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Here are some of the 5,800 contracts the Trump administration formally canceled this week in a wave of terse emails.Starting Wednesday afternoon, a wave of emails went out from the State Department in Washington around the world, landing in inboxes for refugee camps, tuberculosis clinics, polio vaccination projects and thousands of other organizations that received crucial funding for lifesaving work.“This award is being terminated for convenience and the interest of the U.S. government,” they began.The terse notes ended funding for some 5,800 projects that had been financed by the United States Agency for International Development, indicating that a tumultuous period when the Trump administration said it was freezing projects for ostensible review was over, and that any faint hope American assistance might continue had ended.Many were projects that had received a waiver from the freeze because the State Department previously identified its work as essential and lifesaving.“People will die,” said Dr. Catherine Kyobutungi, executive director of the African Population and Health Research Center, “but we will never know, because even the programs to count the dead are cut.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

21 hours ago

Hours after Elon Musk reassured Cabinet members on Wednesday that efforts to contain the Ebola outbreak in Uganda had only been “accidentally canceled very briefly,” the Trump administration terminated at least four of the five contracts for Ebola-related work in that country.The four canceled contracts were a tiny fraction of the 10,000 contracts and grants at the United States Agency for International Development and the State Department that the Trump administration ended on Wednesday.But they were important: Since January, Uganda has experienced a serious Ebola outbreak, from which the country is only just emerging. The contracts funded Ebola screening at airports and protective equipment for health workers, and helped prevent transmission by survivors of the disease, according to a former U.S.A.I.D. official.Mr. Musk told cabinet members that the administration had “restored the Ebola prevention immediately, and there was no interruption.” But his statement was inaccurate, according to two former U.S.A.I.D. officials with knowledge of the situation in Uganda. (The officials asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.)In theory, waivers allowed for some work to continue on containing pathogens like Ebola, Marburg and mpox, as well as preparedness for bird flu. But very little money had actually been delivered.Few organizations providing those services had the financial reserves to continue, and even fewer trusted that they would be reimbursed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Decluttering experts share their best tips.Kim Allen doesn’t like clutter. But when it comes to some of her most sentimental items, she finds it hard to let go.Near the top of the list is a ceramic creature that her daughter made years ago. It has one eye, a lolling tongue and a crop of blue hair. She displays it in a prominent place near her bathroom sink because it always makes her smile.But there are other keepsakes that don’t bring the same kind of joy — such as memorabilia and artwork handed down from her relatives — that are only taking up space, physically and emotionally.“Hopefully I will be retiring at age 67,” said Ms. Allen, who is 52 and lives in Sherrill, N.Y. “Do I really want to deal with all of this excess stuff then? No, I want to be having fun with my friends and family, enjoying the life I worked so hard to build.”And yet for a long time, Ms. Allen felt uneasy about discarding the family heirlooms.Mr. Shuer’s treasures include items that his grandfather owned. The decorative mask and the taxidermied piranha are among Mr. Shuer’s favorites. “I grew up looking at them and they sparked my imagination,” he said.Tony Luong for The New York TimesKim Allen is a descendant of the Oneida Community, a religious commune created during the mid-1800s that flourished for 30 years before eventually dissolving. Pressure to keep historical items within the family — like these silver-plated souvenir spoons — was strong, she said.Amrita Stuetzle for The New York TimesMs. Allen donated her family’s historical treasures, which included these forceps, to the Oneida Community Mansion House museum.Amrita Stuetzle for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

33 minutes ago

People who have already had norovirus, the winter vomiting bug, could be at risk of catching it again this season, experts from the the UK’s Health Security Agency say.

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Marcus Edsall-Parr, a teenage kidney patient in Michigan, has been getting dialysis treatments for years. Alyssa Schukar for The New […]