| We’re covering disappointing results for American students on a global exam, today’s NATO anniversary celebrations, and a deadly storm in the Philippines. | |  By Chris Stanford | | | Images from a study in 2013 on 3-D human facial images. BMC Bioinformatics | | | It sounds like science fiction, but it isn’t. | | | At least two Chinese researchers working on the technology have ties to institutions in Europe, and critics say Beijing is exploiting the openness of the international scientific community for questionable purposes. The Chinese have said that they followed international norms that would require research subjects’ consent, but many in Xinjiang have no choice. | | | The details: The process, called DNA phenotyping, is in its early stages and is also being developed in the U.S. and elsewhere. | | | What’s next: In the long term, it may be possible to add DNA-produced images into the mass surveillance systems that China is building, tightening the government’s grip on society. | | | Quotable: “What the Chinese government is doing should be a warning to everybody who kind of goes along happily thinking, ‘How could anyone be worried about these technologies?’” said Pilar Ossorio, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. | | | A currency exchange in Buenos Aires. Argentina's peso has weakened during the country's economic crisis. Ronaldo Schemidt/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images | | | Mr. Trump accused the countries of manipulating their currencies, an idea that economists and government officials have rejected. Their currencies have weakened recently, making Brazilian and Argentine products less expensive in other countries, most notably China. | | | Another angle: The administration also threatened to place tariffs as high as 100 percent on French wine and other products. It’s responding to a new French tax that targets American technology companies such as Facebook and Google, which have little physical presence in France but whose products are widely used there. | | | The results of the test, the Program for International Student Assessment, were announced today. They showed that about a fifth of American 15-year-olds last year hadn’t mastered the reading skills expected of a 10-year-old. | | | Education experts disagree about why American students struggle and why a string of national reform efforts, including No Child Left Behind and the Common Core, has produced uneven results. | | | The details: About 600,000 15-year-olds from around the world took the test, which is given every three years. Students from Canada, China, Estonia, Finland, Ireland and Singapore were among those who outperformed their U.S. counterparts. | | | William Barr has said that he is skeptical of a Justice Department finding that the F.B.I. was justified in opening an investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, according to two people familiar with the conversations. | | | The report by the department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, is set to be released on Monday and is expected to contradict some of the theories about the 2016 election that President Trump and his allies have promoted. | | | Related: Republicans released a report on Monday that said Mr. Trump acted on “valid” concerns about possible corruption involving Americans when he pressed Ukraine for investigations of his Democratic rivals. Read it here. | | | Designed in 1979, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s map is a record of how graphic design, politics and geography have shaped New York over the past 40 years. | | | PAID POST: A MESSAGE FROM PEARSON | | See the Future of Learning | | The talent economy is driving new job opportunities requiring new thinking, new technology and new tools— and requires nothing less than a redesign of learning. Ten years from now the U.S. will have half a million more IT jobs. In 15 years, 5G will create more than 20 million jobs globally. Yet, today we can't even find workers for the 2.4 million unfilled STEM jobs we have now. Just imagine a world where we could plug that leak in the STEM pipeline. We have. | | | MEET AIDA | | | | Prince’s accuser speaks: Virginia Giuffre said in a BBC interview that she was ordered to have sex with Prince Andrew during a trip to London in 2001 with her employer, Jeffrey Epstein. The prince, a son of Queen Elizabeth II, has denied the allegations. | | | Australian rescue: A second person who had been missing in the outback for almost two weeks was found today, while the search continued for a third. | | | Doug Mills/The New York Times | | | Late-night comedy: “Today is Cyber Monday, which is followed tomorrow by Someone-Stole-the-Blender-From-My-Porch Tuesday,” Jimmy Kimmel said. | | | What we’re watching: This BBC Breakfast video, in which the head of Fishmongers’ Hall, where the London Bridge stabbing attack began, recounts the bravery of his staff. “Amazing,” writes our reporter Sarah Lyall, who lived in London for years. | | | Julia Gartland for The New York Times. Food Stylist: LIza Jernow. | | | Listen: For the music of “Frozen 2,” the songwriters Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez found inspiration in a Latin hymn, grief and Bryan Adams. | | | The tale of an eccentric family of deposed aristocrats who lived in a ruined palace was well known to foreign correspondents posted to India. But our reporter Ellen Barry kept returning to the story after her tenure as The Times’s Delhi bureau chief — and found an entirely new narrative. | | | Her account reaches deep into the tumult of Britain’s partition of India and Pakistan, and explores how dislocation reshaped one family into an enduring legend. | | | Ellen Barry, who was part of a team that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2011 for reporting in Russia. Andrew Testa for The New York Times | | | We asked Ellen, who is now our New England bureau chief, why she couldn’t stop until she found the real story. | | | “It never entered my mind that I would be working on it for years,” she said. “But I was not able to answer the question of what the family’s history had been to my satisfaction.” | | | Ellen said the story would have been impossible without the backing of her editor, Jim Yardley. A former Times Delhi bureau chief himself, he had met the prince and encouraged her as she dug beyond the family’s fabled history. | | | That’s it for this briefing. See you next time. | | Thank you
Mark Josephson and Eleanor Stanford provided the break from the news. You can reach the team at briefing@nytimes.com. | | | Were you sent this briefing by a friend? Sign up here to get the Morning Briefing. | | |
