Here’s what you need to know at the end of the day.
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Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Monday.
1. The C.D.C. is struggling to make tough decisions with scant data.
At the onset of the pandemic, the agency stuck with its famously methodical and meticulous scientific approach, at a cost: Testing and surveillance lagged, and officials were late to recommend crucial safeguards like masking.
Now, because of the Omicron variant, the agency is making decisions at a breakneck pace. The agency has issued recommendations based on what once would have been considered insufficient evidence and skipped much of the traditional scientific review process, most recently in shortening the isolation period for infected Americans.
The challenge now, reports Apoorva Mandavilli, is figuring out how to convey a tough message to the public: that the science is incomplete, and this is our best advice for now.
According to a new poll, just 36 percent of respondents believe U.S. efforts to deal with the coronavirus are “going well.” Just 49 percent approved of the president’s management of the pandemic.
2. China faces economic headwinds, a demographic crisis — and Omicron.
The country’s birthrate plummeted for a fifth straight year in 2021, moving it closer to the potentially seismic moment when its population will begin to shrink. The number of births fell to 10.6 million in 2021, compared with 12 million in 2020 — fewer even than the number in 1961, when Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward campaign resulted in widespread famine and death.
The situation is creating a huge political problem for Beijing, which reported on Monday that economic growth in the last quarter of the year slowed to 4 percent. Supply-chain woes around the world could worsen as China imposes new Covid lockdowns.
Among the restrictions, China scrapped plans to sell tickets to the public for the Winter Olympics, less than two days after health authorities reported Beijing’s first case of the Omicron variant.
3. Tensions rise between Donald Trump and a former acolyte.
For months, the former president has been grumbling quietly that the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, has been behaving more like a future competitor.
That resentment burst into view in a spat over Covid, after Trump seemed to swipe at DeSantis by blasting “gutless” politicians who dodge questions about their vaccine history. DeSantis then criticized Trump’s early handling of the pandemic.
The conflict exposed how far Republicans have shifted on coronavirus politics. Doubts Trump amplified about public health expertise have only spiraled since he left office, and his defense of vaccines has left him out of step with elements of his party’s base.
4. The Texas synagogue attacker had “mental health issues,” his brother said.
Malik Faisal Akram, a 44-year-old from Blackburn in northwestern England, was killed after an 11-hour standoff at the synagogue. His brother described him as a deeply troubled man who had grown distant from his family members in recent years, and said his mental state had further deteriorated after another brother died of complications from Covid.
Officials are investigating whether Akram was motivated by the case of Aafia Siddiqui, whom he had spoken of, according to the F.B.I. She is an M.I.T.-educated neuroscientist who has spent almost 12 years in a federal prison in Texas after being convicted on terrorism charges.
The Texas rabbi whom Akram held hostage on Saturday told The Times that he and two other hostages escaped by throwing a chair at the gunman and then fleeing the synagogue. The rabbi, Charlie Cytron-Walker, confirmed that Dr. Siddiqui was Akram’s sole focus.
5. Tonga’s neighbors are struggling to assess the damage from Saturday’s eruption of an undersea volcano, which triggered a tsunami.
The largest volcanic eruption in three decades belched ash, gas and steam more than 12 miles into the air and disabled a crucial submarine internet cable, making it difficult for the outside world to get a picture of the situation. It also sent waves of up to four feet crashing into Nuku’alofa, the capital.
Footage shared in the final moments before the internet connection was cut showed people running inland. No deaths have been officially confirmed so far, but at least one person has been reported missing. Both Australia and New Zealand sent surveillance flights to the country on Monday.
6. Eastern European countries are testing new forms of press censorship.
From Poland in the north to Serbia in the south, the region has become fertile ground for new forms of censorship that mostly eschew brute force but still constrict access to critical voices and tilt public opinion — and therefore elections — in favor of those in power.
Government loyalists run Serbia’s five main free-to-air television channels. Poland’s governing party has turned the country’s public broadcaster into a propaganda bullhorn. And Hungary has gathered hundreds of news outlets into a holding company controlled by allies of Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Around the world, attacks on the press are at an all-time high. It’s a challenge that Jodie Ginsberg, the new president of the Committee to Protect Journalists, is ready to tackle.
In Cambodia, the internet may soon be like China’s: state-controlled.
7. Without Novak Djokovic, the Australian Open is wide open.
The Serbian tennis star, whose visa was revoked over vaccine issues, has won nine Australian Open men’s singles titles, including the last three. His absence gives the sixth seed, Rafael Nadal, a better shot at a record 21st Grand Slam title, which would break a three-way tie with Djokovic and Roger Federer.
In the women’s draw, the top seed is Ashleigh Barty. She’s a favorite to win her first Australian Open title, which would make her the first Australian man or woman to win a singles title there since 1978 — the longest such home champion drought of any Grand Slam event. Her toughest test may come in the fourth round: a potential match against the defending champion, Naomi Osaka.
8. African Americans are overrepresented as gamers, but rarely seen in games or in the industry.
According to Nielsen, 73 percent of African Americans ages 13 and older identified as gamers, compared with 66 percent of the total population. But only 2 percent of professionals in the gaming industry are Black.
The game developer, Neil Jones, who created the game “Never Yield” after years of frustration in the industry, is a notable exception. “The game industry has historically had a type, and I didn’t fit the mold of what they thought a game developer looked like,” he said. “So I decided to make a game on my own.”
9. Man versus Covid: one on one.
On New Year’s Day morning, with 2022 still a blank slate of hope, a Times journalist, Dan Barry, tested positive for the coronavirus and was dispatched into quarantine at his late father-in-law’s house.
There, he faced endless days of basketball therapy as he wondered: Will we ever properly mourn the ones we’ve lost? Will we ever smile again? The answers, pondered over jump shots in the driveway, were hit or miss.
10. And finally, the lunar nothingness of the Skeleton Coast.
In Namibia, the world’s oldest desert dead-ends into the Atlantic Ocean. The untamed Skeleton Coast begins at the country’s northern border, and contains a combination of cultures, landscapes and species unlike anywhere else.
In the latest installment of our series, The World Through a Lens, the photojournalist Genna Martin shares a collection of images that at times can resemble a post-apocalyptic wasteland — but also include the former German colonial town where strudel-filled bakeries and beer gardens still line the streets.
Have an adventurous night.
Angela Jimenez compiled photos for this briefing.
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