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Coronavirus, Assam Tribunals, Global Recession: Your Monday Briefing

Here’s what you need to know.

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Good morning.

We’re covering India’s coronavirus outbreak, whistle-blowers’ stories of the citizenship test in Assam and an endless honeymoon for two stranded travelers.


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People stand on their balconies and light candles or oil lamps in Ahmedabad, India, on Sunday, after Prime Minister Narendra Modi appealed to the country for a lights-out vigil.Credit...Amit Dave/Reuters

As India’s reported coronavirus cases rose past 3,000, people across the country observed a nine-minute lights-out vigil as instructed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday night.

Critics called it a publicity stunt, one that seemed ill-timed amid the mass migrations, medical shortages and uncertainties inside the world’s largest lockdown. India’s caseload may be much higher than has been reported, because the country is testing at a lower rate than many others.

Mr. Modi asked India’s 1.3 billion people to turn off the electricity and “light a lamp, brighten everyone else’s path.” He presented it as an enormous solidarity exercise to “bring our nation closer and strengthen the battle against Covid-19.”

Cluster: About a third of the country’s known cases are linked to a packed gathering in March at an Islamic seminary in Delhi, further intensifying Islamophobia.

In other developments:

Here are the latest updates and maps of the pandemic.

Just so you know, much of The Times’s coronavirus coverage is free, as is our Coronavirus Briefing newsletter. We’d be delighted if you’d consider supporting our journalism with a subscription.


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A Muslim woman living in Assam who showed documents proving she is a citizen. Still, she was left off a roster of citizens and now must go to a tribunal.Credit...Karan Deep Singh/The New York Times

Assam State’s vast effort to “test” individuals’ citizenship has been called a preview of what could happen across the country as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government moves to make India more Hindu.

Two key components of this campaign, which began last year, are mass reviews of every resident’s paperwork to see if they can prove citizenship, and a tribunal that has operated for decades reviewing suspected foreigners.

A Times video team went to Assam to investigate, and whistle-blowers told them how the process is making Muslims stateless. Watch the eight-minute video.

How it works: Many poor Indians lack the required paperwork to prove citizenship, like parents’ voting records and land ownership documents that have been certified by authorities as authentic, so the reviews have left a disproportionate number of Muslims potentially stateless.

And five former tribunal members and one current member described pressure to declare Muslims noncitizens. Some said they were fired for not doing so.

Response: State and central government officials declined to comment.

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Credit...Chad Batka for The New York Times

Tens of thousands of people have died in the coronavirus pandemic. In a new series, The Times is telling some of their stories.

Among those whose lives were claimed the last week are Ellis Marsalis Jr., 85, above, the patriarch of a New Orleans family of jazz musicians; the Japanese comedian Ken Shimura, 70; and Nur Hassan Hussein, 82, the former Somalian prime minister who led his country through a crucial transitional period.

China’s legal crackdown: Wang Quanzhang, a human rights lawyer who took up sensitive cases, was released from prison on Sunday after being held for nearly five years. He was the last of hundreds of legal workers to face prosecution in a widespread crackdown by China on their field in 2015.

Knife attack in France: The authorities are opening a terror investigation after a man killed two people and wounded five others on Saturday in a small town just south of Lyon in southern France.

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Credit...Olivia and Raul De Freitas

Snapshot: Above, Olivia and Raul De Freitas, a couple stuck on an endless honeymoon in the Maldives. They are part of a host of travelers around the world stranded indefinitely by travel restrictions and decreased flight schedules.

What we’re surfing: The Open Culture website. “I don’t have kids at home anymore,” writes our national correspondent Mike Wines. “But if I did, and if they were on 24/7 lockdown with me for uncounted weeks, this is the website I would want.”

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Credit...Melissa Clark

Cook: Citrus-scented and speckled with cornmeal, one-bowl poundcake is excellent toasted and buttered for breakfast.

Explore: Expand your virtual horizons and try a new video game. Or take a virtual gallery tour with our art critics.

Cope: This elegant guide to working out in hotel rooms sure comes in handy now. As does this sly advice for how to deal with noisy neighbors. And here’s how to keep a handle on the wear and tear your home is experiencing now.

We have a lot of ideas about what to read, cook, watch and do while staying safe at home.

Economists are increasingly worried about the length and severity of a global recession resulting from the coronavirus outbreak. Some 6.6 million people in the U.S. filed new unemployment insurance claims in the latest numbers — nearly 20 times that of a typical week. I spoke with Ron Lieber, The Times’s Your Money columnist.

What do you tell people who are struggling to process all this?

It doesn’t look quite like anything we’ve seen before in our lifetime. Trying to plan or make predictions is really hard — and to tell people to embrace that uncertainty is not really helpful. I think the best thing is to talk to as many people as possible who have the same uncertainty that you do.

Is there any financial housekeeping that people who are not laid off but are worried about the economy should get in order?

The problem is: It’s like if your neighbor’s house is burning down, but the fire hasn’t gotten to your house yet, it’s too late to buy insurance. It’s helpful to have an emergency fund, but trying to start one now may not be much help.

You’ve written in the past couple of months that despite the tumult in the stock market, most people should pretty much sit still. Is that still the case?

All the best economic science tells us that if — and it’s a big “if” — you’re willing to stay invested in stock for decades and decades, if you just sit still more or less, keep putting money in at regular intervals, and sell some stock when stock prices get too high and buy some stock when the prices fall, you will do better and earn more than most professional brokers.

Now, that’s a science-based answer — it’s not quite a behavioral-science-based answer. I recognize that there are people who have never been psychologically tested in this way before.


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

— Melina


Thank you
To Melissa Clark for the recipe, and to Theodore Kim and Jahaan Singh for the rest of 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 a bit of relief: an excerpt from a new Times audio series called “Sugar Calling,” hosted by the best-selling author Cheryl Strayed, in which she chats with her mentor and friend, the author George Saunders.
• Here’s our Mini Crossword, and a clue: Killer of the Night King on “Game of Thrones” (four letters). You can find all our puzzles here.
• Times journalists were honored by the Overseas Press Club with awards in five categories and one citation, leading our honored competitors for a second straight year.

Melina Delkic writes the Europe edition of the Morning Briefing. More about Melina Delkic

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 2 of the New York edition with the headline: Financial Advice for Uncertain Times. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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