Good morning. We’re covering the worsening U.S. coronavirus outbreak, a database in China that could be a tool against domestic abuse and the next Women’s World Cup, hosted by Australia and New Zealand. | |  By Melina Delkic | | | A medical worker takes patients’ information at a testing site in Houston on Wednesday. David J. Phillip/Associated Press | | | Cases have been rising in 29 states, and public health officials in the United States reported the highest total since the start of the pandemic: 36,880 new cases as of Wednesday. | | | The tally of new cases, based on a New York Times database, showed that the outbreak was stronger than ever, particularly in the South and West. | | | In Texas, home to one of the largest surges, the governor announced a pause on reopening. More than 4,300 people with the virus are hospitalized across the state — a doubling of the number at the beginning of June. | | | As of Wednesday, 2.3 million Americans have been infected with the coronavirus, and at least 121,925 have died, by far the largest outbreak in the world. | | ■ The number of new coronavirus cases in Europe increased last week for the first time in months, the World Health Organization said. ■ In Germany, a spike of more than 1,500 coronavirus infections within days, mostly concentrated in slaughterhouses and low-income, crowded apartment blocks, has increased fears of wider spread. ■ At least 22 police officers were injured in London on Wednesday night as they tried to disperse crowds that had gathered for an outdoor party in defiance of coronavirus restrictions. ■ The Australian airline Qantas will cut roughly a fifth of its work force as it joins other carriers grappling with the near halt in global travel. | | | The storms came as the yearly monsoon rains began in northern India, sweeping across the subcontinent and drenching cities and towns in their path. | | | “Nature’s fury was at its worst today,” said Manoj Kumar Tiwary, a top police official in the state of Bihar, where the 83 people were reported dead. Officials also noted widespread property damage across the state. Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered his condolences. | | | A couple in Yiwu, China. The city will soon allow people entering marriages to run background checks on their partners. Visual China Group, via Getty Images | | | The move, described as the first of its kind in the country, is meant to address domestic violence, which has worsened during lockdowns. Some are already calling for the searchable database, which goes live on July 1, to be rolled out nationwide. | | | “In many cases, the parties involved only know about domestic violence after marriage. By establishing an inquiry database, partners can know beforehand and consider whether to marry,” Zhou Danying, vice chairman of the Yiwu Women’s Federation, said. | | | Dan Balilty for The New York Times | | | Israel’s plan to annex territory in the occupied West Bank along the Jordanian border has many Palestinian residents worrying about where it would leave them. Many wonder if they will be cut off from jobs, hospitals and family members by new checkpoints or fences. Above, Abdel Rahman Bisharat, a Bedouin shepherd. | | | “We have no idea what annexation would mean for us, because nobody is telling us anything,” said Hamdan Saeed, who runs a coffee stand along the main highway through the Jordan Valley. | | | PAID POST: A MESSAGE FROM CAMPAIGN MONITOR | | TEST: Email Marketing 101: Never Sacrifice Beauty for Simplicity | | A drag-and-drop email builder, a gallery of templates and turnkey designs, personalized customer journeys, and engagement segments. It's everything you need to create stunning, results-driven email campaigns in minutes. And with Campaign Monitor, you have access to it all, along with award-winning support around the clock. It's beautiful email marketing done simply. | | | Learn More | | | | U.S. asylum: The Supreme Court ruled that immigrants whose requests for asylum were rejected in bare-bone proceedings may not contest the denials in federal court. The case concerned Vijayakumar Thuraissigiam, a member of Sri Lanka’s Tamil ethnic minority who was apprehended near the Mexican border in California. | | | Syria: U.S. forces used a specially designed secret missile to kill the head of a Qaeda affiliate in Syria this month. The missile had six long blades tucked inside, which deployed seconds before impact to slice up anything in its path. | | | Congo: After nearly two years and 2,280 deaths, the Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo is over, the World Health Organization said. The country continues to battle the world’s largest measles epidemic as well as the coronavirus pandemic. | | | Julien De Rosa/EPA, via Shutterstock | | | Paola & Murray for The New York Times. Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Rebecca Bartoshesky. | | | Cook: This galbijjim short-rib stew is fragrant and sweet, with deep caramelized flavors. The addition of greens at the end gives the dish an exciting brightness. | | | Read: “Korean Art From 1953,” a lavish new book, is the most significant English-language overview yet of modern and contemporary art on the peninsula. | | | The Times’s Kashmir Hill recently reported on how Robert Julian-Borchak Williams, a black man in Michigan, was accused of shoplifting on the basis of surveillance video that relied on flawed software, leading to Mr. Williams’s arrest in a crime he didn’t commit. (In response to Kash’s article, prosecutors apologized for what happened to Mr. Williams and said he could have his case expunged.) | | | Shira: How did this happen? | | | Kash: The police are supposed to use facial recognition identification only as an investigative lead. But instead, people treat facial recognition as a kind of magic. And that’s why you get a case where someone was arrested based on flawed software combined with inadequate police work. | | | But humans, not just computers, misidentify people in criminal cases. | | | Absolutely. Witness testimony is also very troubling. That has been a selling point for many facial recognition technologies. | | | Is the problem that the facial recognition technology is inaccurate? | | | That’s one problem. A federal study of facial recognition algorithms found them to be biased and to wrongly identify people of color at higher rates than white people. The study included the two algorithms used in the image search that led to Williams’s arrest. | | | Sometimes the algorithm is good and sometimes it’s bad, and there’s not always a great way to tell the difference. And there’s usually no requirement for vetting the technology from policymakers, the government or law enforcement. | | | What’s the broader problem? | | | Companies that sell facial recognition software say it doesn’t give a perfect “match.” It gives a score of how likely the facial images in databases match the one you search. | | | But on the ground, officers see an image of a suspect next to a photo of the likeliest match, and it seems like the correct answer. I have seen facial recognition work well with some high-quality close-up images. But usually, police officers have grainy videos or a sketch, and computers don’t work well in those cases. | | That’s it for this briefing. See you next time. — Melina | | Thank you
To Theodore Kim and Jahaan Singh for the rest of the break from the news. You can reach the team at briefing@nytimes.com. | | | Were you sent this briefing by a friend? Sign up here to get the Morning Briefing. | | |
