The F.D.A. Approved New Covid Shots

The F.D.A. gave the green light today to a new round of Covid boosters, the first to be approved since the public health emergency ended in May. The move comes as the Biden administration is preparing a campaign to convince Americans to get immunized, and as Covid cases tick up.

The C.D.C. tomorrow is expected to discuss who should get the new shots, by Pfizer and Moderna. After a final decision by the C.D.C.’s director, millions of doses will be shipped to pharmacies, clinics and health systems nationwide within days.

Covid hospitalizations and deaths in the U.S. are rising slightly, although not to the levels of past years. In the week ending Aug. 26, there were 17,400 people admitted to the hospital — more than about 6,000 at a low point this summer. Deaths reached roughly 600 a week last month, though that was far lower than the weekly average of 14,000 deaths in August 2021.

The boosters are set to arrive alongside the seasonal flu vaccine and shots to protect infants and older adults from R.S.V., a potentially lethal respiratory virus. Health officials hope the trifecta of prevention measures will allow for the first winter of the decade without a crush of patients overwhelming some hospitals.

But a healthy winter is far from a lock: In the past year, the updated Covid vaccine made it into the arms of only 20 percent of adults in the U.S.

For more, the reformulated Covid shots can better help fight off the latest set of subvariants circulating in the U.S. Here’s what to know.

The death toll in Morocco surpassed 2,800

Three days after a powerful 6.8-magnitude earthquake hit Morocco, killing at least 2,862, rescuers were beginning to reach some of the hardest hit areas in remote mountain villages. But many more settlements were still waiting for assistance.

In the first remarks to come directly from a senior official, Mustapha Baitas, a government spokesman, pushed back on criticism that the response had been slow and uncoordinated, saying the Moroccan authorities had mounted a “swift and effective” search.

Though dozens of countries, including the U.S., have offered assistance, Morocco has officially accepted aid only from Britain, Spain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Morocco has a history of caution about who it lets into the country.

“Every village I’ve been to in the past day has been desperately looking for aid in the form of tents, food, water, diapers,” said my colleague Vivian Yee, who has been reporting from the area. “These villagers are basically left to fend for themselves.”

The escapee in Pennsylvania was a fugitive before

Almost two weeks ago, Danelo Cavalcante climbed over a wall and escaped from Chester County Prison in Pennsylvania, where he was being held on a life sentence for the 2021 murder of his former girlfriend. His escape set off an escalating manhunt, with hundreds of police officers searching for him. But it wasn’t the first time he had escaped justice.

Cavalcante was wanted in 2017 for a killing in Brazil, but he vanished and found refuge on a ranch in the rural outskirts of a small Brazilian town, local residents said.

More top news

• War: Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, will visit Russia in the coming days, the Kremlin said. His talks with Vladimir Putin are expected to focus on supplying munitions for Moscow’s fight in Ukraine.

• China: Beijing used A.I. to spread disinformation about the Hawaii wildfires, a rapid change in tactics, researchers said.

• Africa: In northeastern Libya, officials feared the death toll from severe flooding could exceed 2,000.

• Politics: Early polls of the presidential election showed that Donald Trump’s advantage against Biden in battleground states might have faded.

• Media: Disney and Charter said they had reached a deal to resolve a programming dispute that had raised questions about the future of cable television.

• Business: J.M. Smucker, known for its jellies, agreed to buy Hostess Brands, the maker of Twinkies, in a deal worth $5.6 billion.

• Espionage: A contractor who worked for the State and Justice Departments has been arrested and charged with spying for Ethiopia.

• Health: The U.S. blood supply has dropped to critically low levels, in part because of climate disasters, the American Red Cross said.

• Science: Dr. Ian Wilmut, the British scientist who led the team that cloned Dolly the Sheep in 1996, died at 79.

A new biography of Elon Musk

Walter Isaacson, a veteran journalist, spent two years embedded in the world of Elon Musk to research his biography of the world’s richest man.

The portrait that emerges from the book, “Elon Musk,” out tomorrow, is of a mercurial “man-child” with grandiose ambitions and an ego to match, our reviewer writes. Isaacson wrestles with Musk’s competing character traits: He is a remarkably talented entrepreneur who has led some of the most transformative companies of our age, but his impetuous behavior has raised questions about how he manages his extraordinary power.

“I knew he was mercurial,” Isaacson told The Times. “I knew he had an impulsiveness. But seeing it up close, especially after he swerved into the Twitter lane, made for a much more exciting roller coaster.”

Will we ever know everything?

For decades, physicists have been searching for a “theory of everything” that would finally explain the physics that define the entire universe.

But, as my colleague Dennis Overbye writes, a “theory of everything” might not explain it all. The universe is so big that, even if we knew all of its rules, there would never be enough computing power to accurately track all of its particles. As a result, many things about our future and our past will always remain a mystery.

Have a contemplative evening.

Thanks for reading. I’ll be back tomorrow. — Matthew

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