News Wrap: UN General Assembly will not convene this fall due to pandemic

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• Judy Woodruff:

  In the day's other news: The U.S. Senate confirmed General Charles Brown to be Air Force chief of staff. He is the nation's first black military service chief ever. The vote was 98-0.

  We will focus on race in the military after the news summary.

  The World Health Organization tried today to clear up confusion over the spread of the coronavirus. On Monday, a top WHO researcher, Maria Van Kerkhove, appeared to say that infected people with no symptoms rarely transmit COVID-19.

  Today, she said she was referring only to a small sample of studies.

• Maria Van Kerkhove:

  We do know that some people who are asymptomatic or some people who don't have symptoms can transmit the virus on.

  And so what we need to better understand is how many people in the population don't have symptoms and, separately, how many of those individuals go on to transmit to others?

• Judy Woodruff:

  Also today, the state of New Jersey lifted its stay-at-home order. And a Harvard Medical School study suggested that COVID-19 may have begun spreading in China as early as last August.

  World leaders will not convene this September for the annual United Nations General Assembly due to the pandemic. They may give recorded messages instead. It's the first time that's happened in the U.N.'s 75-year history.

  In Hong Kong, hundreds marched today on the first anniversary of a rally that sparked a pro-democracy movement. They flooded the city's Financial District, defying coronavirus restrictions. Riot police stood watch and made some arrests.

  City leader Carrie Lam warned today that the Chinese territory cannot afford any more chaos.

  North Korea announced today that it is cutting all communications with South Korea. Pyongyang blamed Seoul for letting defectors and activists send leaflets with anti-North Korean messages floating across the border on balloons. The move comes as tensions on the peninsula are rising again.

  And on Wall Street, the ongoing market rally hit a rough patch, and stocks were mostly down. The Dow Jones industrial average lost 300 points to close at 27272. The Nasdaq edged 29 points higher to a new all-time high. But the S&P 500 slipped 25.