| Wednesday, Oct 14, 2020 | | | Good morning. We’re covering European attempts to control a virus surge, how climate change and fire devastated the rich Pantanal wetland in Brazil and one Japanese tourist’s long journey to Machu Picchu. | |  By Melina Delkic | | | Students saying goodbye before the closing of schools across the country, in Prague on Tuesday. Martin Divisek/EPA, via Shutterstock | | | A pointed warning came from Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who said that she was worried about cases “in almost every part of Europe,” Reuters reported. “We mustn’t throw away what we achieved via restrictions over the past months,” she said at a meeting with E.U. officials on Tuesday. | | | Details: The European Union is trying to unify procedures for quarantines and testing between countries in the bloc. The Czech Republic has announced it will close schools and theaters, and it has restricted restaurants to offering only takeout orders. Neighboring Slovakia is closing high schools and is considering restricting travel to the Czech Republic. In Italy, parties have been banned and indoor gatherings are limited to six people. | | | Judge Amy Coney Barrett, President Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, at her confirmation hearing in Washington on Tuesday. Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times | | | The confirmation hearings for President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, ramped up on Tuesday with some heated exchanges. Judge Barrett faced questioning by the deeply divided Senate Judiciary Committee. Follow our live briefing. | | | Here are some of the notable moments from the day: | | ■ Judge Barrett pushed back on Democrats’ portrayal of her as a right-wing activist chosen to undermine certain issues: “Judges cannot just wake up one day and say, ‘I have an agenda — I like guns, I hate guns, I like abortion, I hate abortion,’ and walk in like a royal queen and impose their will on the world.” ■ She refused to say whether she would recuse herself, if confirmed to the Supreme Court, from considering an upcoming case in which Republican states are trying to get the court to strike down the Affordable Care Act — or from any case that may arise from a legal dispute over the presidential election next month. ■ She invoked her predecessors and refused to say how she would rule in potential cases on abortion, the election and same-sex marriage. Quoting Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she said: “no hints, no forecasts, no previews.” ■ Though she pushed back on descriptions of her as a “female Scalia,” referring to her mentor and the former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, they share a similar school of thought. She is a strict textualist who interprets the “Constitution as a law.” | | | Refugees, who fled Nagorno-Karabakh because of military conflict, watching TV in a hotel in Goris, Armenia, last week. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times | | | The new war in Nagorno-Karabakh is a continuation of more than a century of on-off strife. The days of the Soviet Union, when Azerbaijanis and Armenians lived together in peace, feel like a lost world. | | | In both Azerbaijan and Armenia, views of the other as the enemy have hardened as a generation has come of age with no memory of living with each other on friendly terms. Our correspondent visited villages in Armenia where the conflict has left unhealed scars. | | | Quotable: “To live together is, put simply, impossible,” said Shahen Babayants, the village head of Shgharjik, in Armenia. | | | The latest: The conflict has the potential to spiral into a bigger crisis with sprawling consequences. It is already drawing in Turkey, Azerbaijan’s ally and a NATO member; Russia, which has a defense treaty with Armenia; and Iran, which borders to the south. | | | Maria Magdalena Arrellaga for The New York Times | | | Roughly a quarter of the Pantanal wetland in Brazil, one of the most biodiverse places on Earth, has burned this year in wildfires worsened by climate change. It is home to breathtaking wildlife: jaguars, tapirs, endangered giant otters and bright blue hyacinth macaws. Its swamps and lagoons purify water and store carbon. | | | Our climate reporters mapped the devastation from the unprecedented fires this year and talked to people living in communities where the water, air and food supplies have been affected. “I couldn’t help but think: Our Pantanal is dead,” said Eunice Morais de Amorim, a member of the Guató people, an Indigenous group. | | | 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 | | | | Jewelry ad pulled: The Indian jewelry brand Tanishq withdrew an advertisement featuring an interfaith couple on Tuesday after Hindu nationalists accused the company of promoting “love jihad.” The term was coined by right-wing Hindus who have accused India’s Muslim minority of persuading Hindu women into marriage to convert them to Islam. | | | Benson Ibeabuchi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images | | | What we’re reading: This Mother Jones article by a reporter who made 2,000 phone calls to people listed in Jeffrey Epstein’s little black book. “It’s a phenomenal feat of reporting and a gripping psychological portrait,” says Natasha Frost, who writes the Europe briefing. | | | Craig Lee for The New York Times | | | Cook: These snickerdoodles taste of sweet butter and cinnamon, and have a secret ingredient: cream of tartar. | | | Watch: In “Evil Eye,” Sarita Choudhury plays an Indian mother scandalized by her daughter’s romance. The directors, the twin brothers Elan and Rajeev Dassani, keep the tension percolating before letting loose with a final confrontation that is truly something to see, our reviewer writes. | | | After 27 years and more than 2,500 reviews, Ben Brantley, The Times’s co-chief theater critic, is leaving his post. His departure comes during one of the strangest times that he could imagine for theater. He spoke to his colleague Jesse Green about his tenure. | | | How quickly were you introduced to — and how long did it take you to make your peace with — the blowback that often results from writing honestly about a show? | | | I expected the blowback, and it came pretty quickly. The public put-downs from celebrity stars are to be savored, I think. Interestingly, in my case, the attacks almost always came from white men: Alec Baldwin (“Orphans” — he said I was “not a good writer”), Josh Brolin (“True West” — he just said he hated me in highly charged language though we later made up by email). | | | Ben Brantley in 2016. Sara Krulwich/The New York Times | | | How do you add up the pluses and minuses you’ve observed while writing more than 2,500 reviews during 27 years in the hot seat? | | | The roster of shows in the season interrupted by the pandemic showed a breadth of diversity and aspiration in form and content that I found incredibly heartening. I have often complained about the Las Vegas-ization of Broadway during my tenure, but in recent years I’ve seen new signs of life there. When theater comes back, it’s inevitably going to be limping, of course. | | | Even if you aren’t writing reviews, will you still see as many shows as always? | | | I’ll go as much as I can afford to. | | | And you won’t miss the perks and paraphernalia of the job? If I enter a theater without a notebook, I feel naked. Let alone the seats! Can you even sit in one that’s not J-101? | | | There’s a part of me that’s looking forward to attending as a civilian, even one who inhabits the peanut gallery. But once a critic, always a critic. There’ll always be a phantom notebook in my lap. | | 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. | | |
