Monday, Sep 30, 2019 | View in browser

Good morning.

We’re covering preparation in China for its 70th National Day celebrations against a backdrop of fierce protests in Hong Kong. We’ve also got the latest on the Trump impeachment inquiry, and a close look at a video game starring a bothersome goose.

By Alisha Haridasani Gupta

How Hwee Young/EPA, via Shutterstock and Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times

Prepping for a parade in China. More protests in Hong Kong.

Beijing is preparing for the 70th anniversary celebration tomorrow of the Communist Party’s rule. President Xi Jinping is expected to give a speech today and will likely use the opportunity to project the strength and endurance of the party.

But the pomp and pageantry come while tensions are growing both inside and outside the mainland. There’s the debilitating trade war with the U.S., a swine fever epidemic and months of protests in Hong Kong against Chinese rule.

In Hong Kong over the weekend, scenes of tear gas, fires and clashes between riot police and protesters offered a jarring counternarrative to the Communist Party that threatens to overshadow Beijing’s elaborate celebrations on Tuesday.

The latest: Sunday’s unrest was the most violent since Hong Kong’s protest movement began in June. Protesters set fires at intersections and tossed Molotov cocktails at the police, who hit back with tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons.

Go deeper: At the heart of the turmoil in Hong Kong is an identity crisis. For many, being a loyal resident of the semiautonomous city and being Chinese have become mutually exclusive.

Further scrutiny of Trump’s interactions with Ukraine

President Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, have been operating what amounts to a shadow foreign policy in Ukraine, our reporters have found.

The aim? To gather and disseminate political dirt from a foreign country for Mr. Trump’s personal benefit. The overlap between this effort and the president’s official foreign policy toward Ukraine is at the center of an impeachment inquiry.

Timeline: Mr. Trump sought proof that the election meddling in 2016 was not from Russia but from Ukraine. The chain of events picked up speed starting in January, when Mr. Giuliani met with Ukraine’s top prosecutor in New York to push him to investigate Mr. Trump’s rivals, including former Vice President Joe Biden.

What’s next? House Democrats’ first subpoena, issued Friday, gives Secretary of State Mike Pompeo one week to produce documents related to the inquiry. And Mr. Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine, who resigned last week, is expected to be interviewed by House leaders on Friday.

Follow along: We’re starting a newsletter that will focus on all the twists and turns of the impeachment inquiry. Sign up here.

An explosion in images of child sexual abuse

A warning: This is about one of the darkest corners of the internet. It’s grim and contains graphic descriptions.

There has been a boom in the online trading and sharing of images and videos of children — some just 3 or 4 years old, some even younger — being raped and tortured.

Last year, tech companies flagged a record 45 million illegal images, exposing a response system at a breaking point, an investigation by The New York Times found. And the images show increasingly heinous forms of abuse.

The problem is firmly rooted in the U.S. because of the role Silicon Valley plays in both the spread and detection of the material. Here are more takeaways from the investigation.

How we know: The Times reviewed over 10,000 pages of police and court documents; conducted software tests to assess the availability of the imagery through search engines; accompanied detectives on raids; and spoke with investigators, lawmakers, tech executives and government officials.

The reporting also included conversations with an admitted pedophile who concealed his identity, and who runs a site that has hosted as many as 17,000 such images.

If you have six minutes, this is worth it

Has Hollywood reached a turning point?

Universal Studios/DreamWorks

“Abominable” is a rare breed in the movie world: a big-studio animated movie with Chinese characters voiced by Asian-Americans. The last time that happened, writes our reporter Brian X. Chen, was more than 20 years ago with Disney’s “Mulan.”

With this movie, alongside “Crazy Rich Asians” and “The Farewell,” it might seem like Asian-American representation in Hollywood is reaching a watershed moment, he writes, but real change might take time.

Here’s what else is happening

India: In recent decades, the country has built embankments near its border that, during monsoon season, have blocked swollen rivers from emptying south. This has left its northern neighbor Nepal to deal with two or three times more flooding, according to local officials.

Britain: An American businesswoman who received tens of thousands of pounds of government money when Prime Minister Boris Johnson was mayor of London admitted to friends that she was having a sexual affair with him, according to The Sunday Times of London. The revelations intensify the scandal hanging over Mr. Johnson as he faces a hostile Parliament over Brexit.

Apple: Three movies that the company acquired this year will be released in theaters in the U.S. over the next few months, thrusting the technology giant into the movie business. We’re told the effort will expand in 2020, when Apple plans to produce its own films.

SpaceX: Elon Musk suggested over the weekend that Starship, his space company’s largest rocket yet, intended to send people to Mars, could “reach orbit in less than six months.”

Pool photo by Vincenzo Pinto

Snapshot: Above, Pope Francis at the unveiling of a new monument to migration on Sunday in St. Peter’s Square, Vatican City. “Angels Unaware,” by the Canadian artist Timothy Schmalz, depicts 140 migrants and refugees from various historical periods, including indigenous people, the Virgin Mary and Joseph, and Jews fleeing Nazi Germany.

World food tour: Our Australia critic Besha Rodell spent four months traveling across the globe to discover 30 of the best restaurants for two food and travel magazines. As fun as the job sounds, “this was a very hard few months,” she writes, noting that she clocked more than 100,000 miles and spent almost 300 hours on airplanes.

Untitled Goose Game: A video game developed by a Melbourne-based studio, which involves a goose bothering the residents of a nice English village, has become an unexpected hit. “People really take to this idea of a horrible goose,” said one of the game’s creators.

What we’re looking at: Environmental drawings by the Barcelona-based street artist Pejac, collected by the national magazine of the Sierra Club. “These are stunning,” tweeted our climate reporter Kendra Pierre-Louis.

Now, a break from the news

Andrew Purcell for The New York Times. Food Sylist: Barrett Washburne.

Cook: An easy and delicious chicken schnitzel with pan-roasted grapes would go nicely with a salad tonight.

Read: Zadie Smith’s “Grand Union: Stories” is on our list of 18 books to watch for in October.

Go: The south coast of New South Wales — from the dairy town of Berry just two hours south of Sydney, to a historic whaling center near the Victoria state border — is a destination not just for gorgeous scenery, but also for culinary excellence.

Smarter Living: Optimism is associated with many positive physical outcomes and greater professional and social success. A new review of scientific studies concludes that looking on the bright side may also reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and early death. Optimists are likelier to exercise and eat better, according to the review’s main author, but their outlook may also have direct biological effects in the form of “less inflammation and fewer metabolic abnormalities.”

And some scientists think eating insects may be the key to a sustainable food future.

And now for the Back Story on …

Cars and rockets

Elon Musk isn’t the first auto executive to turn his attention to rockets.

In 1928, Fritz von Opel ran publicity for the pioneering Opel German car company, founded by his grandfather.

Fritz von Opel on his fastest rocket-car ride, in Berlin in 1928. Opel, via Associated Press

He liked speed, and began experimenting with solid rocket fuel in automobiles. His first “rocket car” hit an astounding 62 miles an hour (99.7 kilometers an hour), and his second broke through 140 m.p.h. (225 k.p.h.), both feats performed in front of cheering fans and journalists.

He also created a rocket motorcycle and a rocket railway car, before turning his attention to airplanes.

Ninety years ago today, he became the first person to fly a rocket plane. His low-altitude flight of 1.25 miles in 75 seconds ended in a fiery crash. Unhurt, he focused on his triumph.

“I myself can scarcely grasp my joy!” he wrote in a first-person account for The New York Times.

But the next month’s stock market crash set off the Great Depression, bringing Fritz Opel and his car company back to earth — and back to focusing on gasoline-powered cars.

That’s it for this briefing. See you next time.

— Alisha

Thank you
To Mark Josephson and Eleanor Stanford for the break from the news. Victoria Shannon wrote today’s Back Story. You can reach the team at briefing@nytimes.com.

P.S.
• We’re listening to “The Daily.” Our latest episode is about the whistle-blower’s complaint.
• In “The Daily” team’s second episode for kids, meet a 9-year-old who learned to face her fears. (The first kids’ episode follows twin 10-year-old girls as one joins the Boy Scouts.)
• Here’s our Mini Crossword, and a clue: Nada (5 letters). You can find all our puzzles here.