Day: October 28, 2021

The pandemic dealt a serious setback to global efforts to immunize children against diseases like measles and polio, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Thursday, reducing worldwide coverage for some vaccines to levels not seen since more than a decade ago.

The proportion of eligible children who received a polio vaccine fell to 83 percent in 2020 from 86 percent the year before, as did coverage with the third dose of the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccine, known as DTP3. Coverage with the measles vaccine also dipped slightly, to 84 percent last year from 86 percent in 2019.

Those setbacks,

VATICAN CITY — When Joseph R. Biden Jr. visits the Vatican on Friday, he will be the third American president Francis has met since becoming pope in 2013. Each has marked a distinct phase not only of his papacy, but also of the political upheaval in the United States and in its Roman Catholic church.

President Barack Obama shared Francis’ global magnetism, celebrity wattage and a focus on immigrants, climate change and the poor. President Donald J. Trump, whose Christianity Francis once questioned for his anti-immigrant policies, ushered in a populist era that helped sideline Francis.

Now Mr. Biden, a

BRESCIA, Italy — Wearing a toga, the woman points out the top attractions of one of Italy’s more underrated cities: Look! Here’s the ancient Capitoline Temple. Over here you have the Renaissance-era piazza. And you simply must check out the side-by-side old and new cathedrals.

Then the tour guide performs a neat trick that would make Ovid proud: She metamorphoses into an winged statue, while a young girl looking on mouths: “Wow.”

The commercial, seen on national TV, encourages Italians to take in the sights of Brescia, an industrious northern city midway between Milan and Verona that is bypassed by

The trip began in Shanghai, where the couple, both former professors, joined a tour group of other retirees. They traveled through Gansu Province and Inner Mongolia, staying at a bed-and-breakfast and eating three times at the same lamb chop restaurant. Flying south to Xi’an, they dropped in to a 1,300-year-old temple. Their fellow tour group members checked out an art museum, strolled through parks and visited friends.

Then, on Oct. 16, the day they had planned to visit the Terracotta Warriors, the couple tested positive for the coronavirus.

Since then, China has locked down a city of 4 million, as