Thursday, Feb 13, 2020 | View in browser

Good morning.

We’re covering China’s fight for economic normalcy and SoftBank’s latest multibillion-dollar hit. We also have an exclusive look at how our reporter tracked down a disgraced French author.

By Melina Delkic

People at the main railway station in Guangzhou, China, on Wednesday. Alex Plavevski/EPA, via Shutterstock

China acts on both virus and economy

Chinese officials approved a broad strategy to bring the outbreak under control and to bring the economy back to normal, state news outlets reported. The death toll on Wednesday reached at least 1,113, but the authorities said the rate of infection showed signs of slowing.

President Xi Jinping ordered tax cuts, and the country’s No. 2 official called for major construction projects to begin. Banks were ordered to keep interest rates low, and state-owned enterprises were told to cut rents.

But none of the actions addressed the most pressing issue at hand: how to put more than 700 million workers back on the job while avoiding creating conditions ripe for the spread of the virus.

The latest: Some of the test kits distributed to at least 30 countries by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention deliver “inconclusive” results, the agency said.

Cruise ship nightmare: A cruise ship carrying 1,400 passengers — despite not having any diagnoses of coronavirus — may have finally found a place to dock after it was refused by several countries. Another ship, the Diamond Princess, has been quarantined in the Japanese port of Yokohama for more than a week.

The numbers: China’s health authorities have decided to no longer count as confirmed cases those patients who test positive but don’t show symptoms. Experts were skeptical, and it was another factor that made it harder to determine the true scale of the epidemic.

A celebration for Senator Bernie Sanders in Manchester, N.H., on Tuesday. Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

In U.S. Democratic race, Sanders rises and Biden slows

Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator, established himself as a formidable contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, recording his second strong showing in a week.

He narrowly defeated Pete Buttigieg, the former South Bend, Ind., mayor, in the New Hampshire primary.

With most ballots counted, Mr. Sanders had about 26 percent of the vote, fending off Mr. Buttigieg and another moderate rival, Senator Amy Klobuchar. Senator Elizabeth Warren and former Vice President Joe Biden, the struggling onetime front-runner, finished well behind.

Results: Here are the counts from the Democratic race and the Republican primary, which President Trump won easily.

The field narrows: Andrew Yang, the tech entrepreneur whose campaign was one of the Democratic primary’s most surprising story lines, dropped out. So did Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado and Deval Patrick, the former Massachusetts governor.

“The Daily”: Our latest episode examines whether the moderate vote — currently divided between Mr. Buttigieg and Ms. Klobuchar — is growing.

Masayoshi Son, SoftBank's founder, in Tokyo on Wednesday to announce the company's financial results. Kim Kyung Hoon/Reuters

SoftBank takes another multibillion-dollar hit

The Japanese conglomerate said its costly bets on once high-flying companies like Uber and WeWork took a toll on its bottom line, costing it 225.1 billion yen, or about $2 billion, in the last quarter of 2019.

Over all, SoftBank reported a profit of about $501 million for the period, well short of what investors expected and less than one-tenth of what it had posted a year earlier. Its operating profit fell 99 percent.

Impact: Masayoshi Son, the company’s founder, suggested in a presentation to investors on Wednesday that he would slow the Vision Fund’s fast-paced investing and fund-raising. But he still played down the worries about SoftBank’s future.

Context: The news came just after a brief, much-needed victory for SoftBank when a judge approved a merger between Sprint, which SoftBank has invested in, and T-Mobile. SoftBank has faced pressure to change from an investor, the hedge-fund giant Elliott Management.

If you have 15 minutes, this is worth it

Drowning in brands

Illustration by The New York Times

So-called pseudo-brands, many with unpronounceable names and short lives, represent a large and growing part of Amazon’s business, and have allowed it to finally grow a successful market in China.

Thousands of these product lines stock the site alongside legacy brands, challenging the idea of what it means to be a brand.

Here’s what else is happening

Nissan: The automaker filed a lawsuit in Japan seeking $90 million from its former chairman, Carlos Ghosn, who fled the country before his trial on charges of financial wrongdoing.

The Vatican: Pope Francis has rejected a proposal to allow the ordination of married men in remote areas. It was a surprise for many, given that he had appeared open to the idea, a potentially momentous change, for the Amazon.

Juul: A lawsuit filed by the State of Massachusetts against the vaping company presents evidence that, contrary to its insistence that it doesn’t market to young people, it purchased ad space in its early days on youth-focused websites, including Nickelodeon, the Cartoon Network and educational sites.

Calla Kessler/The New York Times

Snapshot: Above, Siba, a black standard poodle with a meticulously groomed coat and a taste for chicken, won best in show at the 144th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in Manhattan. Daniel, a golden retriever, came close but won the hearts of many observers (including but not limited to your Briefing writer’s).

What we’re reading: This piece in The Atlantic about invasive earthworms. “Who knew that they’re not native to the Northeast or Midwest of the U.S.?” says Albert Sun, an assistant editor for news platforms. “And that many actually do little good for soil.”

Now, a break from the news

Con Poulos for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.

Cook: You probably already have everything you need to make creamy braised white beans.

Watch: In the latest edition of “Ask a TV Critic,”“Schitt’s Creek” is one of the shows that Margaret Lyons uses as an example of a show worth sticking with despite a weak pilot. (Email questions to watching@nytimes.com.)

Eat: Nari, in San Francisco’s Japantown, refuses to flatten Thai cuisine into a Eurocentric model, our California restaurant critic, Tejal Rao, writes.

Smarter Living: If you’re spending more for fancy craft chocolate, then learn how to really taste it.

And now for the Back Story on …

Interviewing a French pedophile

For days now, one of the most-read Times articles is our Paris correspondent Norimitsu Onishi’s investigation into how France’s elites long protected a confessed pedophile, the writer Gabriel Matzneff. Norimitsu broke off from the follow-up news story — the filing of criminal charges — to talk about his reporting.

How did this begin for you?

The first time I wrote about him was in January, a few days after a woman whom he had written about having a sexual relationship with when she was 14 published a book about it.

But that story didn’t answer a simple question. This is a guy who wrote diaries full of details of sex with girls in France and with much younger boys in the Philippines. How is he not in jail?

Gabriel Matzneff, the French author, in his hotel room on the Italian Riviera. Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times

How did you find him?

There was a French TV station that found him first and did a three- or four-minute interview. And then a scholar I had interviewed pointed me to this town on the Italian Riviera. In his most recent book, published just a few months ago, he mentions the town, and he mentions going to this particular cafe. I went there literally 30 minutes after I arrived in town. And five minutes later he walks in.

I waited for him to finish his espresso. Outside, I introduced myself. Initially he didn’t respond, then he got angry and said I should go through his lawyer. I said, “I’ve been trying, but he hasn’t been returning messages and phone calls.”

Eventually he started talking. He might have thought, “Why isn’t my lawyer defending me?”

And he was happy someone had read his work. I could say, “Well, in this book you said …” That got him talking a lot.

How much of his work did you end up reading?

He wrote almost 50 books, and I read about a dozen. None of them have been translated into English, but I grew up in Montreal and went to French schools. And two colleagues in the bureau read books that I didn’t read. Many were out of circulation.

So one of my colleagues spent days at the Bibliothèque Nationale scanning books and diaries from the ’70s and ’80s, and then we printed out the scans.

What was he like in person?

His reputation has always been that he’s extremely charming, and he was. He’s 83, but he speaks perfectly, in elegant, full sentences.

Was that what protected him?

I think that partly it is. And people thought he was a good writer. I don’t think a manual laborer would get away with what he did.

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

— Melina

Thank you
To Mark Josephson and Kathleen Massara for the break from the news. Andrea Kannapell, the Briefings editor, wrote today’s Back Story. You can reach the team at briefing@nytimes.com.

P.S.
• We’re listening to “The Daily.” Our latest episode is about the New Hampshire primary.
• Here’s our Mini Crossword, and a clue: Word appearing in nearly every U.S. state constitution, but not the U.S. Constitution (three letters). You can find all our puzzles here.
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