Your Monday Briefing

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Monday, June 1, 2020 | View in browser

Good morning.

We’re covering twin crises in the U.S. of the pandemic and police violence, the world reaching six million coronavirus cases and SpaceX’s (so far) successful mission.

By Isabella Kwai

Protesters in Los Angeles on Saturday. Bryan Denton for The New York Times

Two crises collide in the U.S.

Cities across the U.S. smoldered on Sunday after a largely peaceful day of protests on Saturday turned into a night of chaos and violence.

Hundreds of people were arrested as the police clashed with demonstrators angry over police killings of African-Americans. Videos showed officers using batons, tear gas and rubber bullets on protesters.

The protests began after the death, a week ago today, of George Floyd, a black man who was pinned to the ground by a white police officer in Minneapolis.

Emotions were already running high over the toll of the coronavirus pandemic. The U.S. has the world’s highest death count — more than 100,000 — and has shed tens of millions of jobs.

A first in decades: At least 75 American cities have seen protests in recent days, and mayors in more than two dozen have imposed curfews. Not since 1968, after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., have so many local leaders issued such orders in the face of civic unrest.

International: Protesters in London and Berlin showed overseas support for the U.S. marches. Follow our live updates here. Here are photos of the protests, city by city.

Journalists under fire: A television reporter in Louisville, Ky., was hit by a pepper ball on live television by an officer who appeared to be aiming at her. “I’m getting shot! I’m getting shot!” she told viewers while on the air.

Analysis: While other presidents would seek to cool the situation in tinderbox moments like this, President Trump is whipping up tensions, writes our chief White House correspondent. He has threatened military intervention and said he would designate the anti-fascist group antifa, which he blames for some of the protest violence, as a terrorist organization.

The audience at a drive-in performance by the Czech National Theater did not have to worry about other patrons coughing on them. Laetitia Vancon for The New York Times

Six million coronavirus cases, and rising

Many nations are entering a pivotal period this week, giving students, shoppers and travelers a return to some sense of normalcy after months under lockdown.

The reopenings continue even though more than six million people worldwide have been infected and at least 369,000 have died.

Greece, seeking to bolster its crucial tourism sector, will allow flights from all countries. Britain will reopen more stores and let small groups from different households meet outdoors. Norway and Denmark will allow leisure travel between the two countries. Spain, however, is expected to extend a state of emergency until June 21.

The biggest sports leagues are planning to resume play, including the N.B.A. in July and top-tier soccer leagues in England, Italy and Spain in June.

A continent reopens: Our international correspondent Patrick Kingsley and the photojournalist Laetitia Vancon are driving 3,700 miles to capture Europe’s reopening. In their latest dispatch from Prague, drive-in theaters are keeping entertainment alive and spectators socially distant.

In other news:

■ The United States has delivered two million doses of the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine to Brazil for use in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, despite a lack of scientific evidence on its effectiveness.

■ In Nicaragua, one of the last places resisting strict lockdown measures, there are signs the virus is raging out of control, with families suffering the consequences.

■ The ties between Britain’s oldest magazine, The Spectator, and the governing elite have thrust it in the center of an uproar over a British aide’s trip during lockdown.

■ As President Vladimir Putin’s approval ratings dip, his main opposition leader, Aleksei Navalny, has seen his YouTube audience triple during the coronavirus crisis. Whether he can leverage that support is unclear.

■ With high-end restaurants in Spain closed, the price of usually expensive prawns has tumbled, allowing a much broader clientele to enjoy the shellfish.

Here are the latest updates and maps of the outbreak.

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If you have 5 minutes, this is worth it

Italy’s young people prompt virus anxiety

Max Cavallari/EPA, via Shutterstock

Above, a group gathered for happy hour on a beach in Rimini. Many older Italians are anxious — unfairly, some experts say — that gatherings of the country’s young people could incite a second wave of infections. But the scrutiny of young people, one writer wrote, spotlighted a deeper problem: “the existence of a whole age group that is forced to be inessential.”

Here’s what else is happening

SpaceX docking: A capsule carrying two NASA astronauts docked at the International Space Station on Sunday, less than a day after a launch that marked the first time humans had ever traveled to orbit in a spacecraft built and operated by a private company.

G7 postponed: President Trump pushed back a Group of 7 meeting in the U.S. to September from July after Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said she would not attend in person over concerns about the coronavirus. Mr. Trump said the meeting would discuss the future of China.

Hong Kong protests: As China and the U.S. clash over the future of Hong Kong, global businesses are caught in the middle. Employees face pressure to support pro-Beijing candidates in local elections and echo the Chinese government’s official line.

Children of ISIS: Many Western states with citizens who joined ISIS have insisted that they will not repatriate about 900 children of those adherents, leaving them in disease-ridden detainment camps in northeastern Syria.

Henning Bagger/EPA, via Shutterstock

Snapshot: Above, a giant Zoom meeting of 10,000 spectators watching a Danish soccer game. It’s how one club in Denmark’s top league connected socially distant fans — even piping their shouts through stadium loudspeakers.

In memoriam: Christo, the Bulgarian-born conceptual artist who turned to epic-scale environmental works in the late 1960s, died on Sunday in New York City at 84.

What we’re reading: This essay in The Harvard Review. Lynda Richardson, a story editor, writes: “In a meditation on contact and distance in this age of quarantines, an eloquent writer finally comes to terms with a brutal attack in New York City many years ago.”

Now, a break from the news

Melissa Clark/The New York Times

Cook: For these crisp-on-the-outside, tender-on-the-inside scones, you can use an old banana or any frozen or fresh fruit.

Watch: Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s martial-arts movie “The Assassin” played widely, but here’s a look at some lesser-known works by Taiwan’s greatest filmmaker.

Listen: Money is a stressful subject at the best of times, and only more so in these worst of times. These seven podcasts will help you weather the financial storm.

Check out our At Home collection for more ideas on what to read, cook, watch, and do while staying safe at home.

And now for the Back Story on …

My world: a decade working from home

Claire Merchlinsky

Mike Hale, a Times television critic, has spent 10 years working at home, binge-watching the newest television series. So when the pandemic hit, not that much changed for him. In fact, he discovered, other lives were becoming more like his.

Here’s what he wrote about his unchanging job for Times Insider.

This sense of sameness was buttressed by the ability of the TV industry, relatively speaking, to maintain some semblance of business as usual. Colleagues who covered arts that depended on the physical proximity of audiences — theater, dance, live music, art museums and galleries, even movies, which is to say just about all of them — suddenly found themselves scrambling to find things to write about. On TV, meanwhile, new shows kept coming out.

But the truth, of course, is that everything is changing, and change is quickly catching up to TV. The absence of live sports has been the most obvious effect of the pandemic, but the near-total shutdown of production on most non-news programming is already rejiggering schedules and playing havoc with the fall season (if that designation even means anything now).

Creators are just beginning to explore new and safe methods of making shows. (A leading-edge example, the dramatic anthology “Isolation Stories,” made it on the air this month in Britain and comes to BritBox in America in June.) The next time we do a TV preview, it will probably look a lot different.

And while TV critics have had it easier than just about anyone during this troubling and sometimes terrifying period, we haven’t been untouched. No matter how well-practiced you are at sitting on a couch and staring at a screen, you’re not doing it with the same level of comfort that you had before.

The urge to check the news is stronger. Any susceptibility you might have to feelings of general uselessness is doubled. Worst of all, everyone else in your building is now home during the day too, and instead of watching TV, they’re doing dance aerobics or practicing the cello.

That’s it for this briefing. Take care of yourselves. See you next time.

— Isabella

Thank you
To Melissa Clark for the recipe, and to Theodore Kim and Jahaan Singh for the rest of 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 crisis in Minneapolis.
• Here’s today’s Mini Crossword puzzle, and a clue: Land of piazzas and pizzas (five letters). You can find all our puzzles here.
• The New York Times Magazine won five National Magazine Awards — known as the Ellies — for Print and Digital Media from the American Society of Magazine Editors, the most for any publication.