Evening Briefing: Taliban offer reassurance and warnings

August 17, 2021

By Remy Tumin

Good evening. Here's the latest at the end of Tuesday.

"We assure that there will be no violence against women," the Taliban's spokesman said.Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

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."

Still, the Taliban's record raises worries of a violent and repressive future. Scenes near Kabul's airport offered a bloody counterpoint. Follow our visual updates.

We're still learning about why Kabul fell so quickly. Intelligence reports about Afghanistan over the summer were increasingly grim, officials said, despite President Biden's public assurances.

Here's a look at the origin of the Taliban and how they managed to take over Afghanistan not once, but twice. There are worries that the country will again become a breeding ground for Islamist radicalism and terrorism.

And in Opinion, Malala Yousafzai, who survived a Taliban assassination attempt in Pakistan after she spoke out about her right to go to school, writes, "Like many women, I fear for my Afghan sisters."

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A vaccination site in New York on Monday. James Estrin/The New York Times

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.

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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.

A church in Les Cayes, Haiti, damaged by Saturday's earthquake.Estailove St-Val/Reuters

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.

Amazon's customers spent more than $610 billion in the year that ended in June.Dave Sanders for The New York Times

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.

More than $610 billion was spent on Amazon over the 12 months ending in June, according to Wall Street estimates. Walmart posted sales of $566 billion for the 12 months ending in July. Alibaba, the giant online Chinese retailer, is the world's top seller. Neither Amazon nor Walmart is a dominant player in China.

"Amazon isn't always the best place to shop, but it is winning by mastering everything but the shopping," Shira Ovide writes in On Tech.

Retail sales in the U.S. fell in July, highlighting the rocky economic recovery.

In a poll last month, 47 percent of likely voters said they would vote to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom of California.Jim Wilson/The New York Times

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."

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Heidi Marsh of Seattle tested positive for the PALB2 genetic mutation.Jovelle Tamayo for The New York Times

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.

Crystal Granderson-Reid and Kenyatte Reid bought their Brooklyn home from Mr. Reid's family.Flo Ngala for The New York Times

7. Gentrification. Questionable lending practices. Limited affordable inventory.

Those are some of the reasons that Black homeownership has declined in New York City and nationally in the last 20 years, while the rate of white homeownership has reached record highs. We spoke to a dozen Black homeowners across the city about their challenges — and defying the odds.

Many people in historically Black neighborhoods have to grapple with the fact that selling could mean another step toward Black displacement. Real estate professionals are rewriting the rules and working to help increase Black homeownership.

The Little Mermaid in Asaa, Denmark.Carsten Snejbjerg for The New York Times

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."

Why grilled pizza? It all has to do with high heat and speed.Tara Donne for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Anna Stockwell.

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.

Read more 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.

Maki Kaji in 2007. He helped catapult Sudoku puzzles into the mainstream.Ko Sasaki for The New York Times

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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