Your Monday Briefing: Queen Elizabeth II’s Funeral

Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral

Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral is today at Westminster Abbey. The service, which begins at 11 a.m. London time (6 p.m. in Hong Kong, 8 p.m. in Sydney), will end a 10-day period of official mourning in Britain.

Dignitaries came from across the globe to pay their respects to Britain’s longest-serving monarch. A massive worldwide audience will watch. Tens of thousands will line up for the grand procession from London to Windsor Castle, where the queen will be buried.

How to watch: The BBC will stream the procession on TV and on its website, where it will be available to watchers from around the world. The broadcast will be shared with international affiliates. In Australia, the funeral will be live on ABC.

“The Queue”: For days, tens of thousands of people waited up to 24 hours to see the queen lying in state. Their individual acts of mourning commingled into a vast national expression of bereavement — and, to many, the ultimate expression of British democracy.

Hong Kong: A memorial for the queen has given residents of the former British colony a rare platform for public, if quiet, political dissent.

Japan braces for a strong typhoon

More than eight million people in Japan were ordered to evacuate and seek shelter yesterday as a powerful typhoon made its way up the country. Here’s a map of its path.

Typhoon Nanmadol brought torrential rain and the risk of destructive landslides to Kyushu, Japan’s southernmost main island. It is expected to traverse virtually the entire length of Japan over the coming days.

Japan’s meteorological agency classified the storm as a “violent typhoon,” its most severe category. Heavy rain is the main safety concern, but high winds could cause powerful waves. CNN cited the agency as saying that the storm could cause unprecedented storm surges and “large-scale disaster.”

Details: Officials said that some parts of Kyushu were expected to receive 20 inches (more than 50 centimeters) of rain or more, an amount not seen in the area in decades.

Disruptions: About 190,000 households lost power. Kyushu’s entire bullet train service was suspended, and hundreds of domestic flights were canceled. By yesterday evening, a few injuries had been reported but no deaths.

Cheetahs return to India

Seventy-five years ago, cheetahs went extinct in India. Their habitats had been destroyed, and they were hunted for sport.

On Saturday, eight arrived on a flight from Namibia, part of an experiment to determine whether a top predator population can be restored. Despite some debate over whether the preparations have been adequate, many conservationists view the plan as crucial to protecting the species.

The stakes are high. Cheetahs were once found in great numbers across Africa, Arabia and Asia. Now, scientists estimate that there are fewer than 8,000, down by half over the last four decades, and that they now live almost exclusively in Africa.

“It is the only large mammal that India has lost,” the secretary of India’s National Tiger Conservation Authority said. “It is our moral and ethical responsibility to bring them back.”

Details: The cheetahs will live in Kuno National Park, in the state of Madhya Pradesh. These were a gift from Namibia; India plans to spend roughly $11 million to translocate more until it has about 40.

Background: The British cleared India’s forests before the end of their colonial rule, leading to cheetah habitat loss, CNN reports. Indian nobility also shot them for sport.

Politics: The plan also reflects the nationalism ofNarendra Modi. The prime minister welcomed the big cats on his 72nd birthday.

THE LATEST NEWS

Asia

• A powerful earthquake killed at least one person in Taiwan yesterday.

• At least 27 people died in southwest China yesterday when a bus taking them to Covid-19 quarantine crashed, The Associated Press reports.

• China confirmed its first monkeypox case, CNN reports. Don’t touch foreigners, a top health official warned.

• At least 22 people died in a landslide in Nepal, Reuters reports.

• Gautam Adani, the richest man in India, is now wealthier than Jeff Bezos, NPR reports.

The War in Ukraine

• In the south, Ukraine is pushing a counteroffensive in and around Kherson, the only regional capital under Moscow’s control, but there is no sign of a mass Russian retreat. Here are live updates.

• A mass grave with more than 400 bodies was found in the reclaimed city of Izium, Ukrainian officials said.

• Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, admonished Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, a day after Putin said that Xi Jinping, China’s leader, had “questions and concerns” over Russia’s war in Ukraine.

• Nancy Pelosi, the U.S. House Speaker, visited Armenia and condemned Azerbaijan over recent clashes, openly taking sides where American officials have been careful to mediate discreetly.

• Australia said it would not ban Russian tourists, Reuters reports.

World News

• Hurricane Fiona knocked out power to all of Puerto Rico, its governor said. Forecasters predicted up to 25 inches (about 63 centimeters) of rain.

• Lebanon faces a wave of bank holdups as desperate people try to withdraw their own cash.

• Iran’s morality police detained a woman for allegedly violating dress rules. Her death in their custody has led to protests.

• Protests over Haiti’s economic misery have pushed the country near anarchy. Regional leaders described the crisis as a “low-intensity civil war.”

A Morning Read

New York is bouncing back slowly. So is its reputation as the city that never sleeps.

“It’s hard to put your finger on,” said the owner of Katz’s Delicatessen, which recently returned to a 24-hour weekend schedule after the pandemic. “But it really feels like New York is, you know, sort of done with its PTSD in a lot of ways.”

ARTS AND IDEAS

U.S. democracy faces twin threats

The U.S. has experienced deep political turmoil several times before over the past century. But each time, the basic dynamics of American democracy held firm. Now, David Leonhardt writes in an analysis, American democracy is facing two distinct threats.

There is a growing movement inside one of the country’s two major parties — the Republican Party — to refuse to accept defeat in an election. Six Republican nominees for governor and the Senate would not commit to accepting this year’s election results.

“There is the possibility, for the first time in American history, that a legitimately elected president will not be able to take office,” Yascha Mounk, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University who studies democracy, told David.

And the power to set government policy is becoming increasingly disconnected from public opinion. Just look to recent sweeping but politically unpopular Supreme Court decisions, David notes, or the fact that two of the past four presidents have taken office despite losing the popular vote.

Read David’s analysis of the dangers facing democracy.

PLAY, WATCH, EAT

What to Cook

Milk and bread crumbs lighten these tender meatballs.

What to Read

“The Divider,” by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, details the “cartoonishly chaotic” Trump administration.

Wellness

Did you overshare this weekend? Don’t sweat it. It’s probably fine.

Now Time to Play

Play today’s Mini Crossword.

Here are today’s Wordle and today’s Spelling Bee.

You can find all our puzzles here.

That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — Amelia

P.S. The Times’s Travel desk won 10 awards from the Society of American Travel Writers.

The latest episode of “The Daily” is on deep-sea mining.

You can reach Amelia and the team at [email protected].