viernes, ene. 3, 2020 | View in browser

Good morning.

We’re covering accusations of abuse by the Indian police, the months leading up to Carlos Ghosn’s daring escape and what Martin Scorsese is thinking about at 77.

By Melina Delkic

A 16-year-old at his home in Nagina, India, who says he was among more than a dozen minors detained and abused by the police there. Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times

India’s police are accused of abusing Muslims

As the Indian authorities struggle to contain huge nationwide protests over a contentious new citizenship law, accounts are emerging of abuse meted out by police officers.

In Uttar Pradesh, the northern Indian state with the most Muslim residents, the rioting and the violent police backlash have been the most intense. Indian news media have reported that police officers were encouraged by their superiors to kill protesters engaged in violence.

At least 19 people have been killed in the state during the protests, more than anywhere else in India. Police and state officials have denied using excessive force or singling out Muslims.

Details: According to interviews with more than three dozen people in several towns, police officers broke into houses, stole money and threatened to rape women.

A group of minors in the town of Nagina said they were beaten in a makeshift jail with wooden canes for protesting. Some had obvious signs of deep bruising. Two said the officers were laughing, saying, “You will die in this prison.”

Context: Many Indians fear that the new law, which offers an easy path to citizenship to migrants from every major South Asian faith but Islam, is blatantly discriminatory toward Muslims.

Quotable: “How do you justify detaining minors, let alone beating them black and blue?” asked one municipal officer in Nagina.

Smoke rising from wildfires in East Gippsland, Victoria, on Thursday. DELWP Gippsland, via Associated Press

Australians are warned: Fires will worsen

Tens of thousands of people were forced to evacuate their homes on Thursday, after the authorities warned that the massive fires headed their way might be the worst yet in an already catastrophic season.

Fleeing motorists formed long lines at gas stations in the southeastern part of New South Wales, after the state declared a state of emergency.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who has repeatedly refused to talk about climate change’s role in the fires, was heckled by angry residents who cursed and insulted him as he visited Cobargo, in New South Wales.

Quotable: “It’s going to be a blast furnace” in the coming days, Andrew Constance, the transport minister of New South Wales, told The Sydney Morning Herald. He said the relocation of people was the region’s largest.

Toll: Eight people have died in the past week alone, and the fires have burned down more than 1,000 houses and killed countless wild animals in recent months. In the Victorian town of Mallacoota, where 4,000 people are stranded after fires cut off escape routes, a slow rescue effort by boat will begin this morning.

An Oyo partner property in New Delhi. Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times

Is Oyo a ticking time bomb?

The SoftBank-backed start-up that offers budget hotel rooms has become one of India’s most valuable private companies — but its rise was, at least in part, built on practices that raise questions about the health of its business.

Workers told our reporters that Oyo gave freebies to the police to avoid trouble over illegal rooms, imposed hidden fees, padded listings and even withheld payments. Its employees, under intense pressure to add new rooms to the service, brought hotels online that lacked electricity and water heaters.

Some believe that Oyo’s unstable foundation makes it a bubble waiting to burst.

Impact: The company expects to lose money at least through 2021, according to government filings. If Oyo falls apart, it could blight the country’s start-up landscape as a whole, home to other multibillion-dollar companies like the ride-hailing firm Ola and the digital payments provider Paytm. It would be another black eye for SoftBank, after WeWork and Instacart.

How we know: We combed through financial filings and court documents and talked to 20 current and former employees, as well as others familiar with Oyo’s operations.

Carlos Ghosn, the ousted head of the Renault-Nissan alliance, in his lawyer's vehicle in Tokyo in 2019. Takaaki Iwabu/Bloomberg

How Carlos Ghosn escaped

The escape of the fallen former chairman of Nissan and Renault has all the elements of a Hollywood-style thriller.

When Mr. Ghosn skipped bail in Japan late Sunday, a plane was waiting to whisk him away to Turkey, and another to take him on to Lebanon. There were multiple passports, rumors of shadowy forces at work and people in power denying they knew anything about it.

Our reporters paint a picture of what might have been going through his mind before he fled, blindsiding the lawyers defending him in a drawn-out criminal case on charges of financial wrongdoing.

The latest: Lebanon received an Interpol arrest warrant for Mr. Ghosn, Tokyo prosecutors raided his home and a French official said Mr. Ghosn, who holds French, Brazilian and Lebanese passports, would not be extradited if he traveled to France.

Turkey began an investigation into his escape via Istanbul, questioning seven people, including four pilots.

Reminder: Mr. Ghosn is accused of underreporting his compensation, shifting personal financial losses to Nissan and using funds from Renault to organize parties at the Palace of Versailles.

If you have 20 minutes, this is worth it

Martin Scorsese lets go

Philip Montgomery for The New York Times

The 77-year-old director had a topic in mind when he sat down with our reporter: death. What motivates Mr. Scorsese now, he said, is not fear of it but acceptance that it happens to everyone. Mortality, a recurring theme in his childhood, is important in his latest film, “The Irishman.”

“As they say in my movie, ‘It’s what it is,’” he said. “You’ve got to embrace it.”

Here’s what else is happening

Taiwan: Eight people, including the chief of the armed forces, were killed when the military helicopter carrying them crashed on a mountainside, officials said.

Indonesia: Flash floods killed at least 30 people and left tens of thousands homeless in flood-prone Jakarta, after the capital’s most intense rainfall in decades.

Turkey: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is preparing to send troops to Libya, just months after a military incursion into Syria. Analysts see the country as increasingly confident in its role as a regional power.

Israel: The Supreme Court refused to weigh in on whether a prime ministerial candidate charged with serious crimes can be asked to form a new government, removing an obstacle for Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of a general election on March 2.

Farooq Khan/EPA, via Shutterstock

Snapshot: Above, a frozen waterfall in the Kashmiri town of Tangmarg. A record-breaking cold wave has taken hold in the region, where centralized heating is rare and residents were unprepared. Schools have been closed and pollution is intensifying.

What we’re reading: This essay in The New Yorker on the highs and lows of raising a toddler. “Love this so much,” says Emma G. Fitzsimmons, our new City Hall bureau chief. “We need more writing on parenting by fathers. It shouldn’t be viewed as (more) women’s work.”

Now, a break from the news

Romulo Yanes for The New York Times

Cook: Take the time this weekend to make perfect pancakes with crisp, fritter-like edges.

Listen: This week’s Popcast asks The Times’s critics: If you could change your best album lists from the past decade, would you?

Read: Two books by the Polish fantasy writer Andrzej Sapkowski, whose work is the basis of the Netflix series “The Witcher,” debut on our monthly audio fiction best-seller list.

Smarter Living: Tired of going to the gym (or berating yourself for not)? Here are five cheap(ish) things to bring the gym to you.

And now for the Back Story on …

What your phone will do next

Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters

The New York Times has been reporting on how your smartphone can cost you privacy.

Most recently, our Opinion desk published One Nation, Tracked, an investigation into the location data industry that shows how companies quietly collect and profit off the precise movements of smartphone users.

But there’s a new vulnerability coming.

Apple is including a new chip in its iPhone 11s that will enable ultra wideband wireless communication with other phones and smart devices. More phone makers, like Samsung, appear ready to launch their own UWB. (UWB chips are already in N.F.L. players’ shoulder pads, to gather metrics and inform computer animated replays.)

The new short-range technology could bring a host of conveniences: unlocking your car or front door as you approach and relocking when you exit, speeding phone-to-phone transfers and the like. All faster than Bluetooth.

But it could also make your location trackable even more precisely. In stores, retailers could “see” where you paused in their aisles, possibly keeping track of not only what you bought, but what you may have considered.

And if past experience is a guide, law enforcement could also draw on the data.

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

— Melina

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 “The Daily.” Our latest episode revisits an interview with President Trump that included the publisher of The Times, A.G. Sulzberger.
• Here’s our Mini Crossword, and a clue: Half of 2020 (four letters). You can find all our puzzles here.
• Each day, our editors collect some of the most interesting or delightful facts to appear in that day’s coverage. Here are 79 favorites from last year.