Your Monday Evening Briefing

July 13, 2020

Your Monday Evening Briefing

By Carole Landry and Hiroko Masuike

Good evening. Here’s the latest.

Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York Times

1. California is rolling back reopening plans.

With coronavirus cases surging, Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered restaurants, movie theaters and other businesses to close indoor operations. Bars will be forced to close across the state.

California’s largest public school districts — Los Angeles and San Diego — said all classes in the fall will be online-only. The Trump administration is pushing for a quick reopening of schools, with children in the classroom.

The outbreak is growing in 39 states, from the worsening hot spots in the South and West to those emerging in the Midwest.

The monthly U.S. budget deficit grew to a record $864 billion in June as the federal government responded to the pandemic, the Treasury Department said.

Here are the latest updates and maps of the outbreak.

Continue reading the main story

Rebecca Blackwell/Associated Press

2. Mexico now has the world’s fourth-highest death toll.

The country surpassed Italy this weekend to reach a grim milestone: Only the United States, Brazil and Britain have recorded more deaths during the coronavirus pandemic.

Continue reading the main story

More than 35,000 Mexicans have died so far, and the country has nearly 300,000 confirmed cases, according to a New York Times database. Mexico was slow to impose social-distancing measures and close businesses, and the government has repeatedly changed its projection of when the virus might peak. Above, digging graves at a municipal cemetery on the outskirts of Mexico City.

In other developments:

Hong Kong announced that it would close gyms, cinemas and amusement parks in response to a new wave of locally transmitted infections.
An outbreak on U.S. military bases in Okinawa, Japan, has alarmed the island population, which at times has been at odds with the Americans stationed there, and has otherwise been successful in limiting the spread of the coronavirus.

Nick Wass/Associated Press

3. Washington’s N.F.L. team is getting a new name.

After 90 years, the team announced that it would drop its logo, above, and retire “Redskins” from its name. Native American activists and sponsors had long criticized the name as a racist slur, but the team’s owner, Daniel Snyder, had stridently defended it for years.

The team did not announce a new name, and said it would continue to evaluate possibilities. Earlier this month, retailers including Nike, Walmart, Target and Amazon said they would no longer carry team merchandise.

The Cleveland Indians could be the next franchise to get a new name. Also, at ESPN, Black employees have begun speaking out about the everyday racism and barriers they face at the sports media giant.

Horatio Baltz for The New York Times

4. The virus is killing small businesses.

The second wave of lockdown orders appears to have dealt a heavy blow to many small businesses. Many companies are permanently shutting their doors, realizing that there may be no end in sight to the coronavirus crisis. Above, Gabriel Gordon in his soon-to-be-shuttered restaurant, Beachwood BBQ, in Seal Beach, Calif.

The job market is also being transformed, as the pandemic accelerates demands for a more skilled work force. Elected officials, business executives and labor leaders all agree that now is the time for new worker training programs. As a percentage of economic activity, Canada spends three times as much as the United States on government employment, training and other labor services, and Germany spends about six times as much.

Joseph Rushmore for The New York Times

5. Forensic investigators have broken ground at the site of a possible mass grave in Tulsa.

The experts are searching for the remains of up to 300 people whose bodies were dumped in unmarked graves after the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. Above, headstones for the victims near the area that is believed to be the site of a mass grave.

That year, the city erupted in a spasm of hate and fire, set off by a largely fabricated news story about a Black man assaulting a white girl. Fighting broke out after a white lynch mob tried to attack the jail where the man was being held. Rioters then descended on the city’s Greenwood District, home to an affluent Black community, and destroyed the area.

While it remained unclear what the excavators might find, they said they were treating the area as a crime scene.

Dan Pierce/The Courier, via Associated Press

6. The first federal execution in 17 years was put on hold.

A federal judge issued an injunction on Monday, just hours before the execution of Daniel Lewis Lee in Indiana.

The judge said that there were questions about the constitutionality of the lethal injection procedure, which had been marred by a string of botched executions. The Trump Administration, which was trying to resume federal executions after a nearly two-decade hiatus, appealed the ruling, and the case now appears headed to the Supreme Court. Above, Mr. Lee at a hearing in 1997.

Leszek Szymanski/EPA, via Shutterstock

7. President Andrzej Duda of Poland was narrowly re-elected to a second term in a race that revealed deep divisions in the country.

Mr. Duda, above, secured 51.03 percent of the vote, while Rafal Trzaskowski, the liberal mayor of Warsaw, won 48.97 percent — the closest presidential election since the end of Communist rule in 1989.

Mr. Duda’s promise to protect “traditional families” resonated with older voters and churchgoers, analysts said. His governing party has fought to control the courts and media while stoking fear of gay people, the European Union and foreigners.

Franck Robichon/EPA, via Shutterstock

8. The actress Kelly Preston has died after a two-year battle with breast cancer.

Ms. Preston, 57, was known for her role as the hardhearted fiancée of Tom Cruise’s character in the 1996 film “Jerry Maguire.” She also played the wife of the late mafia boss John Gotti in the 2018 film “Gotti,” opposite her real-life husband, John Travolta.

Investigators said they were confident that they had found the body of Naya Rivera, a star in the series “Glee,” almost a week after she was reported missing at a lake in California. She was 33.

Zindzi Mandela, the youngest daughter of former South African president Nelson Mandela and the anti-apartheid activist Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, died at age 59 in a Johannesburg hospital on Monday. She had served as South Africa’s ambassador to Denmark.

Photo Illustration by Buck Ellison for The New York Times

9. Sales of edible marijuana are sky high.

Managers of dispensaries said they saw an increase in orders for weed gummies and other edibles from new consumers in March, many of whom were working from home and dealing with the stresses of the coronavirus.

Edibles, as opposed to smoking or vaping, are more discreet, they say. Also, consumers may not want to share cannabis in the same way they used to, because of transmission fears.

More than a dozen states declared cannabis stores and medical marijuana dispensaries essential businesses during the pandemic, along with pharmacies and grocery stores.

Russell Shakespeare for The New York Times

10. And finally, one more reason to be thankful for koalas.

Researchers in Australia are testing a vaccine to fight chlamydia, which runs rampant in the adorable marsupials.

Microbiologists say that a trial in Queensland, as well as another in New South Wales, will be the last step before the government starts a mass vaccination program in northern Australia. If they’re right, it could be good news for more than just koalas.

Chlamydia is the world’s most common sexually transmitted disease among humans, and the hope is that the trials will yield valuable clues for researchers working on a human vaccine.

Have an adorable evening.

Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p.m. Eastern.

Want to catch up on past briefings? You can browse them here.

What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes.com.

Continue reading the main story