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Good morning. North Korea’s outbreak grows, India bans most wheat exports and South Korea amends its surgical procedure legal guidelines.
North Korea’s outbreak grows
State media reported 21 new deaths and an enormous bounce in suspected coronavirus instances on Saturday, as North Korea struggled to comprise its first reported outbreak.
State media mentioned a further 174,400 folks had signs, like a fever, that could possibly be attributable to Covid-19 — a tenfold bounce from the 18,000 such instances reported on Friday. North Korea has reported a complete of 524,400 folks with Covid-like signs since late final month.
“North Korea is reporting solely ‘folks with fever’ as a result of it doesn’t have sufficient check kits,” an professional mentioned. Covid might not be inflicting all these fevers, he mentioned, however the variety of asymptomatic instances is probably going a lot greater than the official depend.
Vaccines: North Koreans are unvaccinated, although some elites could have obtained pictures. Worldwide well being organizations and the South Korean authorities have mentioned that they had been able to ship vaccines, therapeutics and different help.
India bans most wheat exports
Including to considerations of world meals insecurity, the world’s second-largest wheat producer has banned most exports of the grain. India’s commerce ministry mentioned {that a} sudden value spike had threatened the nation’s meals safety.
The transfer, an obvious about-face, might compound a worldwide shortfall and exacerbate a dire forecast for international starvation. In April, Prime Minister Narendra Modi informed President Biden that India was prepared to provide the world with its reserves.
Background: The struggle has interrupted wheat manufacturing in Ukraine and Russia, and blockades within the Black Sea have disrupted transport of the grain. And local weather change poses a dire menace. Agricultural consultants mentioned that India’s ongoing warmth wave might have an effect on the harvest this yr. Torrential rains introduced on poor harvests in China, whereas drought in different international locations additional snarled provides.
South Korea’s surgical procedure surveillance
South Korea has turn into one of many first international locations to require cameras in working rooms that deal with sufferers beneath normal anesthesia, a measure meant to revive religion within the medical system.
For years, hospitals have fielded complaints about docs turning sufferers over to unsupervised assistants who carry out “ghost surgical procedures.” About 5 sufferers have died from such surgical procedures prior to now eight years, a affected person advocate mentioned.
In accordance with affected person advocates, surgeons deputize nurses to carry out operations, thereby packing in additional procedures and maximizing earnings. They argue that cameras will defend sufferers and provide medical malpractice victims proof to make use of in courtroom.
However ethicists and medical officers internationally have cautioned that surveilling surgeons could damage morale, violate affected person privateness and make physicians much less prone to take dangers to save lots of lives.
Background: The surreptitious surgical procedures started occurring at cosmetic surgery clinics within the 2010s, after South Korea began selling medical tourism, in response to authorized consultants. They unfold to spinal hospitals, consultants mentioned, which largely carry out comparatively uncomplicated procedures in excessive demand among the many nation’s growing older inhabitants.
Tattooing with no medical license is against the law in South Korea, the place ornamental physique artwork has lengthy been related to organized crime. However the regulation is crashing into rising worldwide demand for what are referred to as “k-tattoos,” and the nation’s tattoo artists argue that it’s time to finish the stigma in opposition to their enterprise.
Lives lived: Katsumoto Saotome compiled six books of survivors’ recollections of the 1945 Tokyo firebombing and based (with out authorities help) a memorial museum. Saotome died at 90.
ARTS AND IDEAS
The way forward for paralysis?
Sixteen years in the past, Dennis DeGray’s thoughts was almost severed from his physique. He ran to take out the trash in a rainstorm, slipped, landed onerous on his chin, and snapped his neck, paralyzing him from the collarbones down.
For a number of years, he “merely laid there, watching the Historical past Channel,” he mentioned. However then he met Jaimie Henderson, a neurosurgeon at Stanford, who had been creating a brain-computer interface. Henderson requested DeGray if he needed to fly a drone. DeGray determined to take part.
Now, implants in his mind permit DeGray some management, regardless that he can not transfer his arms. Simply by imagining a gesture, he can transfer a pc cursor, function robotic limbs, purchase from Amazon and fly a drone — albeit solely in a simulator, for now.
There are apparent therapeutic purposes. Curiosity from an growing variety of high-profile start-ups additionally suggests the potential of a future through which neural interfaces improve folks’s innate skills and grant them new ones — along with restoring these which have been misplaced.
PLAY, WATCH, EAT
What to Prepare dinner
That’s it for in the present day’s briefing. See you subsequent time. — Amelia
P.S. Elisabeth Goodridge, The Instances’s deputy journey editor, will examine journey reporting in an period of local weather change as a 2023 Nieman fellow at Harvard.
The most recent episode of “The Day by day” is on America’s Covid demise toll.
You may attain Amelia and the workforce at briefing@nytimes.com.
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