Your Thursday Briefing: China Eases Covid Restrictions

China eases ‘zero Covid’ restrictions

The Chinese government announced a rollback of the country’s strict coronavirus restrictions, a major pivot from a policy on which President Xi Jinping had staked his legitimacy.

The move is an implicit concession to public discontent after mass street protests against the Covid restrictions gripped China. Protesters were livid over lockdowns that confined hundreds of millions of people in their homes for weeks and dragged down the economy. They also disliked the seemingly arbitrary way in which the restrictions were enforced.

The Chinese Communist Party appears to be trying a face-saving retreat without acknowledging that widespread opposition forced Xi’s hand. The rollback could assuage protesters, but China is expected to confront a surge of infections as people resume normal life. Experts have warned that China needs to step up its pace of vaccinations, especially for older adults.

Data: Just two-thirds of people ages 80 and older are vaccinated, compared with 90 percent of the population overall, and only 40 percent have received a booster dose.

Changes: P.C.R. tests and health codes will no longer be checked for travel between regions. People who have mild Covid will be allowed to isolate at home. The government can still impose lockdowns, but to buildings, floors or apartments instead of neighborhoods, districts or cities. Those lockdowns would also be lifted more quickly.

Quotable: “Our voices are finally heard. We workers no longer have to be locked up, starved and suppressed,” said one migrant worker, who had protested against a lockdown last month at an iPhone manufacturing complex.

Peruvian president ousted after trying to dissolve Congress

President Pedro Castillo of Peru announced the dissolution of Congress and the installation of an emergency government on Wednesday, hours before it was set to vote on whether to impeach him.

Political leaders from across the spectrum said Castillo’s move was a coup attempt, and Congress quickly voted to impeach and remove him from office.

Peru’s armed forces and the police released a joint statement suggesting that they would not support him, and many members of his administration resigned after his announcement. But he has still plunged Peru’s fragile democracy into its biggest political crisis in years.

Context: Castillo’s tenure has been plagued by high-level scandals, criminal investigations and cabinet turnover. He has churned through more than 80 ministers and survived two previous impeachment attempts.

History: Corruption is so rife in Peruvian politics that the country has had five presidents since 2016. Castillo — a former farmer, schoolteacher and union activist with no governing experience — won the presidential election over Keiko Fujimori, a right-wing politician, by campaigning to support poor Peruvians.

Dozens arrested in German insurrection plot

In early morning raids across Germany, 3,000 police and special forces members arrested 25 suspected supporters of a domestic terrorist organization that prosecutors said planned to topple the German government and install a prince as the new head of state.

The heavily armed group’s plans included an attack on the Reichstag, the German parliament building. Members of the group had organized arms training and formed a shadow government to install if their plans were to succeed, according to prosecutors.

Prosecutors said that they were investigating a total of 52 suspects and had detained the prince, a former member of Parliament and former German soldiers.

Motive: The group, which was formed in the past year, believed that members of a “deep state” controlled Germany and needed to be overthrown, according to prosecutors.

Context: Germany’s intelligence services have said for years that the greatest threat to the country comes from far-right, domestic extremist groups. In 2020, far-right supporters, QAnon backers and anti-vaccine activists tried to storm the Reichstag, and the police say they have investigated several smaller possible plots against state leaders.

Related: The Times podcast “Day X,” from 2021, examined the German far right.

THE LATEST NEWS

Asia Pacific

• India is pursuing clean power while burning more fossil fuels, an approach that many growing countries have taken and that puts economic security before climate concerns.

• The tiny nation of the Cook Islands is moving toward joining international bodies after President Biden formally recognized it.

• A bomb maker in the 2002 attacks in Bali that killed 202 people was released from prison on parole, The Associated Press writes.

• Our South Asia correspondent writes of a dear friend’s suicide and “the tension between modern Indians’ aspirations, and the old and unchanging expectations of family that weigh on them so heavily.”

Around the World

• President Vladimir Putin said in a speech yesterday that Russia’s war in Ukraine “might be a long process,” and a U.N. report documented the killings of 441 civilians around Kyiv.

• Businesses in more than 50 cities in Iran were shut for a second day yesterday, demonstrating the staying power of protests calling for an end to clerical rule.

• Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, a political titan in Argentina, was sentenced to six years in prison and barred from holding public office after she was found guilty in a fraud scheme.

• It’s a rest day at the World Cup. But we’ve got you covered with a look ahead to the round of 8.

Other Big Stories

• A search team hired by Donald Trump found at least two more documents marked classified in a storage unit, according to a person familiar with the matter.

• Raphael Warnock defeated Herschel Walker in a runoff election for a Georgia Senate seat, giving Democrats a 51-49 majority in the chamber and cementing the Peach State as a political battleground. (Here’s more about Warnock and about Walker.)

• The U.S. Supreme Court heard a case on the “independent state legislature theory,” which could transform federal elections.

• The oldest known DNA paints a picture of a once-lush Arctic.

• COP15, a global U.N. conference on biodiversity, began yesterday in Montreal.

A Morning Read

A study of an ankylosaur skeleton provides insights into the behavior of a dinosaur that was practically a prehistoric tank, covered in bony plates and wielding a sledgehammer-like tail club — which, injuries suggest, the creatures may have used in combat with one another.

ARTS AND IDEAS

An egg with ennui finds an audience

Gudetama is a genderless, cartoon egg with a sad face and a shiny yellow butt; a burnout, a slacker, a malingerer, crushed under the weight of their own melancholy.

Despite, or because of, Gudetama’s utter lack of initiative, the character rocketed to international fame after Sanrio introduced them in 2013, not long after Hello Kitty, the company’s biggest star, began to underperform. Sanrio held a contest to develop new food characters strategically, and although Gudetama didn’t win, they became a fan favorite.

While Gudetama’s cute antiproductivity and anticapitalist vibes have helped the marketing of products like plush toys, Happy Meals, ramen and bedsheets, adventure is a harder sell. How can you go on an adventure when you never take action?

Netflix solved that problem for a new animated and live-action series by pairing the indolent egg with a relentless chick on a journey to find its mother. The show “offers delightful moments,” our critic writes, especially “in the darker, more absurd Gudetama-focused vignettes.”

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

What to Cook

Kare rice, or Japanese curry rice, is instantly nostalgic and hearty.

What to Read

Our critic’s list of the best crime novels of 2022.

What to Hear

Our music critics present their favorite songs of 2022.

What to Buy

Wirecutter recommends 61 gifts for $100 or less, 75 under $50 and 83 under $25.

Now Time to Play

Play the Mini Crossword, and a clue: D.J.’s creation (5 letters).

Here are the Wordle and the Spelling Bee.

You can find all our puzzles here.

That’s all for today. See you soon. — Dan

P.S. The word “housedaddies,” referring facetiously to fathers who help in the home, appeared for the first time in The Times yesterday.

“The Daily” is about book bans in small-town New Jersey.

You can reach Dan and the team at [email protected].