#if i could i would write an essay about sam but instead i will stew in anger

[fallowtail]

and if i say samantha arondekar is the most misunderstood/harshly judged character in the cbs ghosts fandom…what then

[mastcomm]

Your Monday Briefing – The New York Times

Coronavirus deaths exceed toll from SARS

As many people across China return to work today after an already-extended Lunar New Year break, the country is confronting two bleak statistics:

The novel coronavirus has killed more than 900 people in the country — more than the 774 people who died worldwide from the SARS epidemic 17 years ago.

The number of new deaths that the government reported on Sunday — 97 — was the highest so far in a single day.

Here are the latest updates and a map of where the virus has spread. The World Health Organization’s director general said on Sunday that an advance team was on its way to China to help the government contain the outbreak.

Analysis: Officially, the virus has sickened 40,171 people in China. But experts say that deaths and infections are probably being undercounted because testing facilities are under severe strain.

Inside the outbreak: In Wuhan, the center of the outbreak, our reporter met a family in which three generations have been sickened by the virus.

In Beijing: The outbreak is testing an authoritarian system that President Xi Jinping has built around himself over the past seven years. A writer in the Chinese capital described the outbreak as “a big shock” to the ruling Communist Party’s legitimacy — second only to the government’s armed crackdown on Tiananmen Square protesters in 1989.

Sinn Fein poised to enter Irish government

Preliminary results from Ireland’s national elections over the weekend show that Sinn Fein, a party that was once the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, is on the doorstep of joining a coalition government.

In doing so, Sinn Fein would break the hold that two center-right parties — Fianna Fail and Fine Gael — have held on the country’s politics for 90 years.

“This is changing the shape and mold of Irish politics,” Mary Lou McDonald, Sinn Fein’s leader, told reporters in Dublin. “This is not a transient thing — this is just the beginning.”

Why this matters: Sinn Fein has long been ostracized over its ties to sectarian violence. But many younger voters don’t remember that. Instead, they see the party as the only one responding to their day-to-day grievances on issues like soaring rental prices and corporate tax breaks.

By the numbers: Fianna Fail was on track to win about 45 seats in the 160-seat Parliament, followed by Sinn Fein with 37 seats and Fine Gael with 36 seats. The final results are expected today or tomorrow, probably kicking off weeks of coalition negotiations over who will control Parliament.

Germany’s political red line

A political drama in Germany last week — in which the far-right Alternative for Germany party played kingmaker for a center-right candidate on the state level — set off spontaneous protests in a country that is still deeply conscious of its Nazi past.

It also raises a question: Will mainstream parties ever feel pressured to break their own taboo against working with the AfD, the first far-right party to enter the national parliament since World War II?

“For many Germans, allowing the far right to be kingmakers conjures up dark memories,” writes our Berlin bureau chief, Katrin Bennhold. “It is a red line that many do not want to see crossed.”

Context: The drama took place in Thuringia, an eastern state where the Nazis first won power locally in the dying days of the Weimar Republic. They later won nationally, with the help of conservative parties.

Related: A researcher in Germany discovered that a 17th-century painting, on view for years at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, once belonged to a Jewish art dealer who fled the Nazis and lost court battles to win the artwork back.

The hydropower dam that has Egypt worried

Egyptian and Ethiopian officials are set to reconvene in Washington this week to discuss a colossal hydroelectric project that some fear could bring the two countries to blows.

For Ethiopians, the $4.5 billion project, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, would confirm their country’s place as a rising African power. Ethiopia’s young leader, Abiy Ahmed, has said that “no force could prevent” the dam from being completed.

But the Nile is under assault from pollution, climate change and population growth. And many Egyptians fear that the project, whose reservoir is about the size of London, will cut into their precious water supplies.

Details: Egypt has justified its dominance over the Nile partly by citing a colonial-era water treaty that Ethiopia does not recognize. President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt has insisted that he wants a peaceful resolution, but he has been accused of sponsoring anti-government protests and armed rebellions inside Ethiopia, among other destabilizing tactics.

If you have a few minutes, this is worth it

An uneasy political alliance

By becoming the junior partner in a coalition government led by conservatives, Austria’s progressive Green Party was able to put climate change on the country’s political agenda.

But now the party is also becoming complicit in Chancellor Sebastian Kurz’s hard-right immigration policy.

That is particularly difficult for Alma Zadic, above, a daughter of Bosnian refugees and Austria’s first minister with a migrant background: The coalition charges her to defend policies that were designed to effectively keep people like her parents out of the country.

Here’s what else is happening

U.S. budget: President Trump is expected to propose today a $4.8 trillion budget that includes billions for his wall along the border with Mexico and steep cuts to social programs like Medicaid. Congress can ignore the budget, but it will feature in Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign.

Switzerland:Voters in Switzerland agreed on Sunday to greenlight an amendment to an anti-discrimination law that had not provided protection for lesbians, gay men and bisexual people. The national referendum had been forced by critics who said the amendment threatened freedom of expression.

Thailand: The country’s deadliest mass shooting ended on Sunday, when a rogue soldier whose shooting rampage at a military base and a shopping mall left at least 29 people dead was killed during a firefight with the authorities.

Rocket launch: Solar Orbiter, a European-built spacecraft that launched from Florida late Sunday, is expected to complete 22 orbits of the sun in 10 years — and perhaps help solve mysteries about how that fiery star works.

Snapshot: Migrants play soccer at a refugee camp on the Greek island of Samos, where asylum seekers are waiting for approval to travel to the Greek mainland to pursue new lives. Few on the mainland want them, and other European governments have mostly closed their doors.

Oscars: The South Korean film “Parasite” won best picture, a first for a foreign-language film. Follow our coverage and check out our roundup of red-carpet fashion.

What we’re reading: This essay in Essence, addressing the attacks on the broadcast journalist Gayle King after she raised the question of a 2003 rape accusation against Kobe Bryant in the wake of his death. “The term misogynoir — the special type of hatred directed against women of color — says it all,” says the briefings editor, Andrea Kannapell.

Now, a break from the news

Cook: Italian pasta and chickpea stew cooks in just one pan and can be vegan by leaving off the final dusting of pecorino.

Watch: The final season of the show “Homeland,” starring Claire Danes as a brilliant C.I.A. officer with bipolar disorder, is now playing on Showtime.

Smarter Living: Want to improve your sleep? Our Wirecutter colleagues present hacks, tips and products that actually help in their “Five Days to Better Sleep” Challenge. (Sign up here.)

And now for the Back Story on …

Revisiting ‘The Year of Africa’

Seventeen African countries shed their colonial status in 1960. Sixty years later, our archival storytelling team, Past Tense, paired photography from collections at The Times and elsewhere with writers and thinkers of African descent for a special section, “A Continent Remade.” Veronica Chambers, the editor of Past Tense, spoke with Adriana Balsamo about the project. Here are a few lightly edited excerpts from their conversation.

Can you speak to the decision to have more youthful writers be a part of the project?

We really wanted a certain dynamism to the conversation. And we thought that it would be interesting to ask youngish people who are really connected to the continent … and who have a sense of pride about it. David Adjaye, for example, spent years cataloging the architecture of Africa in a way that had never been done before. But he grew up half his life off the continent.

There’s always a period of discovery for someone who has a foot in a country but didn’t necessarily grow up there. And especially because the countries are so young, it felt like it’d be interesting to ask these young people who in some ways really benefited from all of the good of independence — their lives were shaped by everything that came after — to look at the pictures and respond.

What is your favorite photo?

I think the mother and baby picture [with Imbolo Mbue’s essay] and the Miss Independence picture [with Luvvie Ajayi’s essay] were really important to me because those were the two I found first, in October 2018. I held onto those two pictures as a kind of proof of concept. I also love the picture at the United Nations by Sam Falk [with Mr. Adjaye’s essay]. He’s so special to the history of The Times and just to know what it must have meant for those men to be able to go and represent new nations. To say, “Our country is three months old and here we are. Let’s talk about how we fit into the rest of the world.” I think that’s pretty powerful.

What do you hope readers take away from the section?

We are really hoping that people on the continent will read the digital version, and we’ve worked really hard on the interactive. When you look at the news photographs, it was a time when very few New York Times readers would have been to the continent. And so when we look at where we are at 60 years later, there’s still a lot of people who have never been and may never go.

And I hope what readers will take from it is a sense of possibility on the continent that I believe continues to this day. A sense of beauty, a sense of community. And I hope, interest: I hope they will continue to read some of the writers we featured.

That’s it for this briefing. See you next time.

— Mike

Thank you To Mark Josephson and Eleanor Stanford for the break from the news. You can reach the team at briefing@nytimes.com.

P.S. • We’re listening to “The Daily.” Our latest episode is on the lawyer behind Harvey Weinstein’s legal strategy. • Here’s today’s Mini Crossword puzzle, and a clue: Where the heart is (five letters). You can find all our puzzles here. • The 1619 Project is the centerpiece of a new wave of ads from “The Truth Is Worth It,” a Times campaign.

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