Your Wednesday Evening Briefing |
Good evening. Here’s the latest. |
 | | Karsten Moran for The New York Times |
|
1. States and localities are tapping the breaks on reopening as daily U.S. coronavirus cases shoot up, rising 85 percent over the last two weeks. |
 | | Kyle Grillot/Reuters |
|
On the surface, the advice may seem to buck the trend of the group’s generally conservative approach to health and safety. But the organization says there are far more benefits to bringing students back to classrooms than to keeping them at home this fall — and that children, particularly the youngest, are not spreading the coronavirus. In an Opinion essay, an epidemiologist and a pediatrician have suggestions for how to make classroom learning a reality. |
 | | Samuel Corum for The New York Times |
|
The denials, qualifications and accusations continue to pile up. Robert O’Brien, the national security adviser, told Fox News that President Trump knew nothing about the reports that Russia paid rewards to members of the Taliban who killed American troops because a presidential briefer “decided not to” share unverified intelligence with Mr. Trump. |
It is still unknown whether Mr. Trump received the information, which was delivered in a written briefing in February, days before a peace deal with the Taliban was signed. But the gravity of the situation remains, our reporters write in an analysis: The list of Russian aggressions in recent weeks — including cyberattacks, election interference and tests of U.S. air defenses — “rivals some of the worst days of the Cold War.” |
On Wednesday, Russian voters approved a measure that allows Mr. Putin, 67, to stay in power until at least 2036. The independent monitoring organization Golos called the vote rigged from the start. |
 | | Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times |
|
4. The Hong Kong police moved swiftly to enforce China’s new national security rules. |
About 370 people were arrested, including 10 over new offenses created by the security law, which takes aim at political dissent. Among them was a 15-year-old girl waving a Hong Kong independence flag, the police said. |
The chilling effect has booksellers, professors and nonprofits in Hong Kong questioning their futures. |
 | | Ruth Fremson/The New York Times |
|
5. The Seattle police cleared the so-called autonomous zone cordoned off by protesters after the death of George Floyd in a symbolic rejection of racist policing. |
Officials cited a series of violent episodes in the zone, including at least four shootings over 10 days last month. Tensions have been growing over how to handle the area, known as CHOP, or Capitol Hill Occupation Protest. |
Activists have been transforming neighborhoods into short-lived protest camps for at least a century, opening brief portals into alternate sociopolitical realities. Some have had happier endings. |
 | | Bryan Denton for The New York Times |
|
6. The U.S. has outperformed Europe on the economic front for decades, but the coronavirus may be changing that. |
In this crisis, the U.S. provided an early burst of funds for taxpayers and company support, but is leaving it up to the market to reallocate jobs. Experts say the European response, which froze the economy in place with wage subsidies, may work better. |
In recent weeks, as new coronavirus cases intensified, real-time economic data began to show the economy moving backward as rising infection fears spooked consumers. Above, the Santa Monica Pier in California, still mostly closed, last month. |
 | | Justin Lane/EPA, via Shutterstock |
|
7. It’s July, and sports are really, truly, finally coming back. Pandemic willing. |
Baseball, men’s and women’s basketball, hockey, soccer, as well as Formula One racing and cricket are all set to restart in some shape or form this month. Adam Silver, the commissioner of the N.B.A., said that he was “pretty confident” plans to restart the league in Florida would move forward but that he was monitoring the surge in cases there. |
And that’s the thing — leagues are setting up bubbles and writing safety protocols, but as long as the coronavirus continues to surge across the country, their seasons remain at risk. |
The question of whether to play is particularly hard for college sports. Morehouse and Clemson, for starters, have very different answers. |
 | | National Gallery of Art |
|
8. “I’m finding myself some peace and quiet today. I buried it in a coffee can under a weeping willow last fall.” |
And like the account, which is illustrated with Frans Hals’s “Portrait of an Elderly Lady” (1633), the memoir will be published anonymously. |
“That’s kind of the joke to me,” the writer told the Times in an interview. “That Duchess is famous as a fictional person, but I’m not. In any way.” |
 | | Universal Studios |
|
9. Forty-five years ago this summer, a colossal shark freaked out the world, scaring us out of the water — and into a new chapter of moviegoing. |
In a year when the summer blockbuster is most likely dead in the water, our film critics are looking back on past seasonal hits and thinking about what we can learn from them moving forward. |
 | | Angie Wang |
|
10. And finally, falling for Mozart. |
In the past we’ve asked some of our favorite artists to choose the five minutes or so they would play to make their friends fall in love with classical music, opera, the piano and the cello. Now Mark Hamill, Condoleezza Rice, Missy Mazzoli, Mitsuko Uchida and other music-lovers tell us what made them love Mozart. |
For Ms. Rice, the former secretary of state, it’s Piano Concerto No. 20. The Times’s classical musical editor, Zachary Wolfe, who loves “when Mozart swerves from the comic, just for a bit, and opens his heart,” selected Piano Concerto No. 25. Ragnar Kjartansson, an Icelandic artist, chose “Ave Verum Corpus” (“Hail, True Body”). For him, “few human bodies have brought as much joy to the world as Mozart.” |
Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p.m. Eastern. |
|
