Good morning. We’re covering Aleksei Navalny’s declining health, sluggish vaccinations around Asia and rising fear among Afghan women. |
 | | Aleksei Navalny attends a February court hearing in Moscow.Maxim Shemetov/Reuters |
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Navalny near death, doctors say |
Aleksei Navalny, the imprisoned Russian opposition leader who survived an attempted poisoning and is now in the third week of a hunger strike, “could die at any moment,” his personal doctors said. |
His supporters say the Russian government is engaged in a slow-motion assassination attempt. They are calling for nationwide mass protests to persuade the authorities to allow him access to independent doctors. The U.S. national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said the Russian government would face “consequences if Mr. Navalny dies.” |
Context: Mr. Sullivan’s statement comes as Russia embarks on the largest military buildup on the Ukrainian border in seven years. Some analysts believe it is intended as a warning to the West not to take Russia for granted. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, who is notoriously sensitive to any slights, cannot help but recognize that Russia is not one of President Biden’s top foreign policy priorities. |
 | | A vaccination center in South Korea.Yonhap/EPA, via Shutterstock |
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Slow vaccine rollout in Asia |
As Europe and the U.S. suffered catastrophically high coronavirus infections and deaths, countries around the Pacific Rim staved off disaster. But now, they lag behind in vaccinations. |
South Korea, which tested widely, and Australia, which locked down, have vaccinated less than 3 percent of their populations. In Japan, where people donned masks and heeded calls to isolate, and New Zealand, which also locked down, not even 1 percent of the population has received a shot. |
To some extent, they are taking advantage of the luxury of time that their comparatively low infection and death counts afford. But experts are warning of complacency and residents are getting frustrated as officials blame supply-chain bottlenecks. |
Olympic fears: Japan’s virus caseload has reached its highest levels since January, with more than 4,500 new infections reported on Friday. But the postponed Tokyo games are set to start in fewer than 100 days. |
A comparison: The U.S. has fully vaccinated close to a quarter of the population, and Britain has given first shots to nearly half of its residents. |
- The global death toll from Covid-19 surpassed three million on Saturday.
- A devastating second wave of the coronavirus in India may undo decades of progress that brought hundreds of millions of people into the middle class.
- Turkey reported another record high in new coronavirus cases as new restrictions were imposed for the two first weeks of Ramadan.
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 | | A yoga class in Kabul, Afghanistan.Kiana Hayeri for The New York Times |
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Afghan women fear the worst |
Now, as U.S. and NATO forces prepare to leave, women in Afghanistan fear a new era of Taliban rule. The paramilitary group, poised to seize more territory, will very likely close schools for girls, limit women’s career options and usher in a surge of gender-based violence. |
Quotable: “All the time, women are the victims of men’s wars,” said Raihana Azad, a member of Afghanistan’s Parliament. “But they will be the victims of their peace, too.” |
U.S. context: American officials and lawmakers frequently pointed to such gains of Afghan women and girls as proof of success over the past two decades. But when Pentagon officials pressed President Biden to maintain at least a modest troop presence, as they have for his predecessors, he refused. |
Analysis: In 2001, the U.S. refused the Taliban’s surrender, instead opting for total eradication and a highly centralized government, displacing a patchwork but stable state and turning each village and valley into a power struggle. |
 | | The New York Times |
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- Queen Elizabeth II said goodbye to her husband of more than 73 years, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, in a subdued funeral that serves as a dress rehearsal for the passing of this royal era.
- NASA has awarded a $2.9 billion contract to Elon Musk’s company SpaceX to take astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface of the moon.
- In Cape Town, an uncontrolled wildfire is ripping through Table Mountain National Park and has forced hundreds of students at the University of Cape Town to evacuate.
- The Biden administration may soon increase the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. in a year after widespread backlash over it maintaining the historically low cap set by Donald Trump.
- The gunman in the latest U.S. mass shooting legally bought two semiautomatic rifles just a few months after the police had seized a gun from him over concerns about his mental state.
- When 89-year-old Raúl Castro steps down as the head of Cuba’s Communist Party, he will leave the country without a Castro at its helm for the first time in over 60 years.
- The newly pragmatic Green Party may lead Germany after Angela Merkel steps down, potentially heralding a shift to a more assertive foreign policy.
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 | | Florian Gaertner/Photothek via Getty Images |
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It has been 100 days since Twitter banned Donald Trump from its platform. The left breathes easier: “My blood pressure has gone down 20 points,” Gary Cavalli, 71, said. The right cries censorship: “I miss having his strong, conservative, opinionated voice,” Kelly Clobes, 39, said. But most everyone agrees that a strange quiet cloaks the portal. |
“The last year might’ve tricked a person into believing that anything could really happen. And by nomination day, something had. The academy’s vow to do better with respect to racial, ethnic and gender representation, essentially, bore out. |
The Oscars have never featured a less white class of major nominees; women fill 40 percent of the director slots; there are three people of Asian descent in the acting categories. There are enough identity-oriented milestones that enumerating them feels thanklessly actuarial. Instead, you just look at the mix of names and titles and think: Was that so hard? Maybe. All it took was a pandemic. |
Now we can toast marshmallows by the hearts warmed by the range of experiences (and faces) in this group of nominees. I’m not wild about most of these movies, but seeing their posters assembled on nomination day was gladdening. This is how things should look. But those are optics, which have their function but can’t be everything.” |
 | | Sarah Anne Ward for The New York Times. Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Amy Elise Wilson. |
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For a newcomer to running, the notion that you can just throw on a pair of sneakers, hit the road and enjoy the sport turns out to be a big, fat lie. Our writer explains how she tricked herself into liking it. |
That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — Amelia |
The latest episode of “The Daily” is on pandemic parenting. And on “Sway,” CNN’s Don Lemon discusses the future of cable news. |
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