Good evening. Here's the latest at the end of Friday. |
 | | Ruhullah at the funeral of his father, Hussain, who was killed in a suicide attack in Kabul.Victor J. Blue for The New York Times |
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1. With four days remaining until an Aug. 31 deadline for the U.S. withdrawal, the window for airlifts out of Afghanistan is narrowing. |
Hundreds of Afghans desperate to flee the Taliban continued to crowd Kabul's airport on Friday, even after one of the deadliest bombings in the country's history. Local health officials said that as many as 170 people were killed and at least 200 were wounded in the attack. |
The airport appeared to be largely locked down on Friday. Early in the day, the White House said that 12,500 people had been evacuated from Afghanistan in the previous 24 hours. American officials believe "another terror attack in Kabul is likely," said Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary. |
Among the dead are a former Afghan police officer who had hoped to help his family escape. His son, Ruhullah, pictured above, went missing after the blast, and only resurfaced at his father's funeral. |
Rylee McCollum, a 20-year-old Marine from Wyoming, was one of the first American victims to be identified publicly among the 13 U.S. troops killed in the blast. Some of them, like McCollum, were babies when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan. Now, they are among the last casualties of America's longest war. |
 | | Two-month-old Junior Perrilloux was put on a ventilator last week in New Orleans.Erin Schaff/The New York Times |
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2. Children's hospitals around the country are seeing a surge in Covid-19 patients. |
As the Delta variant grips the country, children who are not yet eligible for vaccination are at higher risk of being infected — especially in places where the virus is surging. A New Orleans children's hospital had so many Covid-19 patients that a federal "surge team" was called in to bolster an exhausted staff. |
Separately, Florida school districts may impose mask mandates, a judge ruled, overturning an executive order by Gov. Ron DeSantis. |
 | | Neighbors say the person who lived in this home in San Antonio, Texas, was evicted.Sergio Flores for The New York Times |
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3. Millions of Americans around the country are facing the prospect of eviction after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a federal moratorium on evictions. |
Separately, Jerome Powell, the Fed chair, said he supported slowing bond purchases this year as the economy heals, but warned the Delta variant was still a threat. |
 | | Prime Minister Naftali Bennett of Israel and President Biden met in the Oval Office.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times |
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4. Despite vast policy differences, President Biden and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett used their first meeting to try to reset relations between the U.S. and Israel. |
Bennett's arrival at the White House, postponed a day because of the attacks in Kabul, was an opportunity to make good on his campaign promise that the confrontational approach of his longtime predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu, was not in Israel's best interest. |
 | | Smoke from the Caldor fire nearly blotted out the sun over Lake Tahoe on Wednesday.Max Whittaker for The New York Times |
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5. Smoke from the Caldor fire is overwhelming one of California's most iconic regions, confounding thousands of newcomers who moved there to escape Covid. |
Residents of Lake Tahoe, the azure gem of the Sierra Nevada, fled this week from smoke so toxic and thick that readings spiked past the highest levels on air quality charts. The Caldor fire, which has chewed through an area larger than Denver since it started on Aug. 14, is now just a dozen miles south of the lake. Just inhaling, one man said, felt like a "sizable man is standing on my chest." |
 | | State Rep. Andrew Murr votes against an amendment to the election bill.Eric Gay/Associated Press |
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6. The Texas House passed a sweeping election overhaul bill, clearing a major hurdle in a monthslong push by Republicans to introduce new voting restrictions. |
The passage of the bill came a week after a handful of Democrats returned to the State Capitol, effectively ending a 38-day walkout. The legislation, which the State Senate is expected to take up this weekend, would ban drive-through polling places and 24-hour voting; greatly empower partisan poll watchers; and limit the mailing of absentee ballot applications. |
Its passage signaled the end of the most high-profile battle in a nationwide Republican campaign to harden election rules in response to false claims about the integrity of the 2020 presidential contest. Gov. Greg Abbott is expected to sign the bill, making Texas one of the hardest states in the country to cast a vote. |
 | | A false-color satellite image of a giant mass of glowing seawater at night, near Java, Indonesia, in 2019.Steven D. Miller, NOAA |
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7. The ocean is always glowing. |
A close examination of satellite images gathered between December 2012 and March 2021 showed a dozen extremely luminous events — approximately one every eight months, covering an area at least a hundred times larger than Manhattan. The imagery opens a new window on the world's oceans, scientists say, and promises to aid our understanding of the glowing seas, whose origins are poorly understood. |
 | | Selena Gomez, Martin Short and Steve Martin in "Only Murders In The Building."Craig Blankenhorn/Hulu |
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8. Why are Steve Martin, Selena Gomez and Martin Short working together? It's a mystery. |
The three stars forge an unexpected partnership in "Only Murders in the Building," a new comic whodunit on Hulu in which they play mismatched residents in a Beaux-Arts building, drawn together by the death of a neighbor. We spoke to Martin and Short about their years of friendship and collaboration, and to Gomez about her new "crazy uncles." |
 | | Marinated zucchini with farro and parmesan.Linda Xiao for The New York Times |
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9. We're heading into the last weekend of August, time to savor the final ingredients of summer. |
 | | A brown bear hunting for sockeye salmon in the Kamchatka Peninsula of Russia.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times |
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10. And finally, are you prepared for a bear attack? |
Given a choice, most bears try to avoid people, but it's always better to be prepared: Do you have the right equipment for your hike or camping trip? Should you play dead or fight back if a bear comes charging at you? |
If you're still feeling playful after bear survival 101, take our news quiz and see how well you followed the week's headlines. |
| David Poller compiled photos for this briefing. |
Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p.m. Eastern. |
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