |
Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — Claire |
P.S. Send us a question for the News Quiz! Submit a suggestion before noon Eastern tomorrow, and we may feature it in this week’s quiz. |
Today’s episode of “The Daily” is about Georgia’s election law. On “The Ezra Klein Show,” Ted Chiang discusses science fiction, technology and superheroes. |
Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com. |
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