Your Tuesday Evening Briefing |
Good evening. Here's the latest. |
 | | Jon Cherry for The New York Times |
|
1. After weeks of decline followed by a plateau, the U.S. is seeing a rise in coronavirus cases again. |
 | | via Court TV |
|
2. Young witnesses took the stand on the second day of the Derek Chauvin trial. |
Darnella Frazier, the teenager who took the video of Mr. Chauvin arresting George Floyd, held back tears as she described arriving on the scene and seeing him "terrified, scared, begging for his life." The widely seen footage of the former Minneapolis police officer kneeling on Mr. Floyd's neck during the arrest, along with the precise cause of death, has emerged as key to the arguments. |
 | | Erin Schaff/The New York Times |
|
3. Representative Matt Gaetz is said to be under investigation over whether he had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old and paid for her to travel with him. |
The Justice Department is examining whether Mr. Gaetz, a Florida Republican and a close ally of Donald Trump, violated federal sex trafficking laws, people briefed on the matter said. It was not clear how Mr. Gaetz met the girl, believed to be 17 at the time of encounters about two years ago that investigators are scrutinizing. |
The investigation was opened in the final months of the Trump administration by former Attorney General William Barr. It was part of a broader investigation of a political ally of Mr. Gaetz, Joel Greenberg, who was indicted last summer on several charges including the sex trafficking of a child and financially supporting people in exchange for sex, at least one of whom was an underage girl. |
 | | Katie Currid for The New York Times |
|
4. As President Biden prepares to announce his big infrastructure plan on Wednesday, one group is fighting for inclusion: mothers. |
The package is expected to include significant child care aid, on top of the financial support for families outlined in the $1.9 trillion stimulus plan. But for many mothers who have been hit hard by the pandemic, like Bridget Hughes, above, there are no real feelings of relief yet, and resentment lingers that the government is helping too late. Both political parties are now trying to court them. |
And with a burst of judicial nominations, Mr. Biden began a drive to reshape the federal judiciary. The president's first choices reflected his campaign promise to choose judges from diverse backgrounds, including public defenders. |
 | | New York City Police Department |
|
5. An attack in Manhattan on a 65-year-old woman is the latest in a surge of anti-Asian violence. |
The N.Y.P.D. said it was searching for a man who kicked the woman to the ground in broad daylight on a Midtown Manhattan sidewalk, stomped on her several times and made anti-Asian remarks. Building staff members who witnessed the attack and did not intervene have been suspended. |
Mayor Bill de Blasio said the video of the attack was "absolutely disgusting and outrageous" and that it was "absolutely unacceptable" that no one stepped in or came to the woman's aid. |
The assault on the woman came as hate crimes investigators were looking into the subway beating of a man on the same day. |
 | | Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times |
|
6. Peace deal or not, the Taliban think they have already won the war. |
From the bellicose speech of their deputy leader, boasting of "conquests," to sneering references to the "foreign masters" of the "illegitimate" Kabul government, the Taliban's swagger is shaping Afghanistan's volatile present. |
The grim sense of Taliban supremacy is hanging over talks scheduled for next month in Turkey. The Taliban are showing little outward interest in compromise, or in going along with the American idea of power-sharing. |
 | | Suez Canal Authority/EPA, via Shutterstock |
|
7. The Suez Canal blockage showed that bigger is not always better. |
The Ever Given, a ship longer than the Empire State Building and capable of carrying furnishings for 20,000 apartments, may finally be sailing again, but it was part of a growing trend in how ships were built: As global trade has grown, shipping companies have steadily increased ship sizes. |
The growth in ship size, which sped up in recent years, often made economic sense — bigger vessels are generally cheaper to build and operate on a per container basis. But the increase has pitted port against port, canal against canal, in the race to accommodate mammoth ships. |
 | | Eric Gay/Associated Press |
|
8. The Final Four will be settled tonight. |
 | | Youtube |
|
9. Lil Nas X has engineered a good old-fashioned moral panic, our music critic writes. |
"Montero" — a frisky song about lust featured in a campy erotica video where Lil Nas X gives Satan a lap dance before killing him — may or may not top the Billboard Hot 100 next week, but it will be unrivaled in conversations started. |
"The true art here isn't the music," Jon Caramanica writes, adding that though it's one of his better songs, "it's the effortlessness, the ease, the joy of his reactions to the reactions." |
 | | Steven Kovacs |
|
10. And finally, tiny sea creatures are ready for their close-up. |
In what is known as blackwater photography, divers plunge deep into the ocean during nighttime to a place where "there's no bottom, no walls, just this space that goes to infinity," as one photographer put it. Many of the larvae are no bigger than a fingernail. But up close through macro lenses, the scene is like an undersea safari on another planet. |
"The No. 1 thing people, even scientists, ask is: 'What the hell is that?'" said Ned DeLoach, an experienced underwater photographer. |
Have an otherworldly night. |
Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p.m. Eastern. |
|
