Good morning. We’re covering the congratulations pouring in for President-elect Joe Biden, a new peak of 10 million coronavirus cases in the U.S. and China’s widening reach in the Caribbean. | |  By Carole Landry | | | Joe Biden delivering a speech on Saturday evening after winning the U.S. presidential election. Erin Schaff/The New York Times | | | Foreign leaders showered the U.S. president-elect with congratulations. For many, the importance of this election was as much about removing President Trump as ushering in Joe Biden. | | | Diplomats and commentators expressed gratitude, satisfaction and even jubilation, anticipating that Mr. Biden would bring a much-needed return to normalcy — something that alarmingly vanished the day Mr. Trump took office. | | | Still, Mr. Trump will be handing Mr. Biden a difficult cleanup act internationally. The most pressing foreign policy areas the Biden administration will face starts with China and includes North Korea’s nuclear program, NATO alliances and power shifts in the Middle East. | | | Kamala Harris: India, particularly the village where the vice president-elect’s grandfather was born, is relishing the Biden-Harris triumph. But foreign policy experts expect that the Biden administration will be tougher on India. | | | Coronavirus testing on Saturday at a clinic in Providence, R.I. Elizabeth Frantz for The New York Times | | | The country is struggling with its most widespread wave of infection since the pandemic began. Its seven-day average of new cases now exceeds 100,000 per day, far more than any other country’s, and the U.S. now accounts for a fifth of global cases, which are nearing 50 million. Hospitalizations and deaths are up. | | | States in the Great Lakes, the Great Plains and the Mountain West have seen the fastest recent upticks in infections. North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin have led the country for weeks in the number of new cases relative to their populations, and Iowa recently shot up, too. | | | Students at the University of Hong Kong, where a wall of protest posters that students erected last summer was recently dismantled. Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times | | | Politically active professors have been fired or denied contracts in what they call retribution for their criticism of the government. Students are requesting more secure platforms for submitting assignments. Scholars are reconsidering whether Hong Kong is a viable home for their careers. | | | Bigger picture: The scrutiny is part of a wider campaign to control education. The Education Bureau has offered to review textbooks, and last month it stripped a primary schoolteacher of his teaching credentials after he discussed Hong Kong independence. Beijing’s top official in Hong Kong has called on the government to bolster “patriotic education.” | | | Pierre Michel Jean/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images | | | China has offered Jamaica loans and expertise to build new highways, donated security equipment to military and police forces throughout the Caribbean and dispatched large shipments of test kits, masks and ventilators to help governments in the region respond to the pandemic. Above, a Chinese cargo plane delivering medical equipment at the Port-au-Prince airport in Haiti in May. | | | Here’s what else is happening | | | Nagorno-Karabakh war: The president of Azerbaijan claimed on Sunday that his forces had captured the strategically important hilltop town of Shusha, known as Shushi to Armenians. The town, overlooking several mountain valleys and Nagorno-Karabakh’s capital, Stepanakert, is considered a linchpin to military control of the region. | | | Ethiopia reshuffle: Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed undertook a major reshuffle of the security services on Sunday, days after he ordered a military offensive in the Tigray region, which edged the country toward a potential all-out civil war. He replaced the head of intelligence and the army chief, appointed a new federal police commissioner and chose a new cabinet minister for foreign affairs, naming the former one as his national security adviser. | | | Khadija Farah for The New York Times | | | Snapshot: Above, a fig tree, almost a century old, in the commercial neighborhood of Westlands in Nairobi. Government authorities plan to take it down to make way for a four-lane highway but are facing growing public opposition. “This particular tree is a symbol of Nairobi,” an environmental consultant said. | | | In memoriam: Alex Trebek, 80, who hosted “Jeopardy!” for a record-setting 36 years. Mr. Trebek had announced in a video in March 2019 that he had received a diagnosis of Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. | | | 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 | | | | Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Iah Pinkney. | | | The results of the U.S. elections seemed to crystallize the deep divisions in the country — on the virus, the economy, issues of race and even how to properly count the vote. In the days leading up to the final day of voting, Americans waited in line in record numbers to cast ballots. What did they want for America? Here are some of their answers. | | | Kristin Haynes, 44, of Atlanta | | | “My hope is that we find our humanity again, that we find a way to be kind to one another, and have empathy in general. I’m in a hopeless place right now in terms of what’s happened to this country, and that’s a lot coming from a Black person. I’ve never seen this total lack of respect for differences.” | | | Jairee Tannan, 19, voted for the first time in the U.S. elections. Gabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York Times | | | Jairee Tannan, 19, of San Francisco | | | “I want America to not see us as animals, you feel me? I want everybody, when they look at me — I don’t want them looking at me just as a Black man. I want them to look at me as an individual.” | | | James Couch, 35, of Wilmington, Delaware | | | “I’m tired of Covid-19, so I hope the country can move past. This has been the worst time for us in our lives, and I want to see that get better and the economy get better.” | | | Phyllis Minsuk, 82, and Les Minsuk, 85, of Maryvale, Arizona | | | Phyllis: “I want peace within and peace outside. I want the country to come back together as caring, loving and concerned citizens, where we really live in a way where we can support each other.” | | | Les: “I would like for us to be sane again.” | | That’s it for this briefing. See you next time. — Carole | | Thank you
To Theodore Kim and Jahaan Singh for the break from the news. You can reach the team at briefing@nytimes.com. | | P.S.
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