Good morning. We’re covering record virus cases in India, a major I.P.O. for Ant Group and how Bali residents are dealing with a change to their tourism-based economy. | |  By Melina Delkic | | | A virus care center set up in an indoor stadium in New Delhi on Monday. Manish Swarup/Associated Press | | | Infections in the country have jumped in recent weeks as a nationwide lockdown was lifted. Some states, including Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh, reimposed restrictions to try to bring the virus under control. | | | Still, new hot spots seem to emerge faster than they can be contained, and researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology now estimate that India will be the world’s worst-hit country by the end of next year. | | | Context: India, with 1.1 million confirmed cases, now falls behind only the U.S., with 3.7 million, and Brazil, with two million. India’s caseload is on track to surpass Brazil’s. | | | Ant Financial Services Group, Alibaba's financial affiliate in China, is controlled by Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba. Shu Zhang/Reuters | | | The I.P.O. is expected to be big — the company was valued at $150 billion two years ago — and it offers a ray of light for Hong Kong, which has struggled under the pandemic and a new national security law imposed by Beijing. | | | Ant, which is controlled by Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, did not offer details on timing. Investors have been waiting for the listing for years. | | | Context: Although not as well known as Alibaba, Ant has grown huge as a provider of payments, investments and loans to Alibaba’s hundreds of millions of customers. The company grew out of Alibaba’s payment platform, Alipay, which Mr. Ma broke off from Alibaba after what he said was regulatory pressure from Beijing in 2011. | | | Britain's foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, announcing the suspension in the House of Commons in London on Monday. Agence France-Presse — Getty Images | | | The foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, cited fears that anyone extradited to Hong Kong from Britain could be sent to mainland China under the new law. The move is sure to inflame tensions with Beijing and shows a hardening of Britain’s stance toward China. | | | This week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson is meeting with Mike Pompeo, the U.S. secretary of state, and China is expected to be high on the agenda during the visit. Australia and Canada suspended their extradition treaties with Hong Kong earlier this month. | | | Response: A spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Wang Wenbin, urged Britain to “stop going further down the wrong path.” | | | Imogen Cunningham; © The Imogen Cunningham Trust. From “Everything She Touched: The Life of Ruth Asawa,” by Marilyn Chase, published by Chronicle Books, 2020 | | | Asawa, above working on a looped-wire sculpture in 1957, was incarcerated as a teenager in a Japanese-American concentration camp and overcame incredible prejudice and racism to be an artist. Her legacy reflects both her own contributions as an artist as well as the singular path she forged for herself as a woman, an Asian-American and the child of immigrants. | | | 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 | | | | Oil deal: Chevron, the American oil giant, said on Monday that it had agreed to acquire Noble Energy, a Houston-based oil and gas explorer with an international dimension, for $5 billion. | | | U.S. presidential election: Former Vice President Joe Biden led by 15 points in the latest poll by ABC News and The Washington Post, and he has now held nearly a double-digit advantage over President Trump for more than a month. Will this big lead be different this time? | | | Nyimas Laula for The New York Times | | | Snapshot: Above, people foraging for clams, crabs and shrimp in Bali in June. The island that depends heavily on tourism is struggling to get back on its feet. Many resort workers have been forced by the coronavirus pandemic to return home to their villages and small towns, taking up traditional ways of making a living to feed their families. | | | What we’re listening to: This Armchair Expert podcast about aging research, featuring the Australian biologist David Sinclair. The way we age affects our response to disease, and the work Mr. Sinclair’s team is doing at Harvard might make your jaw drop. | | | Bryan Gardner for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne. | | | Cook: This heirloom tomato tart celebrates juicy, vibrant tomatoes in a cheesy, herby, custard-filled, flaky crust, with each bite punctuated with pesto. | | | See: Museums in Europe are reopening, and masks festooned with artwork by masters including Van Gogh and Rembrandt are hot souvenirs — a simple way to support institutions and cover your face in art. | | | Meshell Ndegeocello, Brandi Carlile and Hayley Kiyoko, artists with different backgrounds, found shared experiences in a conversation during The Times’s “Live at Home” series focused on music, activism and queer identity. Here’s an excerpt from their exchange. | | | When did activism start for each of you? When did you become politically awakened? | | | Hayley Kiyoko: I was on my own journey. For me, it’s been out of necessity. I think that for most people who have lived their lives being activists, it is through necessity. When I released my music video for “Girls Like Girls,” that was out of necessity for myself. | | | Meshell Ndegeocello: In my youth, I wasn’t very aware of it. I was very singularly focused on making music. Music is something where I feel genderless and raceless. But being a person of color, I think every day of my existence is pretty much making a statement, and I’ve only come to understand that as I now am 52. | | | How do you integrate queerness into your music? | | | Brandi Carlile: Music is such an expression that your sexuality comes out. It just does. Whether you’re writing about it or not. The people that need to know, know. I write songs with guys and sometimes they’ll have written a song or a narrative and they’re singing about a woman, but the perspective is so male I can’t put that on me. “I don’t feel that way, I feel really female about this,” and that’s just where I am with my gender identity so I kind of need to change this — keep the pronoun where it is, but I need it to be me. | | | So how do you balance activism and being out with threats of violence that still exist? | | | Meshell: I have to say your safety is much more important, your life. I’m a very passive, nonviolent person, and I hope you can find the peace within yourself, so perhaps do your activism through other channels that don’t jeopardize your safety. That’s the most important thing. | | | Hayley: Survival is key and without you, there is no change. | | That’s it for this briefing. See you next time. — Melina | | Thank you
To Theodore Kim and Jahaan Singh for 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. | | |
