Coronavirus, China, Aleksei Navalny: Your Friday Briefing

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Good morning.

We’re masking China’s troubled relationship with Europe, rising issues about a virus uptick throughout the continent and new particulars on the poisoning of Aleksei Navalny.

A second wave of coronavirus throughout Europe

The World Well being Group on Thursday warned of a “very severe” resurgence of the coronavirus across Europe however stated that transmission may very well be contained by native somewhat than nationwide measures. “We have now a really severe state of affairs unfolding earlier than us,” Hans Kluge, the W.H.O.’s regional director for Europe, stated. “Weekly instances have now exceeded these reported when the pandemic first peaked in Europe in March.”

The variety of virus instances has elevated by greater than 10 % prior to now two weeks in over half the international locations of Europe. In seven of these international locations, the variety of instances has doubled. The area has recorded no less than 220,000 deaths from the virus.

In France, cities together with Lyon and Good have skilled a worrying rise in instances and should enact new restrictions on public gatherings. The nation’s charge per capita of recent instances over the past seven days is currently one of the highest in Europe, with 91 instances per 100,000 residents, up from 10 on the finish of July.

Listed below are the latest updates and maps of the pandemic.

In different developments:

• Beginning Friday, practically two million individuals in northeast England will probably be restricted from assembly with anybody outdoors their households.

• New Zealand has entered its first recession in a decade. New knowledge confirmed that the financial system shrank 12.2 % within the second quarter, the nation’s greatest fall on report.

• Australia intends to extend the quantity of people that can enter the nation every week by about 2,000, ranging from the tip of subsequent week.

• Within the Czech Republic, roughly 1 / 4 of the nation’s 41,000 whole instances have been reported over the past week because the nation battled one of many fastest-growing outbreaks in Europe.

French politicians can’t cease speaking about crime

Within the Babel Tower of French politics, everybody agrees no less than on this: Crime is uncontrolled.

Besides — it isn’t. Regardless of warnings from the far right, conventional conservatives, the presumed Green Party candidate and the ministers of President Emmanuel Macron’s cupboard, practically all main crimes are decrease than they have been a decade in the past or three years in the past, and regardless of a one-year spike, the 970 homicides recorded in 2019 have been fewer than the 1,051 in 2000.

As a substitute, the debate over crime seems to be a proxy for debates about immigration, Islam, race, nationwide identification and different flamable points. The nation’s conventional social material is more and more being challenged by racial and ethnic minorities and by girls who’ve protested injustices akin to sexual abuse and police violence.

Political angle: For the far proper, a give attention to crime is sweet information. “This theme can take us to victory within the regional and departmental elections, after which within the presidential election,” one far-right aide stated. “We’re on our floor. It’s a house recreation.”

A difficult relationship between China and Europe

Lengthy-simmering European frustrations with Chinese language insurance policies, on issues as diversified as commerce and human rights, have reached a boiling level this yr within the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. For Beijing, it’s an issue: China had set its sights on Europe as a possible pragmatic companion, notably amid its quickly deteriorating relations with america.

For China’s chief, Xi Jinping, a long-lasting shift in European views poses an unlimited problem. Within the quick time period, it threatens to undermine the nation’s post-pandemic financial restoration by stifling new investments as america restricts them, particularly in excessive tech. In the long term, it may blunt his ambitions for China to supply an alternative choice to america as the worldwide chief dictating the principles for governance and commerce.

European issues: In a digital summit between Mr. Xi and the European Union’s management, Europeans raised a litany of issues, together with China’s sluggish strikes to fight local weather change, its crackdowns in Hong Kong and Tibet, the imprisonment of a Swedish bookseller, the arrests of two Canadians in transparent retaliation for a criminal extradition case and China’s unilateral strikes in the disputed waters of the South China Sea.

At 26, Jennifer Laude died by the hands of an American she had met at a nightclub, a Marine who was within the Philippines for joint navy workouts. After discovering that Ms. Laude was transgender, Lance Cpl. Joseph Scott Pemberton choked her and pushed her head into a rest room bowl till she drowned.

Human rights advocates had been combating to carry American service members accountable for violence towards girls within the Philippines for years. The Marine’s conviction gave the impression to be a step in the suitable path. However on Sept. 13, Lance Corporal Pemberton was put aboard a U.S. navy airplane and flown out of the Philippines, a free man. He had served lower than six years. Our reporter looked at why he was freed and what the case means for individuals within the Philippines.

Right here’s what else is going on

Brexit: In a pointed tweet, former Vice President Joe Biden warned Boris Johnson, Britain’s prime minister, that any deal with the European Union must shield the Irish peace settlement.

Aleksei Navalny: Aides to the Russian opposition chief stated he had been poisoned at his resort in Siberia, and never on the airport as initially believed, by a water bottle tainted with a highly toxic nerve agent.

Greece: A uncommon Mediterranean cyclone is anticipated to slam into the nation with full power on Friday, with hurricane-strength winds and life-threatening flooding in some locations. In the meantime, 1000’s of migrants displaced by a fireplace on the Moria camp have been relocated to a temporary tent camp elsewhere on the island of Lesbos.

Snapshot: Above, the Greek island of Chios, the place everyone knows if you have Covid-19. The island of 50,000 residents has had about 30 instances because the outbreak started, and no deaths. The principle concern on Chios, our reporter discovered, was of outsiders like her bringing the virus in.

Lives lived: The award-winning playwright Steve Carter, who explored the African-American and Caribbean-American experiences with incisiveness, humor and a willingness to wrestle with troublesome themes, died at 90 on Tuesday in Tomball, Texas.

24 Hours of Le Mans: The world’s oldest sports-car endurance race will probably be held this weekend within the metropolis in northwestern France. For the primary time in its historical past, an all-female team will compete within the LMP2 class, although no spectators will probably be current to cheer them on.

What we’re studying: This essay in The Cut by the mannequin Emily Ratajkowski about what occurs once you lose management of your individual picture. Vanessa Friedman, our style director and chief style critic, writes that the piece “is unflinching and unapologetic, and provides a brand new twist to the dialogue round fashions’ rights as engendered by #MeToo.”

Now, a break from the information

Cook dinner: This one-pot Japanese curry chicken and rice depends on a number of spices to imitate conventional Japanese curry flavors.

Learn: One to your studying checklist: Former President Barack Obama’s new memoir, “A Promised Land,” will probably be launched in 25 languages, together with Chinese language, Arabic and Vietnamese, in November.

Watch: “I’ve Got Issues,” a surreal comedy of despair and deliverance, “isn’t a reasonably image, in both sense of the phrase,” our reviewer writes, “however it’s a profoundly empathetic one.”

Making ready for an additional weekend indoors? At Home has lots of ideas on what to learn, prepare dinner, watch and do.

And now for the Again Story on …

Variations in coronavirus outbreaks

All through the pandemic, there was hypothesis about why some communities appear to be hit tougher than others or why one nation may all of a sudden expertise a better charge of fatality than its neighbor, together with strained hypotheses about completely different variations of the virus and doubtful race-based claims about how Covid-19 impacts completely different demographic teams.

Donald G. McNeil Jr., a science and well being reporter for The Occasions who covers infectious ailments and international well being, stated that variations in outbreaks are sometimes merely a matter of time.

“As soon as a case, or a number of instances, arrive, it may well unfold exponentially,” he stated. “However with borders as nonporous as they’re lately, it might take days or perhaps weeks for one or a number of instances to reach in a brand new nation.” The severity of an outbreak may also reveal one thing a few explicit place, its strategy to containing the virus or the inhabitants within the line of fireplace, he stated.

In Belgium, as an illustration, which had the very best dying charge per capita on the European continent, The Times reported that the authorities had principally left nursing properties to fend for themselves: In the course of the peak of the disaster, from March via mid-Could, nursing residence residents accounted for 2 out of each three coronavirus deaths.

In response to a New York Occasions database, one of many international locations logging the very best charges of deaths per capita is Peru, which is struggling a scarcity of oxygen to manage to sufferers. “As much as 20 % of all symptomatic Covid instances want oxygen to outlive,” Donald stated. “In Peru, the 2 corporations that made oxygen served solely the profitable personal hospitals, so there was an enormous oxygen scarcity there; plus a lot of the inhabitants lives at excessive altitude the place oxygen is brief anyway.”

We’ll have extra on that subject quickly.

Thanks for becoming a member of me for this week’s briefings. See you on Monday.

— Natasha

Thanks
To Theodore Kim and Jahaan Singh for the break from the information. You’ll be able to attain the crew at .

P.S.
• We’re listening to “The Daily.” Our newest episode is concerning the refugee disaster within the Moira camp on the island of Lesbos.
• Right here’s our Mini Crossword, and a clue: “Like a pizza with out meat or actual cheese” (5 letters). You can find all our puzzles here.
• These crowdsourced six-word pandemic memoirs sum up a unprecedented yr. A favourite? “The world has by no means felt smaller.”
• The Occasions won three Deadline Club awards from the New York chapter of the Society of Skilled Journalists.