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Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Tuesday.
1. The Taliban urged the world to look past their brutal history as they began to sketch out what Afghanistan under their rule could look like.
The group’s leaders took to Twitter, appeared on international cable networks and held a news conference to provide assurances that they would not carry out reprisal killings or seize property. At their first news conference, a spokesman said they would allow women to work and study — but “within the bounds of Islamic law.”
2. Most Americans should get a coronavirus booster vaccination eight months after their second shot, the Biden administration decided.
Officials are planning to announce the decision as early as this week. Third shots are likely to be offered as early as next month, starting with nursing home residents, health care workers and emergency workers, then other older people and, finally, the general population. We analyzed data from seven states that shows how the Delta variant may have changed the administration’s approach to booster shots.
The decision comes as the Biden administration struggles to regain control of the pandemic as the Delta variant surges. One in five hospital I.C.U.s in the U.S. now has at least 95 percent of its beds occupied. See where the crisis is concentrated.
Separately, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, who had banned mask and vaccination mandates as the virus surged in the state, tested positive for the coronavirus.
3. For many Haitians, the only source of aid is the church. A 7.2 magnitude earthquake shredded that mainstay of support.
Many churches lay in ruins after the earthquake on Saturday, which wrecked thousands of buildings and left entire towns and at least one city without a church. “We are the only thing here,” said one cleric in Les Cayes, which was particularly devastated by the quake. “There is no support from the government.”
The death toll soared to nearly 2,000 and 10,000 injured. Rain from Tropical Storm Grace frustrated rescue and reconstruction efforts.
4. Shoppers spent more at Amazon than they did at Walmart, a milestone in the shift to online buying that was propelled in part by the pandemic.
5. Can Gov. Gavin Newsom keep his job?
A recall election on Sept. 14 is expected to come down to whether Democrats can mobilize enough of California’s enormous base. Recent polls show a dead heat despite math that suggests that the governor will ultimately prevail. Less than a quarter of the electorate is Republican.
If a majority of voters decides to recall Newsom, the new governor will be whoever among his 46 challengers receives the most votes, even if no rival wins a majority. The most serious contender is Larry Elder, a conservative talk radio host who has called global warming “a crock” and says the minimum wage should be “zero-point-zero-zero.”
6. Many women with breast cancer in their families know about the BRCA gene. Doctors want women to know about another gene that’s almost as dangerous.
The gene is known as PALB2, and people who have the mutation have almost as great a risk of getting breast cancer as those who have the BRCA mutations. Like the BRCA mutations, this mutation also increases a patient’s risk of ovarian and pancreatic cancer. Doctors are increasingly recommending that anyone who was tested before 2014 do it again.
In other health news, a series of studies published in the journal JAMA paints a dismal picture of health disparities in America, shedding light on the ways in which minority groups still receive inferior medical care.
8. Denmark isn’t big enough for two Little Mermaids.
A bronze sculpture created by Edvard Eriksen has sat in Langelinie harbor since 1913 and is one of Copenhagen’s most visited tourist attractions. The diminutive mermaid, which represents a character from a Hans Christian Andersen story, rests her weight on her right arm while tucking her tail neatly under her.
But for Eriksen’s heirs, a mermaid in the northern city of Asaa bears too close a resemblance, and they want it gone. The Eriksen estate has a long history of protecting its licensing rights to the image of the sculpture. While the features of the granite Asaa mermaid are coarser and plumper, her posture is the same.
“How else is she going to sit?” the mayor of Asaa asked. “She’s a mermaid. You can’t put her in a chair.”
9. Fire up the grill: It’s pizza time.
Grilled pizza is one of the easiest ways (really!) to get restaurant-quality pizza at home. Neapolitan-style pizza is typically baked in ovens heated past 900 degrees to achieve its signature crust. But you can easily yield similar textures and flavors at home by baking pizza dough directly on the grates of a hot grill. J. Kenji López-Alt shows you how.
about how he approaches home cooking like a scientist.
Using peppers as a topping? New genetic findings reveal intriguing details about the pepper plant’s global travels and how some of the plants ended up sweet and crisp while others gained their fiery edge.
10. And lastly, goodbye to a puzzle master.
Maki Kaji first fell in love with a game that involved filling in a numbered grid in 1984. The story goes that, in a rush to get to a horse race, he decided on a name in about 25 seconds. He settled on Sudoku, which roughly translates to “single numbers.” The game went on to become one of the world’s most popular logic puzzles.
Kaji, 69, died on Aug. 10 at his home in Tokyo. According to Nikoli, the puzzle company he co-founded, an estimated 200 million people in 100 countries have solved Sudoku. Puzzle experts said Kaji had imbued their world with “soul.”
Have an inventive evening.
Bryan Denton compiled photos for this briefing.
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