The New York Times - Your Monday Briefing

By Amelia Nierenberg

Writer, Briefings

Good morning. We’re covering Olympics news, child deaths from Covid in Indonesia and a potential drawdown deal between the U.S. and Iraq.

Olympics medals start arriving

The Games opened on Friday to a sea of empty seats, and a somber opening ceremony that tried to project a world moving on from the worst of Covid-19. Naomi Osaka, Japan’s most famous athlete, lit the Olympic caldron.

The Japanese public is widely opposed to the Games. In quieter moments throughout the ceremony, protesters outside the stadium could be heard yelling “Stop the Olympics” through bullhorns. And NBC says that only 17 million people watched the opening ceremony, a record low for a Summer Olympics.

Still, over the course of the next two weeks, more than 11,000 athletes from 205 countries are expected to participate. Here are live updates and our medal count.

Australia: The women’s swim team won its third straight gold medal in the 4x100-meter freestyle relay on Sunday in world-record time. Ashleigh Barty, the top-seeded Australian tennis player, was eliminated from the tournament.

Japan: Yuto Horigome, the son of a Tokyo taxi driver, won the first gold ever in skateboarding, a new Olympic sport. Uta and Hifumi Abe, who are siblings, both won gold medals in judo. Osaka beat China’s Zheng Saisai in her opening tennis match.

China: Expect China to dominate diving. On Sunday, it won the first synchronized diving event, the women’s three-meter springboard. China leads the medal count, with 11 so far.

Pandemic: Two golfers, Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm, dropped out after testing positive for the coronavirus. And officials changed the rules to allow medal-winners to briefly drop their masks for a photo.

In other Olympics news:

• Kimia Alizadeh, an Iranian defector who plays for a refugee team, beat her close friend Nahid Kiyani, an Iranian who plays for Iran, in taekwondo.
• The U.S. women’s gymnastics team did not meet its usual standards, and even Simone Biles made errors.
• Kurt Korte, a professional surf forecaster, is tasked with predicting when the best waves will arrive for the surfing contest.
• Here are photos from the second day of competition.

Child deaths in Indonesia

Young Indonesians, many of whom are under 5, are dying of Covid-19 at an alarming and unusual rate.

The deaths, more than 100 a week this month, represent a child mortality rate greater than that of any other country. Coinciding with the surge of the Delta variant, the rate challenges the idea that children face minimal risk from Covid-19.

Health experts said a number of factors contributed to the high number of deaths, including underlying health conditions and overstretched hospitals.

“Until now, children have been the hidden victims of this pandemic,” said Dr. Yasir Arafat, Asia health adviser to the nonprofit group Save the Children. “Not anymore.”

Cases: This month, Indonesia became the new epicenter of the pandemic. Positive tests are averaging more than 30 percent, a sign that the virus is spreading rapidly.

Vaccines: Just 16 percent of Indonesians have received one dose and only 6 percent have been fully vaccinated, according to the Our World in Data project.

Here are the latest updates and maps of the pandemic.

In other developments:

• In Sydney, Australia, about 3,500 mostly maskless people defied a statewide stay-at-home order to protest the monthlong lockdown.
• Fears about the Delta variant prompted New Zealand to pause its travel bubble with Australia for at least eight weeks.
• The European Union’s drug regulator authorized the Moderna vaccine for children 12 and older.
• In Cambodia, patients who test positive say they are being forced into quarantine centers that are more like makeshift prisons than hospitals.

U.S. signals Iraq pullback

Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi of Iraq went to Washington this weekend to demand that President Biden withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Iraq.

The U.S. will most likely oblige. On Monday, the two countries expect to announce a deadline for the drawdown by the end of the year.

But combat troops are only one part of the U.S. military. American officials say they will remove only a small number of the 2,500 American forces and reclassify others. Al-Kadhimi will have a political trophy to take home to satisfy anti-American factions in Iraq and the U.S. military presence will remain.

Context: Al-Kadhimi’s government and many senior Iraqi military officials quietly favor the American troops staying in their current roles. But the 2020 U.S. drone killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani of Iran — the country’s other close ally — along with a senior Iraqi security official and eight others, make it politically impossible.

THE LATEST NEWS

• Nagorno-Karabakh, the territory that Azerbaijan seized from Armenia in the war last year, is almost unrecognizable.
• A landslide in northern India killed at least nine people, many believed to be tourists, and destroyed a bridge.
• In one of the first significant American reactions to the Taliban’s advance, the U.S. launched airstrikes against a number of insurgent positions this week.
• A Hong Kong judge sentenced seven men to prison for their roles in a 2019 mob attack on unarmed people, including pro-democracy protesters.
• Haiti buried President Jovenel Moïse on Friday amid angry protests.

• Critics say new French laws designed to strengthen the country’s ability to fight terrorism curtail civil liberties.
• The U.S. Justice Department moved to drop cases against five Chinese researchers accused of hiding their ties to the military.
• Argentina became the first Latin American country to officially recognize nonbinary people on their identity documents.
• Sierra Leone became the 23rd African country to abolish the death penalty.

• In Nigeria, fisherwomen are fighting American oil companies leaving environmental ruin as they pull out of the country.
• Spain has said it would give citizenship to descendants of Jews expelled during the Spanish Inquisition, but it is rejecting thousands of applications.
• Amateur fossil hunters in England found an exceptionally large and well-preserved group of Jurassic starfish using Google Earth.

Multiracial athletes like Naomi Osaka and Rui Hachimura are helping to redefine Japanese identity. But they are often still seen as outsiders in a society whose ideas of nationhood have long been tied to race.

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ARTS AND IDEAS

Do video games need a new name?

We’re in the middle of a transformation in online idle time, a shift from passive doomscrolling to something more engaging and often more social.

Interactive activities are blurring the lines between video games and other social activities. Games like Pokémon Go, Fortnite and Among Us host hangouts for friends, pop culture moments and political organizing. In so doing, they’re redefining what a “video game” is.

And it’s not just gaming companies experimenting with interactives. Zoom has new features that include poker, trivia and mystery games. Peloton will make a game where pedaling can command a rolling virtual wheel. Netflix plans to add video games.

“It feels as if something exciting is happening,” my colleague Shira Ovide writes in our sister newsletter, On Tech. “There’s more mushing together to arrive at new digital forms that emphasize interaction rather than passive reading, watching or listening.”

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

Tempe penyet, smashed tempeh with sambal, is a famous street food in Indonesia.

“Playing with Sharks,” a documentary, celebrates Valerie Taylor, an Australian diver who dedicated her career to marine photography and conservation.

Enjoy new music from Lil Nas X and Jack Harlow on our pop critics’ latest playlist.

Here’s today’s Mini Crossword.

And here is today’s Spelling Bee.

You can find all our puzzles here.

That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — Amelia

P.S. The Times and other U.S. media companies have delivered letters to Congress and the Biden administration, requesting urgent humanitarian aid for Afghan journalists and staff members who worked with American outlets.

The latest episode of “The Daily” is about the E.U.’s plan to wean off fossil fuels.

You can reach Amelia and the team at briefing@nytimes.com.

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