Tuesday, Sep 3, 2019 | View in browser

Good morning.

We’re covering Britain’s high-stakes week, North Korea’s missile advances and Germany’s nudist lifestyle.

By Alisha Haridasani Gupta

Prime Minister Boris Johnson delivering a speech on Monday. Leon Neal/Getty Images

A make or break week for Brexit

The British Parliament reconvenes today for a high-stakes showdown, with lawmakers racing to try to avert a chaotic withdrawal from the E.U. on Oct. 31.

On Monday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson threatened to call a snap general election if lawmakers from his Conservative Party back a legislative measure blocking a no-deal Brexit, which he says would rob him of leverage in last-gasp talks in Brussels.

A government official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the election could be held as soon as Oct. 14 — just ahead of one of the most important decisions in British history.

View from Brussels: Several European economies have weakened in the three years since Britain voted to leave the E.U., leaving the bloc increasingly vulnerable to the chaos of a no-deal Brexit.

North Korea advances its arsenal

President Trump has dismissed more than a dozen North Korean missile tests in recent months as “very standard.”

But American intelligence officials and outside experts believe the tests have allowed the country to develop missiles with a range and sophistication that could overwhelm American defenses in the region.

The stakes: The rapid improvements in the short-range missiles put Japan and South Korea in increased danger, and also at least eight U.S. bases in those countries housing more than 30,000 troops, according to an analysis by The New York Times.

High school students during a strike in central Hong Kong on Monday. Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times

Hong Kong students go back to school

High school students, a force in the demonstrations that have roiled the city all summer, brought the spirit of the protest onto campus on Monday. They wore gas masks, boycotted classes and formed human chains.

Police officers fanned out, closely watching schools and monitoring subway stations, but the activism remained peaceful, a stark contrast to the violence that erupted over the weekend.

Warnings: A senior Hong Kong official said that “elements of terror” were seen among the protesters, a switch in tone. The city authorities had previously rejected Beijing’s description of the demonstrations as “terrorism.”

The city’s leader, Carrie Lam, has left the door open on invoking colonial-era broad emergency powers to quell the unrest.

Another angle: Beijing has accused a mandatory Hong Kong high school civics course, covering the merits of democracy and civil rights, of radicalizing the city’s youth.

Xinjiang’s prisons swell

The Chinese government is utilizing a harsher method of control in Xinjiang than its vast re-education camps: arrests and prison sentences.

A Times analysis of previously unreported data found that the region experienced a record surge in arrests, trials and prison sentences, with the authorities working in unison to eradicate unrest and convert the largely Muslim minorities, including Uighurs and Kazakhs, into loyalists of the Communist Party.

Arrests, critics said, are often based on flimsy or exaggerated charges, and trials are perfunctory. “It’s as if the whole population is treated as guilty until proven innocent,” said a cultural anthropologist.

By the numbers: A total of 230,000 people in the region were sentenced to prison or other punishments in 2017 and 2018 — significantly more than in any other period in decades.

If you have 8 minutes, this is worth it

The cost of repressive internet shutdowns

Yasuyoshi Chiba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

More than a quarter of the world’s nations — mainly in Asia and Africa — have shut down the internet at one point over the past four years as to stifle dissent. In the first half of this year alone, there were 114 shutdowns in 23 countries.

The move often has far-reaching consequences, battering small businesses and economies and disrupting the daily lives of ordinary citizens.

Here’s what else is happening

Afghanistan: The U.S. would pull 5,400 troops and leave five military bases in 20 weeks, according to the American special envoy, as part of a deal being finalized with the Taliban that awaits President Trump’s approval. Shortly after the envoy spoke, a huge explosion shook Kabul.

Texas: The authorities are hunting for the motive of a 36-year-old gunman who opened fire in two West Texas towns with an assault-style rifle on Saturday, indiscriminately killing seven people and injuring 22, before the police shot him dead. The case intensified the national debate over gun control.

California: The U.S. Coast Guard is searching for more than 30 missing passengers after a scuba diving boat caught fire off Southern California early Monday. Five crew members who were awake and on deck were able to escape.

Hurricane Dorian: The powerful Category 5 storm smashed through the Bahamas before weakening to Category 4 and grinding to a near halt off Florida, which forecasters project might be spared the worst.

India: Nearly two million people are on the verge of being declared stateless, their names missing from lists of confirmed citizens released Saturday at the end of a mass citizenship check in the state of Assam. Almost all are ethnic Bengalis and most are Muslim, according to lawyers and human rights activists.

Vaping: Cases of mysterious and life-threatening vaping-related illness have surged in the U.S., an outbreak that one doctor said is “becoming an epidemic.” Patients in their late teens and 20s have been showing severe shortness of breath, often after several days of vomiting, fever and fatigue.

From The Times: A veteran Times journalist, Rod Nordland, was in New Delhi in July, “waiting for the monsoon,” as he wrote in his journal. During a morning jog, he collapsed. The cause: a malignant brain tumor, which doctors were initially reluctant to name. “All I could do at that point was laugh,” he recalls.

Lena Mucha for The New York Times

Snapshot: Above, nudists at a lake in Germany, where getting naked and doing some exercise has become part of a healthy, harmonious lifestyle and an antidote to a destructive modernity.

What we’re reading: The Public Domain Review. “This site calls itself ‘an ever growing cabinet of curiosities for the digital age,’ writes our national correspondent Michael Wines, “and I can’t do better than that. Check out this collection of roadside-America photos, including a supper club disguised as a giant fish.”

Now, a break from the news

Julia Gartland for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Ali Slagle.

Cook: Looking for an easy-to-assemble Italian-American classic? Pasta alla vodka never disappoints.

Read: The sequel to “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which picks up 15 years after readers last saw Offred, is one of the 17 new books to watch for in September.

Watch: In vacation-home-invasion horror movies like “Funny Games” and “Us,” privilege marks families for murder.

Listen: Sarathy Korwar, who grew up in Ahmedabad and Chennai, has found a following on the London jazz scene with political concept albums that mix Indian classical music, jazz and hip-hop.

Smarter Living: Apple, Samsung, Google and other companies will soon set off the annual tech frenzy, unveiling hot new gadgets. Our personal tech columnist, Brian X. Chen, advises becoming a late adopter. This year, he bought a 2017 Apple Watch: “I get to enjoy a fast, long-lasting watch that tracks my workouts and shows my calendar notifications, among other perks, for a steep discount.” (His free weekly newsletter brings tech tips straight to your inbox.)

And we have six ideas for handling middle-of-the-night insomnia. (Wearing socks can have a surprisingly powerful effect.)

And now for the Back Story on …

September

If you’re familiar with French, you’ll recognize the first syllable of this month as “seven.” That makes “September” an odd name for the year’s ninth month.

But it made sense in ancient Rome.

A mosaic of the Roman months found in Tunisia that dates to the third century A.D. DeAgostini/Getty Images

There, the Greek-influenced calendar had only 10 months. A few were named for gods: March for Mars, April for Aphrodite, May for Maia and June for Juno. But the rest were numbered, and some are still with us. October was the eighth month, November the ninth and December the 10th.

Around 713 B.C., a calendar reform introduced two new months to account for the 60 or so extra winter days. They were January, for the god Janus, and February, for the purification celebration known as Februa.

In later adjustments, the original fifth and sixth months (which had been pushed to seventh and eighth) were renamed for Julius Caesar and Caesar Augustus: July and August.

That’s it for this briefing. And an apology: Friday’s Back Story misspelled the name of a famous cartoonist. He is Art Spiegelman, not Speigelman.

See you next time.

— Alisha

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

P.S.
• We’re listening to our “1619” audio series. The latest episode is on how slavery built the American economy.
• On “The Daily,” our Berlin bureau chief, Katrin Bennhold, discusses the political mayhem in Britain and Italy.
• Here’s our Mini Crossword, and a clue: Poet T.S. ____ (5 letters). You can find all our puzzles here.