Thursday, June 27, 2019 | View in browser

Good morning.

We’re covering the first debate of the 2020 presidential election, the upcoming G-20 summit and the joys of living without a clock.

By Alisha Haridasani Gupta

U.S. threatens new tariffs ahead of G-20

Days before President Trump is expected to meet with President Xi Jinping at the Group of 20 summit in Japan, he threatened to target another $300 billion of Chinese products if negotiations between the two leaders fail to progress.

“My Plan B is that if we don’t make a deal, I will tariff and maybe not at 25 percent, but maybe at 10 percent,” he said in an interview with Fox Business Network.

In Hong Kong: Protesters gathered outside foreign governments’ consulates to demand that world leaders raise their concerns at the G-20 summit over a proposed extradition bill that would give Beijing access to criminal suspects in the city.

“We need all the friends of liberal democracy, people who believe in human rights and freedom, to be on our side,” said one protester.

Workers putting the final touches on the stage where the debate will take place. Doug Mills/The New York Times

Democratic debate kicks off election season

Ten of the Democratic presidential candidates will take the stage in Miami at 9 p.m. Eastern for the first primary debate of the 2020 election. Another group will debate tomorrow. Check back at nytimes.com for live updates and to chat with our reporters.

In this debate, Senator Elizabeth Warren is at the top, as the only candidate polling in the double digits, followed by Senator Cory Booker, who is running a campaign of “love,” and Beto O’Rourke, who has expertise on immigration and President Trump’s border wall proposal. Here are some of the other story lines and political dynamics to watch for.

Wax poetic: A comedy writer roasted all the Democratic candidates by haiku in an Opinion piece for The Times.

The details: NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo (in Spanish) will show the debate on network TV and on their streaming platforms. Here’s a look at possible questions.

The Daily: In our latest episode, a Times political reporter discusses what’s at stake.

Separately: Robert Mueller, the former special counsel, is scheduled to publicly discuss his investigation — a topic that hangs over the 2020 race — during two hearings in Congress next month.

A new potential flash point in Iran crisis

Iran, responding to American sanctions, has said that by Thursday its uranium stockpile will have exceeded the limits set in the 2015 agreement that President Trump pulled out of last year.

This milestone would come amid increasing tensions between Iran and the U.S. and could thrust the crisis into a combustible new phase.

Explainer: Iran is permitted to keep up to 300 kilograms, or about 660 pounds, of low-enriched uranium — an amount safe for civilian use.

According to some estimates, Iran would need roughly triple that amount, enriched at a higher level, to be able to make a weapon.

Reminder: Iran maintains that its nuclear program has remained in compliance with the 2015 accord. But the U.S. disputes that, reimposing sanctions, and has accused the country of attacking oil tankers and an American surveillance drone.

A refugee center on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea. Aziz Abdul/Australian Associated Press, via Associated Press

Despair spikes in Australia’s detention centers

Since May 18, when Australians returned to power a conservative government that has taken a hard line on immigration, there have been dozens of suicide attempts at the country’s offshore detention centers. Warning: The following content might be disturbing.

The government maintains that its strict policy, which bars settlement for migrants who reach the country by sea, has worked and fewer boats are showing up than a decade ago. But for those held at the refugee centers on the islands of Manus and Nauru, the recent election represented a loss of hope for change.

Details: The Times worked with human rights groups to create a rough timeline of events since the election. Within the first 48 hours of Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s re-election, there were six suicide attempts in Manus. By June 26, the number of suicide attempts approached 100.

Quotable: “It was grim when I visited nearly two years ago to write about the situation,” reports our Australia bureau chief, Damien Cave. “Now, it’s worse. Every few days, it seems, a new instance emerges of people cutting themselves, setting themselves on fire or trying to harm themselves in some other way.”

If you have 5 minutes, this is worth it

A mystery disease in India

Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times

Two years ago, researchers said outbreaks of a fatal disease in the eastern city of Muzaffarpur were caused by the prized lychee fruit that grows in the area. A chemical in the lychee causes a catastrophic fall in blood sugar, which is particularly dangerous among malnourished children.

After warnings from the health authorities, the number of cases plummeted. But they’ve risen again this year, and doctors caution that in many of the cases, lychees were not a factor.

Here’s what else is happening

China: “The Eight Hundred,” a patriotic drama of soldiers resisting the Japanese invasion in 1937, has become the latest film to seemingly fall afoul of Chinese censors.

Britain: Boris Johnson, the front-runner to become the next Conservative Party leader and prime minister, is frequently caught in gaffes, oversights and outright lies. And that’s what his fans like about him.

Facebook: Many of the corporate partners said to be working with the social media company on its new cryptocurrency, Libra, are approaching the project with skepticism and have held back on putting in any money.

E-cigarettes: San Francisco became the first city in the United States to ban Juul and other such devices, in an effort to curb what experts have described as a nicotine epidemic among teenagers.

Pierre-Philippe Marcou/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Snapshot: Above, people cooling off in water fountains in Madrid on Wednesday. Temperatures across Europe have soared, prompting the authorities to issue heat alerts and cancel events. Heat waves like these are becoming more frequent and prolonged, weather experts say.

Norway: Residents of the island of Sommaroy, where the sun doesn’t set from May to July, are campaigning to create the world’s first “time free zone,” doing away with clocks, deadlines, start times and the concept of sleeping or eating at certain hours. “When you have the possibility to just be impulsive, you feel alive,” said one proponent.

Copy-edit this: How well can you spot grammatical errors? Take our quiz.

“Stranger Things”: In the third season of the Netflix thriller, which returns on July 4, the kids are all grown up, a phenomenon that they discover comes with its own set of horrors.

What we’re reading: This piece from The Cut, by Allison P. Davis, about the rise and fall of the website Babe.net. Dan Saltzstein, our senior editor for special projects, writes: “The site stirred controversy last year for a #MeToo essay about the comedian Aziz Ansari. This article asks ‘whether the site’s writers — often with little or no journalistic experience or training — understood the traditions they were turning inside out or ignoring,’ capturing a fraught moment for youth media.”

Now, a break from the news

Gentl and Hyers for The New York Times. Food stylist: Hadas Smirnoff. Prop stylist: Rebecca Bartoshesky.

Cook: This cold rice-noodle dish, topped with spicy pork, herbs and peanuts, has roots in Yunnan, a province in southwestern China.

Watch: The HBO limited series “Years and Years,” from the British writer Russell T Davies, is about a lot of ideas: runaway technology, European nationalism, the failure of liberal democracy.

Listen: The new track “Money in the Grave” is Drake at his moody, petulant peak — a morbid anthem for a hot summer, writes our critic.

Read: In “The Patient Assassin,” which recounts the life of a man seeking revenge for British brutality in India in 1919, Anita Anand poses a question: When is violence morally legitimate in a people’s fight against a tyrannical regime?

Smarter Living: The contacts list on your phone is probably less a list of people you talk to and more a list of everyone you’ve ever talked to. We have tips for cleaning it up. First, pick one place to store your contacts, preferably attached to your email service, and sync from there. Then get rid of clutter: acquaintances you don’t talk to anymore, former co-workers and contacts imported from other apps.

And try our seven-day money challenge to strengthen your financial well-being.

And now for the Back Story on …

The return of the Belvedere

Belvedere Castle in Central Park in New York City is scheduled to reopen on Friday after a 15-month renovation.

The castle was conceived as part of the park’s original design and was built in the late 1860s.

Belvedere Castle, perhaps soon after its construction in 1870. via NYC Municipal Archives

It sits atop the second-highest spot in Central Park, offering a panoramic look to the north of the Great Lawn. (“Belvedere” is derived from the Italian for “beautiful view.”)

Designed as an architectural “folly,” with no practical purpose, the castle was later modified to house equipment for the U.S. Weather Service.

After falling into disrepair in the late 1960s and ’70s, the castle was renovated in the early 1980s. The current work is part of a broader $300 million renovation effort by the Central Park Conservancy.

Even if you haven’t visited, you may have seen the castle. It has had numerous appearances in TV and film, including in early episodes of “Sesame Street” as the home of Count von Count.

That’s it for this briefing. Have a beautiful day.

— Alisha

Thank you
Chris Stanford helped compile this briefing and wrote today’s Back Story. Mark Josephson and Eleanor Stanford provided the break from the news. You can reach the team at briefing@nytimes.com.

P.S.
• We’re listening to “The Daily.” Our latest episode is about the Democratic presidential debates in the U.S.
• Here’s our Mini Crossword, and a clue: Farewells in Florence (5 letters). You can find all our puzzles here.
• A letter to The Times in 1853, the year that Central Park was approved, said it would “present an object of public health, amusement and recreation, unsurpassed by any city in the world.” The park was completed 23 years later.