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Young Russians are partying again, seeking a return to normal life and disregarding the pandemic. PAGE 11 INTERNATIONAL 11-14 Cocktail Time in Moscow Hong Kong techniques, like putting traffic cones on tear gas shells, spread as far as Washington, D.C., above. PAGE 16 NATIONAL 16-25 Protest Tactics Gone Viral In a reversal, President Jair Bolsonaro gave in to pressure and took steps to curb Amazon deforestation. PAGE 14 Brazil Bans Forest Fires Stigmatized, out of work and facing dangers, migrant laborers are returning by the thousands — and may be fueling an outbreak in Ethiopia. PAGE 4 TRACKING AN OUTBREAK 4-10 Migrants Return to Ethiopia As America confronts its racism, the next step should be a broadcast specta- cle that squares the present with the past, Wesley Morris writes. PAGE 1 ARTS & LEISURE What This Moment Demands With fears over the virus, New York parents of means are seeking class- rooms near their second homes. PAGE 1 A Hamptons School Surge Basharat Peer PAGE 4 SUNDAY REVIEW Groups of fraternity brothers and soror- ity sisters are working to kick their organizations off campuses. PAGE 1 SUNDAY STYLES The War on Greek Life U(D547FD)v+%!=!/!?!" The Spurs’ Patty Mills, who has faced a lifetime of racial abuse as an Indige- nous Australian, is finding his voice as an activist in the N.B.A. PAGE 29 SPORTS 29-31 A Star Lets Down His Shield Senator Tammy Duckworth, like the man she might serve as vice president, prizes loyalty in her ranks and occasional mischief in her workplace. So when a top communications aide prepared to defect last year to the presidential campaign of Pete Buttigieg, Ms. Duckworth recognized an opportunity. She re- corded a faux media interview trashing Mr. Buttigieg for hiring her staff away, recruiting an in- tern to pose as a journalist on the tape. The file was sent to the de- parting aide, Sean Savett, who called the Buttigieg team in a panic. Soon, Mr. Savett was sum- moned to the Illinois senator’s of- fice, where she fumed theatrically, stalling as other staff members filed in quietly for the reveal: It was all a ruse. Ms. Duckworth handed him a parting gift — a Smirnoff Ice, the centerpiece of a viral drinking game known as “ic- The Biden-est Of Those Vying To Be His V.P. By MATT FLEGENHEIMER Continued on Page 20 Tammy Duckworth during her Senate run in Illinois in 2016. ALYSSA SCHUKAR FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES WASHINGTON — It was one of the few issues on which President Barack Obama and Vice Presi- dent Joseph R. Biden Jr. dis- agreed: how far to go in limiting the influence of lobbyists in gov- ernment. The vice president privately complained that his boss’s effort to slam shut the revolving door between K Street and the adminis- tration would deprive it of experi- enced talent, and he bristled when Mr. Obama’s aides tried to block him from hiring a well-connected Washington operator who had lobbied for pharmaceutical and in- surance companies, credit agen- cies and others. Eight years later, that same confidant, Steve Ricchetti, is help- ing to run Mr. Biden’s presidential campaign. Also involved to vary- ing degrees are other advisers, operatives, fund-raisers and allies with deep connections to Wash- ington’s lucrative lobbying, com- munications and strategic con- sulting industry. That puts Mr. Biden at odds with powerful elements of his par- ty’s liberal base. Increasingly, they are expressing concern that the military contractors, Wall Street banks and other major cor- porations that paid members of Mr. Biden’s inner circle while they were out of government could hold disproportionate power in a Biden administration. Politically, it could limit Mr. Bi- den’s ability to cast himself as the antidote to the anything-goes ac- cess peddling that has prolifer- ated in President Trump’s admin- Left Is Pressing Biden Over Ties With Lobbyists By KENNETH P. VOGEL and GLENN THRUSH Continued on Page 25 Five months after the coro- navirus outbreak engulfed New York City, riders are still staying away from public transportation in enormous numbers, often be- cause they are concerned that sharing enclosed places with strangers is simply too danger- ous. But the picture emerging in ma- jor cities across the world sug- gests that public transportation may not be as risky as nervous New Yorkers believe. In countries where the pan- demic has ebbed, ridership has re- bounded in far greater numbers than in New York City — yet there have been no notable super- spreader events linked to mass transit, according to a survey of transportation agencies con- ducted by The New York Times. Those findings could be evi- dence that subways, commuter railways and buses may not be a significant source of transmis- Riding Subway Might Not Pose Inordinate Risk By CHRISTINA GOLDBAUM Continued on Page 8 GÜSTROW, Germany — The plan sounded frighteningly con- crete. The group would round up political enemies and those de- fending migrants and refugees, put them on trucks and drive them to a secret location. Then they would kill them. One member had already bought 30 body bags. More body bags were on an order list, investi- gators say, along with quicklime, used to decompose organic ma- terial. On the surface, those dis- cussing the plan seemed reputa- ble. One was a lawyer and local po- litician, but with a special hatred of immigrants. Two were active army reservists. Two others were police officers, including Marko Gross, a police sniper and former parachutist who acted as their un- official leader. The group grew out of a nation- wide chat network for soldiers and others with far-right sympa- thies set up by a member of Ger- many’s elite special forces, the KSK. Over time, under Mr. Gross’s supervision, they formed a paral- lel group of their own. Members included a doctor, an engineer, a decorator, a gym owner, even a lo- cal fisherman. They called themselves Nord- kreuz, or Northern Cross. “Between us, we were a whole village,” recalled Mr. Gross, one of several Nordkreuz members who described to me in various inter- views this year how the group came together and began making plans. They denied they had plotted to kill anyone. But investigators and prosecutors, as well an account one member gave to the police — transcripts of which were seen by The New York Times — indicate their planning took a more sinis- ter turn. Germany has belatedly begun dealing with far-right networks that officials now say are far more extensive than they ever under- stood. The reach of far-right extre- mists into its armed forces is par- ticularly alarming in a country that has worked to cleanse itself of its Nazi past and the horrors of the Holocaust. In July the govern- ment disbanded an entire com- pany infiltrated by extremists in the nation’s special forces. But the Nordkreuz case, which only recently came to trial after being uncovered more than three years ago, shows that the problem of far-right infiltration is neither new nor confined to to the KSK, or even the military. Far-right extremism penetrat- ed multiple layers of German soci- ety in the years when the authori- ties underestimated the threat or were reluctant to countenance it fully, officials and lawmakers ac- knowledge. Now they are strug- gling to uproot it. One central motivation of the extremists has seemed so far- fetched and fantastical that for a long time the authorities and in- vestigators did not take it seri- ously, even as it gained broader currency in far-right circles. Neo-Nazi groups and other ex- tremists call it Day X — a mythical moment when Germany’s social order collapses, requiring com- mitted far-right extremists, in their telling, to save themselves and rescue the nation. Today, Day X preppers are drawing serious people with seri- ous skills and ambition. Increas- Plans for German ‘Day X’ Show Revival of Far Right Police Officers, Reservists and Professionals Had Enemies Lists and Body Bags By KATRIN BENNHOLD Continued on Page 12 PUNE, India — In early May, an extremely well sealed steel box arrived at the cold room of the Se- rum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine maker. Inside, packed in dry ice, sat a tiny one-milliliter vial from Ox- ford, England, containing the cel- lular material for one of the world’s most promising coro- navirus vaccines. Scientists in white lab coats brought the vial to Building 14, carefully poured the contents into a flask, added a medium of vita- mins and sugar and began grow- ing billions of cells. Thus began one of the biggest gambles yet in the quest to find the vaccine that will bring the world’s Covid-19 nightmare to an end. The Serum Institute, which is exclusively controlled by a small and fabulously rich Indian family and started out years ago as a horse farm, is doing what a few other companies in the race for a vaccine are doing: mass-pro- ducing hundreds of millions of doses of a vaccine candidate that is still in trials and might not even work. But if it does, Adar Poonawalla, Serum’s chief executive and the only child of the company’s founder, will become one of the most tugged-at men in the world. He will have on hand what every- one wants, possibly in greater quantities before anyone else. His company, which has teamed up with the Oxford scientists de- veloping the vaccine, was one of the first to boldly announce, in April, that it was going to mass- produce a vaccine before clinical trials even ended. Now, Mr. Poon- awalla’s fastest vaccine assembly lines are being prepared to crank out 500 doses each minute, and his phone rings endlessly. National health ministers, prime ministers and other heads of state (he wouldn’t say who) and friends he hasn’t heard from in years have been calling him, he The Indian Family Betting a Fortune on a Vaccine By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN A technician at the Serum Institute, in Pune, India, a global vac- cine giant controlled by the small and rich Poonawalla family. ATUL LOKE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Continued on Page 9 CHICAGO — First, the Pacific Northwest and the Northeast were hit hardest as the coro- navirus tore through the nation. Then it surged across the South. Now the virus is again picking up dangerous speed in much of the Midwest — and in states from Mississippi to Florida to Califor- nia that thought they had already seen the worst of it. As the United States rides what amounts to a second wave of cases, with daily new infections leveling off at an alarming higher mark, there is a deepening na- tional sense that the progress made in fighting the pandemic is coming undone and no patch of America is safe. In Missouri, Wisconsin and Illi- nois, distressed government offi- cials are retightening restrictions on residents and businesses, and sounding warnings about a surge in coronavirus-related hospital- izations. In the South and the West, sev- eral states are reporting their highest levels of new coronavirus cases, with outbreaks overwhelm- ing urban and rural areas alike. Across the country, communi- ties including Snohomish County, Wash., Jackson, Miss., and Baton Rouge, La., have seen coronavirus numbers fall and then shoot back up — not unlike the two ends of a seesaw. In Illinois, Gov. J.B. Pritzker sounded an unusually somber note this past week as he deliv- ered a warning that reverberated across the state: Even though Illi- noisans had battled an early flood of coronavirus infections and then managed to reduce the virus’s spread, their successes were fleet- ing. As of Thursday, the state was averaging more than 1,400 cases a day, up from about 800 at the start of July. “We’re at a danger point,” Mr. Pritzker said in Peoria County, where the total number of cases has doubled in the last month. Gone is any sense that the coun- try may soon gain control of the pandemic. Instead, the seven-day average for new infections hov- ered around 65,000 for two weeks. Progress in some states has been mostly offset by growing out- breaks in parts of the South and the Midwest. Brief Reprieve, Then the Virus Charges Back Resurgence in Midwest, South and California This article is by Julie Bosman, Manny Fernandez and Thomas Fuller. Continued on Page 6 FLORIDA Clearwater Beach. The state continues to report some of its highest daily totals. EVE EDELHEIT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES GEORGIA Sunning in Atlanta. Several Southern states are seeing their highest levels of new cases. LYNSEY WEATHERSPOON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES TEXAS A drive-in movie in San Antonio. Harris County, home to Houston, had a lull, then a surge. CHRISTOPHER LEE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Overcrowding, not density, has defined many coronavirus hot spots. Service workers’ quarters skirting Silicon Val- ley are no exception. PAGE 1 SUNDAY BUSINESS Home to 12. Enter Covid-19. Trump administration evictees have turned their tenures into a new genre: political revenge literature. PAGE 22 Piecing Together a Presidency Late Edition VOL. CLXIX . . . No. 58,773 © 2020 The New York Times Company NEW YORK, SUNDAY, AUGUST 2, 2020 Today, mostly cloudy, humid, a few showers and thunderstorms, high 87. Tonight, evening thunderstorms, low 76. Tomorrow, humid, sunny, high 86. Weather map is on Page 24. $6.00
