Good morning. We’re overlaying the Indian vaccine disaster, an assault on Afghan women and stalled U.S.-Iran negotiations.

The Serum Institute, the world’s largest vaccine maker, had vowed to take a number one function in India’s struggle towards Covid-19, and the nation’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, had pledged its vaccines would “save humanity.”

Now, those promises have fallen apart.

Serum is failing to uphold export offers price a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands of {dollars}. India largely stopped vaccine exports as its disaster intensified. AstraZeneca has since served Serum a authorized discover over supply delays, and different struggling international locations are scrambling to seek out options.

“We need to take care of our own, like America has taken care of their own, Europe is taking care of their own,” Adar Poonawalla, Serum’s chief government, instructed The Times.

But despite the fact that the corporate is contributing 90 p.c of India’s vaccine provide, it’s nonetheless falling quick. A fireplace delayed plans to ramp up manufacturing, limiting the corporate’s output to 72 million doses a month in a nation of 1.four billion folks.

A brand new improvement: A probably deadly fungal an infection, mucormycosis, is rising amongst India’s Covid sufferers. Some consultants attribute the infections to an elevated use of steroids, whereas others say they crop up when households apply oxygen remedy at house with out the right hygiene.

Public and personal grief: Relatives broadcast funeral pyres throughout oceans, information websites play movies of India’s cremation grounds and neighbors document the flames as a rebuke to the federal government. But because the fires turn out to be spectacle, many really feel the pandemic has stripped the ultimate rites of their dignity.

Here are the latest updates and maps of the pandemic.

In different developments:


Powerful explosions exterior a highschool in Kabul killed at least 50 people and wounded scores more, lots of whom had been teenage women. The assault underscored rising fears that the American troop withdrawal would depart girls, and their academic and social positive aspects, significantly weak.

The highschool hosts lessons for boys within the morning and for ladies within the afternoon. A automobile bomb detonated round four p.m., proper as the women had been leaving class. As college students rushed out, two extra bombs exploded, a authorities spokesman mentioned.

The presidential palace blamed the Taliban, which denied responsibility and condemned the attack. The bloodbath has pushed house the uncomfortable actuality that, as American troops depart, there was extra chaos than accord and extra concern than hope.

Analysis: In the facility vacuum, many concern the Taliban will quickly attempt to seize energy. Even if the insurgents attain an unlikely peace cope with the Afghan authorities, their harsh Islamist strictures, together with retaining women out of faculty, may once more turn out to be the mainstream.

Surging violence: At least 140 pro-government forces and 44 civilians had been killed in Afghanistan prior to now week, the best weekly demise toll since October.


President Biden and Iran’s leaders say they need to re-enter the nuclear deal that Donald Trump scrapped three years in the past. But after 5 weeks of oblique negotiations in Vienna, it has become clear that the old parameters won’t work, at the least in the long term.

Iran desires to maintain superior nuclear-fuel manufacturing tools it put in after the U.S. backed out. It seeks not solely aid from U.S.-imposed sanctions that choked its economy, but in addition integration with the world monetary system past what was secured in 2015.

At minimal, the U.S. desires to revive the outdated deal. It additionally desires an expanded accord that will cease Iran from producing sufficient gasoline for a bomb for many years, halt missile assessments and finish Iran’s help of terrorism.

Analysis: Restoring the outdated settlement appears doable, in keeping with European, Iranian and American officers. The lead negotiator made a big provide to raise some sanctions on Iran that he mentioned had been “inconsistent” with the unique deal. But getting the expanded settlement the U.S. seeks appears unlikely.

Domestic considerations: In Iran, the place presidential elections are six weeks away, highly effective conservatives mock the outgoing management. In the U.S., Biden should deal with a Congress that’s skeptical of a deal and sympathetic to Israel.

As tourism reopens, pilots are lastly behind the wings once more. But after a yr on land, they’re out of practice. “It’s not quite like riding a bike,” one former airman mentioned. “What fades is the operational side of things.”

Roger Federer is maybe Switzerland’s most well-known son. Now, the worldwide tennis champion has turn out to be an unpaid spokesman for the nation’s tourism. In a Zoom name with The Times, he shared a few of his favourite vacation spot spots — and his love for chocolate. Here’s Federer with some reward for the nation’s mountain climbing trails.

Hiking and biking are the go-to issues for everybody to do in Switzerland. Some of essentially the most spectacular mountain climbing trails I like are by Gstaad within the Bernese Alps. It’s not so brutally up and down, it’s extra of a good slope, which is nice for mountain climbing.

The identical goes for Appenzell, which is a really good place that’s not so well-known. It’s additionally the place I all the time went mountain climbing once I was a boy. When I used to be harm in 2016, I spent lots of time on the mountain climbing trails in Graubünden, the place I dwell now. We have the Swiss National Park over there — that entire space is unbelievable for mountain climbing.





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