Good morning. We're covering the E.U.'s surging vaccination rates, China's gold medal strategy and growing tensions in Afghanistan. |
 | | France is enacting policies designed to make life more difficult for unvaccinated people.Raymond Roig/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
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E.U. vaccinations surpass the U.S. |
This month, the bloc also overtook the U.S. in first injections — currently, 58 percent to 56.5 percent. Earlier this year, the E.U. faced vaccine shortages while the U.S. rollout was initially more successful. |
Some member countries, like France and Italy, have implemented vaccine mandates to try to speed up inoculations. And as campaigns decrease or plateau in some countries, officials are urging younger age groups to get vaccinated. |
Hesitancy: The bloc is vaccinating at a faster pace than most developed countries, while U.S. rates have declined. Around 79 percent of E.U. residents say they intend to get vaccinated this year, according to a May survey. The U.S. faces much more anti-vaccine sentiment. |
Delta: Officials say the variant is now dominant in a majority of countries in the bloc. Cases have soared in countries such as the Netherlands and Portugal, and hospitalizations have increased in France and Spain. |
 | | China dominates women's table tennis. Its athletes won both the gold and silver medals on Tuesday.Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times |
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China goes for the top prize |
By fielding 413 athletes in Tokyo, its largest ever delegation, China aims to land at the top of the gold medal count. On Thursday, China was tied for the lead at 15 with Japan. It trails the U.S. 31 to 38 in overall prizes — but to China, silver and bronze barely count. |
For decades, Beijing has focused on less prominent sports that are underfunded in the West, or sports that offer multiple Olympic gold medals. Women's weight lifting was an ideal target: A niche pursuit with multiple weight classes, it offers up four potential golds. |
Rooted in the Soviet model, China relies on the state to scout tens of thousands of children for full-time training at more than 2,000 government-run sports schools. The assembly line is working. Chinese athletes dominate sports like table tennis, badminton and shooting. |
Cost: The public is increasingly wary of the sacrifices made by China's Olympians. Academic instruction in sports schools remains paltry, and athletes are lucky to see their family a few times a year. |
 | | As the U.S. withdraws, the safety of the Kyrgyz nomads is unclear.Gohar Abbas/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
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Afghan herders try to flee the Taliban |
As the fighters advanced, a small group of ethnic Kyrgyz herders feared their home would be next. The insurgents assured the herders that they could continue their pastoral lifestyle, but fighters made a point of counting the animals, raising concern that they would tax or confiscate the livestock. |
About 350 of the nomads tried to seek asylum in Tajikistan, the country that separates the tiny ethnic minority from their brethren in Kyrgyzstan. But their appeal fell through. |
Their failed two-day trek highlights growing tensions between Afghanistan and its northern neighbors, who fear the sudden arrival of refugees and cross-border violence. The Biden administration has asked Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to accept as many as 9,000 asylum seekers. |
Geography: The herders navigated the Wakhan Corridor, a mountainous panhandle that remained peaceful through the two-decades-long U.S. military presence. Once difficult to traverse, it now has a road, thanks to China's Belt and Road investment project, which could allow the Taliban to advance. |
Chaos: Flash floods killed at least 80 people and destroyed a village in a Taliban-controlled area on Wednesday. Afghanistan consistently ranks as one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change, according to the World Bank |
| Asia, Africa and the Middle East |
 | | Declan Walsh/The New York Times |
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 | | Scott McIntyre for The New York Times |
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- The U.S. economy returned to prepandemic size in the second quarter, a much faster rebound than its recovery after the Great Recession.
- Turkey is foisting ever-tighter regulations on Google, as an antitrust backlash against Big Tech emerges in places outside regulatory hotbeds.
- Robinhood's stock opened at $38, the same as its I.P.O. price, and then declined, a sign of investor hesitancy.
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 | | Tolga Akmen/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
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The $2.7 million Marble Arch Mound was pitched as an Arcadian dreamscape in the middle of London. Instead, visitors got a widely mocked pile of blocky scaffolding and patchy vegetation. Local officials are offering ticket refunds. |
Undoing the damage of 'Jaws' |
A skilled diver and spearfishing champion, Valerie Taylor was one half of the Australian couple whose shark footage featured in the climax of "Jaws." A longtime shark conservationist, Taylor, 85, is the subject of a new documentary, "Playing With Sharks," on Disney+. |
"Some are shy, some are bullies, some are brave," she said of the animals. "When you get to know a school of sharks, you get to know them as individuals." |
Taylor began studying sharks after she killed one while shooting a film in the 1960s. She regrets how "Jaws" influenced audiences to fear sharks as bloodthirsty, human-stalking monsters. (Only a few species are known to bite humans, who they often mistake for natural prey.) |
Climate change and overfishing have ruined many of the underwater habitats Taylor witnessed, and her arthritis makes swimming in colder waters difficult. Still, she dives. |
"I hate being old, but at least it means I was in the ocean when it was pristine," she said. Today, "it's like going to where there was a rainforest and seeing a field of corn."— Sanam Yar, a Morning writer |
 | | Ryan Liebe for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. |
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"The Green Knight," starring Dev Patel, is a "sumptuous, ragged and inventive adaptation" of a 14th-century Arthurian romance, our critic writes. |
Prince made "Welcome 2 America" in 2010. The previously unreleased album is bleak, disillusioned and distressingly prescient. |
That's it for today's briefing. See you next time. — Amelia |
P.S. Read how over two dozen Times journalists worked on a series of articles examining the extraordinary techniques of four Olympic athletes. |
The latest episode of "The Daily" is on China's nuclear arsenal. |
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