| Moment of reckoning | Trump's sparsely attended rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is stirring fresh questions about his re-election strategy. As Mario Parker reports, the president's return to the campaign stage showed the extent to which he's struggling to escape the fallout from the pandemic and protests over police brutality, crises that are making it harder for him to focus his arguments against Democratic opponent Joe Biden. When to deal | America's allies and rivals face a tough choice as Trump trails in polls ahead of November: Wait to see if he loses to Biden, or cut deals now to avoid negotiating with an emboldened second-termer. As Marc Champion and Nick Wadhams report, nations may also be coming to the more sweeping conclusion that massive swings in U.S. policy are here to stay, meaning allies will need to rely less on Washington no matter who's in the White House. Explosive gambit | North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's move to blow up a building meant to symbolize rapprochement with South Korea may have been a forceful ploy to get help for an economy straining under international sanctions and borders shut by the coronavirus. Sam Kim explains what might be influencing Pyongyang's strategy amid the weakest economy in two decades. Rural hotspot | After overwhelming India's megacities, the coronavirus is now moving through the vast hinterland, Bibhudatta Pradhan and Abhijit Roy Chowdhury report. Home to nearly 70% of India's 1.3 billion people, the nation's villages were initially isolated from the pandemic. Then millions of laborers who lost city jobs in the lockdown went home, leaving the rundown rural health system in jeopardy.  People visit a mobile Covid-19 testing van in New Delhi. Photographer: T. Narayan/Bloomberg Buckle up | The German government's 9 billion-euro ($10 billion) rescue of Deutsche Lufthansa is at risk after the airline's biggest shareholder threatened to scupper the accord. Billionaire Heinz-Hermann Thiele is expected to press officials for better terms at a virtual meeting today, William Wilkes reports. Lufthansa's dilemma — management and workforce are desperate for the deal to go through — underlines the perils of government intervention in the pandemic era. - German regulators are under fire over Wirecard AG, a payments company whose unraveling has become a national embarrassment.
What to Watch This Week - Hong Kong is likely to be on the agenda when European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel hold video conferences today with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and President Xi Jinping.
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Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic led his party to a landslide victory in general elections boycotted by the opposition. He heads to the White House for talks Saturday with the leader of Kosovo aimed at reconciling the former wartime foes. -
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Elizabeth Warren are leading the charge by Democratic progressives to topple an establishment veteran in New York's primary tomorrow, a race that's become the latest front in the battle over the party's future direction. -
Europe's longest-serving president, Alexander Lukashenko, said his security forces thwarted a "foreign" plan to foment revolution as protests spread across Belarus following the arrests of potential challengers to his rule. -
Polish President Andrzej Duda meets Trump in Washington on Wednesday, with a newspaper in Poland reporting the two will announce a sweeping defense deal. -
Thursday marks the 70th anniversary of the start of the three-year Korean War, though events planned to mark the occasion may be curtailed because of the coronavirus. Thanks to all who responded to our pop quiz Friday and congratulations to Ee Ling Chong, who was the first to correctly name salmon as the imported food Chinese officials have blamed for a resurgence of Covid-19 in Beijing.
And finally ... Hong Kong's pro-democracy camp is on edge after details of a proposed national security law showed that Chinese authorities will have the right to directly prosecute residents for vaguely defined offenses to national security. A year that began with high hopes of a victory in fall's legislative elections is now marked by worries about disqualification — and even imprisonment.  Protesters during a rally in Hong Kong in June, 2019. Photographer: Kyle Lam/Bloomberg
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