Good evening. Here's the latest at the end of Wednesday. |
 | | A Taliban member tried to hit a woman who was trying to get to an airport in Kabul on Wednesday.Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times |
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1. The Taliban responded with force to the first public protests against them. |
In Jalalabad, a commercial hub in the east, hundreds of protesters marched through the main shopping street. Taliban fighters fired in the air to break up the crowd; when that failed, the fighters resorted to violence. At least two people were killed and a dozen injured, according to Al Jazeera. |
The images of violence at the protest — as well as of people being beaten while trying to approach Kabul's airport — have undermined the Taliban's attempt to present themselves as responsible stewards who are more tolerant than they once were. |
Separately, in his first video address since fleeing Afghanistan, President Ashraf Ghani said he had left the country to avoid a lynching by the Taliban. Ghani, who is now in the U.A.E., vowed to return. |
Economy: The former acting governor of the Afghan central bank said that nearly all of the country's reserves were beyond the reach of the Taliban, including $7 billion held by the U.S. Federal Reserve. |
Refugees: The fall of Afghanistan has panicked European politicians who are terrified of a repeat of 2015, when hundreds of thousands of Syrians and Iraqis sought refuge from wars in their countries. |
Perspective: Khaled Hosseini, author of "The Kite Runner" and "A Thousand Splendid Suns," spoke with The Times about what he wants Americans to know about Afghans, and what we owe them. |
 | | A woman being vaccinated against the coronavirus at a Denver site in February.Kevin Mohatt for The New York Times |
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2. The Biden administration is pushing Covid booster shots — and masks. |
U.S. officials strongly recommended booster shots for Americans who received either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine eight months after their second doses. The rollout of the booster shots will depend on a determination by the F.D.A. that third shots are safe and effective. The F.D.A. is expected to make that ruling in the coming weeks. |
Officials said the additional shots are needed because of the growing evidence that the vaccines' protection against Covid fades over time, and the particular force of the Delta variant. Early data hints at a rise in breakthrough infections in the U.S. |
 | | A coronavirus isolation ward last week in Safed, Israel.Jalaa Marey/AFP — Getty Images |
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3. Israel was once the model for beating Covid. Now it faces a new surge that is raising questions about the vaccines' efficacy. |
The country's remarkably swift vaccination campaign brought coronavirus cases sharply down, and in the spring, Israel reopened its economy. Now, a fourth wave is rapidly approaching the worst days of the pandemic. The daily rate of new virus cases has more than doubled in the last two weeks. Restrictions are back. |
Scientists are still assessing what happened, but the experts say that Israel's high rate of infections among early vaccine recipients may indicate a waning of the vaccines' protection over time. |
 | | R. Kelly is facing his first criminal trial since 2008.Kamil Krzaczynski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
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In a courtroom in Brooklyn, the R&B singer faced charges of commanding a criminal enterprise that recruited women and underage girls to have sex with him. Prosecutors outlined some of the accusations that have followed Kelly for decades. |
Jurors will hear testimony from witnesses and evidence of kidnapping, forced labor and producing child pornography. But they are also being asked to process a much broader question: whether an informal criminal organization existed around and contributed to the crimes Kelly is accused of. Here's a timeline of the allegations and five things to know about the trial. |
Amid the furor over the allegations, Kelly's music has largely disappeared in public. But streaming data tells a different story: According to one measure, he's one of music's top 500 artists. |
 | | At least 20 people died when this church in Toirac, Haiti, collapsed in the earthquake.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times |
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5. Many survivors of the Haiti earthquake expect no help from officials. |
The U.N., the U.S. and an array of international aid groups mobilized, but the aid effort has remained patchy and limited, mostly confined to urgent medical assistance to the main population centers near air strips. The Haitian government, which has promised to centralize and coordinate the relief efforts, has been largely absent. |
At least 1,900 people were killed and nearly 10,000 injured in the 7.2 magnitude quake that struck on Saturday, causing tremendous damage in an area that is home to about 1.5 million people. Complicating aid efforts was a deluge from Hurricane Grace. Here's how Haiti was devastated by two natural disasters in three days. |
 | | Broward County in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis has threatened to withhold funding from schools that require masks.Amy Beth Bennett/South Florida Sun-Sentinel, via Associated Press |
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6. "You have brought division to us." |
"The water pressure is higher than it has ever been, and there are more leaks than I have fingers," said a school board official in Brainerd, Minn., who was followed to his car and called "evil" after a board meeting. A school superintendent with 26 years of experience said she had never seen so many political issues converge on schools. |
Schools are reopening just as the Delta variant of the coronavirus is tearing through communities. "It's like being in the eye of a storm," one principal told The Times. |
 | | Studies of chlorpyrifos, used in almond groves as well as on other crops, have shown a link to brain-development problems.Mike Nelson/EPA, via Shutterstock |
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Chlorpyrifos has been widely used on fruits and vegetables since 1965, and studies have shown that exposure to the pesticide is linked to lower birth weights, reduced I.Q. scores and other developmental problems. The Obama administration began the process of revoking all uses of the pesticide in 2015 but, in 2020, the Trump administration ignored the recommendations of E.P.A. scientists and kept chlorpyrifos on the market. |
The new rule, which will take effect in six months, follows a court order in April that directed the E.P.A. to halt the agricultural use of the chemical unless it could demonstrate its safety. |
 | | Gelb demonstrating how much a deft performer can do inside a closet-size space.Mark Sommerfeld for The New York Times |
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8. The best and most theatrical thing to emerge from the pandemic was Theater in Quarantine, our chief theater critic, Jesse Green, says. |
Joshua William Gelb has done nearly 60 presentations on YouTube out of his 2-foot-by-4-foot-by-8-foot closet since March 2020. "I'd come to think that these shows — in their weirdness, humor, gravitas, intellectual curiosity, graphic boldness and electric vitality — offered the best argument by far for the artistic promise of streaming theater," Green writes. |
With all their resources, no established theater achieved what Theater in Quarantine did with none: create a body of astonishing new digital work, most of it live, every few weeks. Some of the pieces were dance-oriented, some were abstract, some were more-or-less plays, and some just sketches or doodles. |
 | | Duc van Tol Red and Yellow are a six-inch-high pixie tulip circa 1595.Vanessa Elms |
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9. Bulbs can be the easiest of all plants, if you choose well and treat them right. |
They're most vulnerable at the moment you plant them, because they're tempting snacks or playthings to animals like voles and deer, so chicken wire and bricks give them a chance to get rooted. Animals also like to eat them once they've sprouted, so some experimentation may be required to find a palette that can withstand your garden's animal pressure. A professional shows us how. |
 | | Soren Johnson, 6, and his brother Killian, 8, in Jackknife Creek.Ryan Dorgan for The New York Times |
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10. And finally, freedom. |
The Times gave sportswriters 900 words and a theme: "freedom." They gave us a dispatch from Freedom, Wyo.; a profile of the baseball star who forged the path to free agency; a globe-trotting horseman's retirement at 100; and more. |
Hope you're free this evening. |
| Bryan Denton compiled photos for this briefing. |
Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p.m. Eastern. |
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