Your Thursday Evening Briefing |
Good evening. Here’s the latest. |
1. More than 40 million people — about 1 in 4 American workers — have filed for unemployment since March. |
Some 2.1 million people filed claims last week to reach the astounding tally reported by the government on Thursday. That rivals the bleakest years of the Great Depression — and a backlog may be leaving many uncounted. |
Some of the federal aid meant to cushion the pandemic’s economic blow, like the extra $600 per week on top of state unemployment benefits, is set to expire over the summer. |
 | | Sources: New York State; Public Health England; Carlos III Health Institute; Wu et al.; Journal of Medical Virology; City of Boston; Public Health Agency of Sweden |
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2. The vast majority of people remain vulnerable to the virus, even in areas where the spread has been greatest, new studies found. |
The percentage of those infected is still a fraction of the threshold epidemiologists believe is needed for herd immunity, the point at which the virus can no longer spread widely. |
“We don’t have a good way to safely build it up, to be honest, not in the short term,” a Harvard epidemiologist said. |
 | | Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times |
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3. China officially claimed broad powers to quash unrest in Hong Kong. |
Beijing will be hashing out the specifics in the coming weeks, and those final rules will help determine the fate of a city that has been a link between China and the West for decades. |
 | | Tim Gruber for The New York Times |
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4. The mayor of Minneapolis pleaded for calm after a destructive night of protests over the death of George Floyd, an African-American, in police custody. |
“We cannot let tragedy beget more tragedy,” Mayor Jacob Frey said on Twitter. |
Gov. Tim Walz declared a state of emergency in Minneapolis, St. Paul and surrounding communities and activated the Minnesota National Guard to help keep the peace. Here’s the latest. |
In the wave of protests on Wednesday, the police fired tear gas and rubber bullets as people set buildings on fire and looted stores. Mr. Floyd’s death on Monday also spurred protests in Memphis and Los Angeles, among other cities. |
 | | Doug Mills/The New York Times |
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5. Angered by Twitter’s moves to fact-check him, President Trump signed an order cracking down on social media sites. |
The order seeks to strip liability protection in certain cases for companies like Twitter, Google and Facebook, meaning they would have to be more aggressive about policing messages that could be false or defamatory. In other words, Mr. Trump is trying to remove the very legal provision that has allowed him so much latitude online, our reporters write in an analysis. |
 | | Laetitia Vancon for The New York Times |
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6. Europe is gradually reopening after months of lockdown. Our reporter Patrick Kingsley is driving more than 3,700 miles to document what life looks like. Above, a checkpoint at the border between Germany and Belgium. |
Like most Europeans, Patrick was used to traveling freely across borders in the European Union. But as he recently crossed the Czech-German border, police officers stopped and searched his car and suitcase. It was “a mildly inconvenient episode,” he writes, that shows “how haphazard and disorientating life in Europe has become.” |
Back in the U.S., campers who miss their beloved outdoors will find a complicated camping landscape come summer, with reopening rules varying on local, state and federal lands. And demand is expected to be high. |
 | | Chris O'Meara/Associated Press |
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7. Major League Baseball and its players are hoping to have a deal to return to play by Monday. It’s not looking good. Above, an empty Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Fla. |
The league wants to slash the regular season from more than 160 games to 82, with teams using their home ballparks but without fans, at least initially. Players agreed to have their salaries prorated for the number of games played. |
Now the owners are trying to share the damage from lost revenue. They never formally presented their preferred plan, a 50-50 split of revenue with players, because it was clear the union would reject it. Instead, they proposed a sliding scale for salaries, in which the lowest-paid players would take the smallest pay cut, and the highest-paid players the largest. |
Asking for that on top of the prorated salaries miffed the players, and the union may not counter at all. |
 | | Quil Lemons for The New York Times |
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8. We checked in on Pamela Anderson in quarantine. |
The former “Baywatch” star and Playboy model is living on an idyllic family compound on Vancouver Island, where she is preparing the debut of Jasmin, a webcam or “camming” site that offers live online (and not necessarily sexually explicit) broadcasts. |
 | | The New York Times |
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9. Over the past two months, our critic Jason Farago has grown obsessed with this painting: “The Gross Clinic” by a young Thomas Eakins. |
The 1875 masterpiece of pain and healing offers a depiction of American medicine that, he writes, feels particularly relevant right now. “The artist plunges us into the bloody reality of the operating theater, and paints in a frank, even ruthless new style that foregrounds the bare facts of illness and healing.” |
Detail by detail, Jason shows how the work creates “a vision of progress in which art and medicine have common aims.” |
 | | Farvardin Daliri |
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10. And finally, the ultimate pandemic project. |
Coronavirus lockdown presented the perfect opportunity for Farvardin Daliri to complete his magnum opus: a 15-foot-tall replica of a laughing kookaburra, a beloved Australian bird. Mr. Daliri, an Iranian-born 65-year-old who moved to Australia in the 1980s, built it in his yard in Brisbane. |
The body includes fiberglass, steel mesh, bamboo, ceramic and plenty of hot glue, and a sound system inside emits the bird’s distinctive cackling laugh. The entire sculpture is registered as a boat trailer. |
He said he just wanted to cheer people up. “If a bird can laugh, why not me?” he said. |
Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p.m. Eastern. |
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