here is nick schifrin. >> schifrin: on a recent evening in melbourne, drinks with friends provide thee of freedom. >> sometimes you kind of forget that there's a pandemic still going on. many of us are leading normal lives pretty much right now. >> schifrin: graduate student anna bailey and people across melboue are enjoying the normality of zero: zero local transmission of covid-19 in the city and the surrounding state of victoria. and across the country, almost zero community transmission. everywhere they go, they check in electronically, for contact tracing, and to keep the city safe. >> the theater is back in person. so i've gone to like a couple of plays, pubs and galleries. all that life is starting to come back to life. and that's that's so nice to >> god, it felt good to be in live performance and a sort of a normal life. >> schifrin: sharon lewin is head of the university of melbourne's doherty institute for infection and immunity-- the first lab outside of china to grow the covid-19 virus. she's also a music fan, and recently attended the adelaide festival, with more than 16

nick schifrin speaks to taiwan's foreign minister, and sets the scene. >> schifrin: in taiwan, authorities, are becoming reality. taiwanese pilots scramble american-made fighter jets, to practice responding to chinese military incursions. taiwanese soldiers practice defending their island from a would-be chinese invasion. taiwan believes beijing is preparing for war. the chinese military recently released this video of chinese drills simulating amphibious assaults. and almost every day chinese jets cross taiwan'self- identified air defense identification zone. never before have so many chinese planes come so close to taiwan. senior biden administration officials tell pbs newshour they do not expect an imminent invasion. but in march, the outgoing top u.s.ilitary commander in the region, predicted war was coming. >> i think the threat is manifest during this decade, in fact in the next six yrs. >> schifrin: the trump administration increased arms sales to taiwan. the biden administration continued expanded us naval operations, and became the first administration to invite taiwan's envoy to

nick schifrin has the story. >> schifrin: when ryanair 4978 was forced to land in minsk, authorities didn't only remove the luggage. they also arrested 26-year-old belarusian activist raman pratasevich. he ran an online news service that helped organize mass protests against president alexander lukashenko. known as europe's last dictator, who's been in power one year longer than pratasevich's been alive. belarusian government, and said four belarusian security agents a confession to organizations protests but today rye ryanair chief executive blamed the bellorussian government and said four security agents were on board to ensure the hijacking succeeded. >> i think it is the first time it happened to a >> i think it's the first time it has happened to a european airline. but i mean this was a case of state-sponsored... it was a state-sponsored hijack. >> schifrin: the flight path shows the plane flying in a straight line to intended destination lithuania, when it did a u-turn, landing instead in minsk. state media said lukashenko ordered a fighter jet to escort the plane to belarus'

nick schifrin reports. >> schifrin: thanks to brave local journalists and activists, the world has witnessedf the crackdown in myanmar. much of it is so violent, we cn't show it to you without blurring the video. activists, shot, their bodies taken away. soldiers, beating demonstrators. security forces, killing demonstrators, and then dragging their bodies through the street. and now the human rights center investigative lab at berkeley and the ap found the myanmar military used dead bodies, corpses, who were killed indiscriminately, as a tool of war to try and control an entire population. alexa koenig is the center's executive director. she is also a professor at berkeley school of law, and she joins me now. myanmar what was happening on the ground coming social media combing through bubbled up to ghe surface dragged into the backs of trucks many bodies were returned so they maybe told for example watching these horrific videos, it often seemed like the killings were random. but were they, in fact, not random at all, and instead designed to terrorize? >> i think it really spends on what yo

nick schifrin has been following this closely. reporting on this all day, he joins me now, nick t is good to see you, let's start with president biden's call for this review, why now. >> senior administration officials say th overall motivation is that the world needs greater clarity on the origins of covid-19 in order to prevent the next pandemic but this week the biden team took affront to china's rejectioning any calls for further investigation. back in-- senior officials tell may back in march he requested the or i girchs and received that but china rejected a call for further investigation. a senior official says that lead the white house to accelerate their declassification of the originf covid, leading to yesterday's statement, calling for the intelligence community to redouble their erts-- efforts and a promise to release more information in the next three months. >> judy mentioned one of the theories that the scrie russ escaped from a lab, what is the evidence. >> since the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic the intellige

i am nick schifrin. ♪ judy: 38 years of marriage to the late senator john mccain gave cindy mccain athe adventure and challenges of life and politics. from navigating political scandals and a growing family, to taking on president trump, she writes about it all and her new book. "stronger: courage, hope, and humor in my life with john mccain." cindy mccain joins me now, welcome to the newshour and very good to have you with us. you write, we hope to get that picture back from skype, i hope you are still there. if she is, we will continue. cindy: i am so sorry. i apologize. judy: it is all good. we will keep going, it is the way we all live right now. cindy mccain, you write about the 38 years, the ups, the downs, the highs and the lows. there was not much of a quiet moments, was there? cindy: no, there really was not. in the beginning, part of what we talked about is at some point there'll be a normal in the household, there will be an normal in our family and of course, that never happened. it was always very exciting, always challenging, and always a lot of fun and it had its pitfa