New York is "decidedly in the reopening phase," Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Sunday, as the state hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic gave sports leagues, campgrounds and veterinarian offices the green light to start up again, with modifications.

Professional sports leagues in the state are now able to begin training camps, Cuomo said during his daily press conference, adding that having teams come back, even without spectators, would mark a "return to normalcy."

Can Americans return to fun in the sand and in the water while keeping themselves safe from the coronavirus? That's a question being put to the test this Memorial Day weekend as many Americans flock to newly reopened beaches, like Los Angeles' famed Venice Beach.

Except for still-closed stores that usually sell souvenirs to tourists and signs reminding people to wear masks, Venice Beach looked much like its normally eclectic self this weekend.

Hong Kong police fired tear gas, pepper spray and water cannons as thousands of protesters rallied against proposed security measures aimed at tightening Beijing's grip on the semi-autonomous territory.

Vermont is a state of vast beauty, yet for all its idyllic Green Mountain landscapes, living there takes a certain amount of grit. The state's bitter winters can last as long as six months, only to be followed by "mud season" – the character-building preamble to spring that turns the ground to sludge and makes dirt roads impassable.

"I wasn't afraid of fighting," Ilhan Omar writes about her childhood in Somalia in her new memoir. "I felt like I was bigger and stronger than everyone else — even if I knew that wasn't really the case."

Champale Greene-Anderson keeps the volume up on her television when she watches 5-year-old granddaughter Amor Robinson while the girl's mom is at work.

"So we won't hear the gunshots," says Greene-Anderson. "I have little bitty grandbabies, and I don't want them to be afraid to be here."

As a preschooler, Amor already knows and fears the sounds that occurred with regularity in their St. Louis neighborhood before the pandemic — and continue even now as the rest of the world has slowed down.

In Brazil's favelas, poor urban neighborhoods where residents live in crowded homes and lack basic sanitation, the toll of the coronavirus is expected to be brutal. The informal jobs that sustain 39 million Brazilians, such as selling street food or working temporary construction gigs, are also victims of the stay-at-home order, which started in mid-March. For some in these sprawling settlements, hunger is a threat as real as COVID-19.

North Carolina has reported its highest one-day spike in new COVID-19 cases, a development that comes a day after the state entered its second phase of reopening.

In a statement on Saturday, the state's Department of Health and Human Services reported 1,107 infections — around 250 more cases than the state's last highest daily tally.

It has been around two months of quarantine for many of us. The urge to get out and enjoy the summer is real. But what's safe? We asked a panel of infectious disease and public health experts to rate the risk of summer activities, from backyard gatherings to a day at the pool to sharing a vacation house with another household.

President Trump is visiting one of his golf courses this weekend, his first apparent golf outing since declaring a state of emergency because of the coronavirus pandemic.

On Saturday, the president visited the Trump National Golf Club located just outside Washington, D.C., in Northern Virginia. His last visit to a course was on March 8 to his West Palm Beach club in Florida, days before he declared a national emergency.