Your Monday Evening Briefing |
Good evening. Here's the latest. |
 | | Justin Lane/EPA, via Shutterstock |
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1. Fully vaccinated Americans may gather indoors in small groups without masks, the C.D.C. said. |
In its latest guidance, the Centers for Disease Control also said vaccinated people may visit indoors with unvaccinated people from a single household so long as no one among the unvaccinated is at risk for severe disease if infected with the coronavirus. |
It's good news for grandparents who have refrained from seeing their children and grandchildren during the past year. But even the fully vaccinated should still adhere to wearing masks and social distancing in public spaces, the agency advised. Above a vaccine site in Queens, N.Y. |
Among those vaccinated, more women than men are reporting side effects, C.D.C. researchers report. Though rare, nearly all of the anaphylactic reactions to Covid-19 vaccines have occurred among women, too. Scientists say that's probably because of factors including hormones, genes and the size of a vaccine dose. |
Here are some frequently asked questions and answers for the newly vaccinated. As of today, about 60 million people have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, including about 31.3 million people who have been fully vaccinated, according to the C.D.C. |
 | | Karsten Moran for The New York Times |
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2. A milestone for New York City's schools. |
But even with the return of as many as 55,000 high-school students who signed up for in-person classes in the fall and have not been in classrooms since November, only about a third of all city students will be receiving any in-person instruction. The remaining 700,000 or so chose remote learning. Above, a high school in Queens. |
In Los Angeles, school district officials say a deal with its powerful teachers' union to resume in-person learning might happen this week. But even with an agreement in place, it would take at least until mid-April to welcome back elementary and special needs students. |
In England, millions of students age 5 to 11 returned to schools today for the first time since January, with a phased re-entry for older pupils over the coming week. |
 | | Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA, via Shutterstock |
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3. President Biden's $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill will get a final vote in the House most likely on Wednesday. |
The Times's personal finance experts, Ron Lieber and Tara Siegel Bernard, combed through the bill to explain what it means in real terms to real people. Here's what they found. Above, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at the Capitol today. |
Mr. Biden will deliver the first prime-time address of his presidency on Thursday, looking back on the year since the adoption of measures to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed nearly 525,000 Americans and battered the economy. |
The speech comes a year to the day since the World Health Organization declared the spread of the coronavirus a global pandemic and a year to the night since former President Donald Trump delivered an address from the Oval Office, after initially dismissing the virus as a minor problem. |
 | | Doug Mills/The New York Times |
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4. President Biden targets Trump-era policies on campus sexual violence. |
Mr. Biden, who has promised since his campaign to reassess a number of the former administration's education policies, has long vowed to dismantle rules that afforded greater protections to students accused of sexual assault. |
He also signed an executive order today — on International Women's Day — establishing a Gender Policy Council in the White House that will seek to advance "gender equality and equity" across government. The council will report directly to the president. Above, Mr. Biden at the White House today. |
The number of unaccompanied migrant children detained along the U.S. border with Mexico has tripled in the past two weeks to more than 3,250, according to documents obtained by The Times. The increase highlights their belief that Mr. Biden will be more welcoming to them than his predecessor. |
 | | Joe Pugliese/Harpo Productions, via Associated Press |
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5. The Meghan and Harry interview sent a shock wave across the Atlantic, shedding explosive details on their rift with the British royal family. |
In the interview televised in the U.S. on Sunday, Meghan Markle said that her life as a member of the royal family had become so emotionally desolate that she contemplated suicide, and that a member of the family had expressed concerns about how dark her unborn child's skin would be. |
Many Black Britons felt a measure of vindication, after Meghan and Prince Harry made it clear that racist abuse played a role in their decision to leave the country, but they also expressed frustration that some in Britain were still skirting the issue. |
The palace has said nothing in the aftermath of the interview, but many Britons have agreed that it could have wide-ranging implications for the House of Windsor. |
 | | Henry Milleo/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
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6. Brazil's ex-president "Lula" may run for office again. |
Mr. da Silva, above, a fiery leftist leader who led Brazil from 2003 to 2010, had been the front-runner in the 2018 presidential contest. But the Supreme Court ruled that he could not appear on the ballot as a result of a corruption conviction in 2017. |
Mr. Bolsonaro, a polarizing far-right leader who pays homage to Brazil's military dictatorship, would face a formidable challenge in Mr. da Silva, a former political prisoner who remains revered among lower-income Brazilians. |
 | | Bridgette Craighead |
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7. From the best of America to the worst of America. |
At the Black Lives Matter protest last spring in rural Franklin County, Va., police officers and activists ended up laughing and dancing together. |
But in January, two of the officers were charged with disorderly conduct for their roles in the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6. Above, the officers at the B.L.M. event. |
The contrast has divided the county. The officers' supporters say that the violence of the riot was wrong, but that the protest against the election itself was honorable. Others say their participation looked a lot like white people going out of their way to make sure that America was theirs. |
"There had always been this veneer in the county that everything is OK," said a Black teacher in Franklin County, "and it slowly started to get peeled back." |
 | | Kerem Yucel/AFP — Getty Images |
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8. A delay in the George Floyd murder trial. |
The trial's first stage was set to begin with jury selection today, but a disagreement over whether to add a third-degree murder charge against the former officer with the Minneapolis Police Department, Derek Chauvin, means the jury selection process will not begin before Tuesday at the earliest. Above, a protester today outside the courthouse. |
It could then take several weeks as prosecutors and Mr. Chauvin's lawyer narrow a pool of possible jurors down to 12. Mr. Chauvin, who is white, was captured on video on May 25, 2020, holding his knee to the neck of Mr. Floyd, who is Black, for more than nine minutes as Mr. Floyd repeatedly said, "I can't breathe." |
 | | Sayaka Mitoh |
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9. These animals chop off their own heads. |
A type of sea slug, the Elysia marginata, is capable of decapitating itself when its body becomes infected with parasites, scientists say. |
"We've known for a long time that sea slugs have regenerative capabilities, but this really goes beyond what we had thought," said Terry Gosliner, senior curator of invertebrate zoology at the California Academy of Science. |
 | | Preston Gannaway for The New York Times |
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10. And finally, the best bagels are in … California? |
Our critic is also a former resident of New York City, where Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe introduced the bagel in the early 1900s, so she knows whereof she writes. But she also concedes that "bagels are personal." |
The bagels at Boichik Bagels, she reports, makes a version loosely based on the New York version that the baker remembers eating as a child. They "are some of the finest New York-style bagels I've ever tasted," our critic writes. "They just happen to be made in Berkeley." |
Have a mouth-watering evening. |
Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p.m. Eastern. |
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