NPR News

This is the first in an ongoing series of stories following the struggle of one restaurant trying, like many, to reinvent itself in order to survive the global pandemic.

Food and drink establishments have been among the most challenging businesses to operate through the pandemic. Around the nation, many have already shut down for good, while others that reopened are now closing again because of increases in COVID-19 cases in some places.

India has now surpassed Russia to become the third country worst-affected by the coronavirus, in terms of total infections. Only the United States and Brazil have more.

On Tuesday, India's death toll from COVID-19 crossed 20,000, and its total caseload now exceeds 700,000. Both tallies are now rising at their fastest pace since the pandemic began.

When you're a man of a certain age, not getting a haircut for a few months, the thinning hair on top starts getting wispy and blowing around, the sides stick out all crazy. It is not a good look.

And it seemed beyond the help of a YouTube haircut video. So when the stylist who cuts my hair, Vincent Cox, told me that the salon he works at was opening up, I thought — "Well, I don't know. What am I going to risk my health just for vanity?"

Local officials and public health experts warn that domestic violence is spiking in Australia as the country deals with the aftermath of catastrophic fires paired with the global pandemic.

The fires killed at least 35 people and destroyed nearly 2,000 houses in the southeastern part of the country in 2019 and early 2020, leaving thousands of Australians jobless and still in temporary housing as the coronavirus pandemic swept through with its widespread lockdowns, illness and economic pain.

In a dramatic reimposition of public health emergency measures, the premier of Victoria state, Australia's second-most populous, announced the establishment of a "hard boundary" around Melbourne, a six-week lockdown in the city and the closure of Victoria's border with New South Wales state in an attempt to halt further spread of the coronavirus.

Premier Daniel Andrews said the lockdown takes effect at 11:59 p.m. Wednesday (9:59 a.m. ET).