Modi’s Party Loses a Key Election, Held Under the Cloud of Covid

NEW DELHI — One of India’s feistiest opposition parties cruised to victory in state elections in West Bengal on Sunday, dealing a blow to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a campaign held during a catastrophic surge in Covid-19 infections.

Top parties had campaigned relentlessly in West Bengal, one of India’s most populous states and a stronghold of opposition to Mr. Modi, India’s most powerful prime minister in decades. Even with cases soaring and more and more people dying across India, Mr. Modi and other politicians held enormous rallies up and down the state, which critics said helped spread the virus.

I Went Braless During Lockdown. What Do I Do Now?


One of the meta questions of the moment, as we emerge from the pandemic, in-person work restarts and restaurants and entertainment sites open up, is what, of all the changes that occurred during these long periods of isolation, will stick?

The virus is surging in Alaska’s interior, straining a Fairbanks hospital.

Dr. Angelique Ramirez, the chief medical officer of the main health care system in Fairbanks, Alaska, started the monthly coronavirus briefing in April by saying that she thought March’s meeting would be the last. But amid a new surge of cases in the state, one of the country’s worst surges, Dr. Ramirez was blunt about her past assessment.

“I was wrong,” she said.

With nearly 100,000 people, the Fairbanks metropolitan area is Alaska’s second largest and the largest in the state’s vast interior. According to a New York Times database, the number of new coronavirus cases in the borough of

Adar Poonawalla, Head of India’s Vaccine Giant, Speaks From Britain

In recent months, the chief executive of Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, has come under increasingly intense pressure as both pro-government voices and leaders of the state governments headed by opposition politicians criticized him.

Some accused him for delays in supplying vaccines; some called him a “profiteer” for not offering Covid-19 vaccines to state governments at cost. There were calls for his company to be nationalized.

In an interview with The Times of London published on Saturday, the executive, Adar Poonawalla, described menacing calls from some of the most powerful men in India, creating an environment