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The Monte Toledo oil tanker covered the uneventful voyage from Iran to Europe with a haul of one million barrels of crude in just 17 days, but its journey has been four years in the making.

On Sunday, the tanker became the first to deliver Iranian crude into Europe since mid-2012, when Brussels imposed an oil embargo in an attempt to force the Middle Eastern nation to negotiate the end of its nuclear program. The ban was lifted in January as part of a broader deal that ended a decade of sanctions.

In southern Spain, the tanker’s arrival was met with little fanfare. It was a quiet Sunday at the refinery, and for the workers, the Monte Toledo is just one of the eight or so vessels they expect to receive this month. By the time the refinery has taken in all the Iranian crude, another tanker from Algeria will be already waiting.

United States coronavirus cases have increased again after hitting a low point late last month, and some of the states driving the upward trend have also been hit hardest by variants, according to an analysis of data from Helix, a lab testing company.

“It is a pretty complex situation, because behavior is changing, but you’ve also got this change in the virus itself at the same time,” said Emily Martin, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.

Michigan has seen the sharpest rise in cases in the last few weeks. B.1.1.7 — the more transmissible and more deadly variant of the coronavirus that was first discovered in the United Kingdom — may now make up around 70 percent of all of the state’s new cases, according to the Helix data.

The latest polling data from the company YouGov show Vietnam to lead the list of countries most supportive of their governments’ efforts to combat COVID-19. To be exact, 95% of Vietnamese people think their government is handling the pandemic “very” or “somewhat” well. But this doesn’t mean the Vietnamese people are letting down their guard. Of the 26 countries measured by the YouGov researchers, Vietnam also exhibits the highest level of COVID-19 fear; 89% of the Vietnamese population are “very” or “somewhat” concerned they will contract the disease. This finding is interesting, as one might assume that fear should drop to the extent that citizens believe their government has things under control. Then again, unprecedented events often produce unexpected results.

Other countries that are handling the crisis well, at least in the eyes of its citizens, include India, Australia, Denmark, Norway, Canada, and Finland. Where does the United States stand? Toward the bottom of the pack. According to the most recent YouGov polling data, less than half (49%) of Americans think the government is handling the pandemic “very” or “somewhat” well. This squares with other polling data in the United States. A recent Pew Research poll, for instance, found that 65% of Americans felt that the federal government was too slow to take major steps to address the threat posed by COVID-19.

The three countries where citizens show the weakest support of their governments’ handling of the pandemic are Spain, France, and Japan. In each of these countries, less than 40% of people are supportive of their governments’ handling of the crisis. And then there’s the case of Sweden. Interestingly, the data show a significant increase in Swedish citizens’ support of the way their government has handled the crisis. Currently, 57% of Swedes think their government is handling the pandemic “very” or “somewhat” well compared to 41% a month ago. This may have to do with the fact that more Swedes are buying into the government’s contrarian approach to managing the crisis. Unlike most of the developed world, Sweden decided not to close businesses and schools. A recent article in Bloomberg suggests that COVID-19 infections and fatalities are beginning to plateau in Sweden and the popularity of Sweden’s Prime Minister Stefan Lofven has soared.

Joe Biden’s presidency has been dominated by historic challenges — a resurgent Covid pandemic, an uncertain economy and the American military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.

But how will these events affect his approval rating?

Bookmark this page to see if Biden’s approval rating will follow suit. The chart below shows his approval rating history, along with those of former Presidents Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

The Donald Trump Cabinet Tracker

The Senate hasn’t formally rejected a Cabinet pick since it voted down President George H.W. Bush’s nomination of John Tower for defense secretary in 1989

Trump may have more luck with the Senate than his immediate predecessors, and he has Democrats to thank. When they held the majority in 2013, they changed the rules so that executive-branch nominations are no longer subject to the 60-vote threshold for filibusters. That means Trump could conceivably win Senate approval of his entire Cabinet without a single Democratic vote.

For the first time in nearly a month, Donald Trump looks mortal again.

the GOP frontrunner came away with just two wins that were both quite narrow, in Louisiana and Kentucky. He lost the Maine caucuses — his first defeat in the Northeast — and got blown out in

Kansas

One year into Donald Trump's presidency, Americans feel more positive about the economy but not as good about the state of the country overall – and the latter is closely tied to views of the president. 

The number of believers has shrunk (from 22 percent to just 18 percent) and the number of strong opponents "resisters" has grown – from 35 percent to 41 percent now. In that regard, President Trump's first year in office looks a bit like a tale of what might have been, as those who began the year looking for a reason to support him have instead become increasingly opposed. 

For Donald Trump's opponents, 70 percent say a big reason they don't support the president is that he's disrespected people like them, and most don't like his policies. Support and opposition to the president connects to whether or not people feel like they have a voice in what happens in the country. Mr. Trump's strongest supporters feel they do, and his most ardent opponents (the "Resisters" – who make up four in 10 Americans) feel they have less of a voice now than they did.  Fifty-five percent of Americans think Donald Trump's response to criticism is that he just argues with those who disagree, but the resisters (73 percent) view Trump as trying to suppress the views of those who disagree with him. 

Alaska on Tuesday became the first state in the nation to make COVID-19 vaccinations available to anyone over the age of 16 who lives or works in the state.

"A healthy community means a healthy economy," Dunleavy said. "With widespread vaccinations available to all Alaskans who live or work here, we will no doubt see our economy grow and our businesses thrive.

The Pfizer vaccine is available to people who are 16 and older, while the Johnson & Johnson and Moderna vaccines are available to people 18 and olde

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The US just recorded a seven-day average of fewer than 20,000 new daily Covid-19 cases for the first time since March 2020.

Still, it's a stunning milestone that comes after more than a year of loss and suffering across the country and the world. And it's one worth pausing for, to acknowledge both that devastation but also the progress the US has made.

Moderna on Tuesday became the latest pharmaceutical company to apply to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for full approval for its Covid-19 vaccine for use in people 18 and older. F.D.A. approval would allow the company to market the shot directly to consumers, and could also help raise public confidence in the vaccine.

Moderna’s vaccine was authorized for emergency use in December, and as of Sunday, more than 151 million doses had been administered in the United States, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Last month Pfizer and BioNTech applied to the agency for full approval of their vaccine for use in people 16 and older.

For the first time since the Jan. 6 mob attack on the U.S. Capitol, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell publicly denounced President Trump and his supporters for instigating the insurrection.

"They were provoked by the president and other powerful people, and they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government, which they did not like."

"Dozens of lawsuits received hearings and courtrooms all across our country. But over and over, the courts rejected these claims, including all star judges that the president himself had nominated," he said at the time.

While millions wait for a life-saving shot, the U.S. death toll from the novel coronavirus continues to soar upwards with horrifying speed. Today, the last full day of Donald Trump's presidency, the official death count reached 400,000 — a once-unthinkable number. More than 100,000 Americans have perished in the pandemic in just the past five weeks.

In the U.S., someone now dies from COVID-19 every 26 seconds. And the disease is now claiming more American lives each week than any other condition, ahead of heart disease and cancer, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

Certain parts of the country have a disproportionately high death rate. Alabama and Arizona, in particular, have experienced some of the highest death rates, given their populations. The virus continues to kill Black and Indigenous Americans at much higher rates than white Americans.

California reported Sunday that 45,352 people newly tested positive for Covid-19, continuing a surge that has pushed hospitals and their exhausted staff to the brink.

Overall, at least 123,000 people nationwide were in the hospital with coronavirus on Sunday, marking more than a month that the number of hospitalizations has exceeded 100,000, according to the Covid Tracking Project.

As of Sunday, more than 20.4 million people have been infected with the virus in the US and at least 350,000 people have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

RICHMOND, Va. — When tiny glass vials of coronavirus vaccine began rolling off production lines late last year, federal health officials set aside a big stash for nursing homes being ravaged by the virus. Health providers around the country figured as well that it was prudent to squirrel away vials to ensure that everyone who got a first dose of vaccine got a second one.

The get-tough approach in Virginia and other states has begun to pay off. The gap between the number of doses shipped to states and the number injected into arms is narrowing: More than three-fourths of the doses delivered are now being used, compared with less than half in late January, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s data tracker.

“This kind of visibility does, you know, motivate,” Dr. Avula said.

A month ago, the pandemic looked bleak. More than 750,000 coronavirus cases were tallied worldwide in a single day. Infections surged across the entire United States. New variants identified in the United Kingdom, Brazil and South Africa threatened the rest of the world.

But the last month has brought a surprisingly fast, if partial, turnaround. New cases have declined to half their peak globally, driven largely by steady improvements in some of the same places that weathered devastating outbreaks this winter.

“It’s a great moment of optimism, but it’s also very fragile in a lot of ways,” said Wafaa El-Sadr, an epidemiologist at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.

“I have my own business and I don’t have anybody wear a mask in my business,” said Mr. Girvin, a used-car dealer. “I don’t buy into it. When you look at the facts, with how many people die of influenza every year. Obesity kills more people than the Wuhan virus does.”

“Joe Biden has enough nerve to say Donald Trump’s killing people? No. The far-left liberals are causing this. The Pelosis, the Soroses and all these people, that’s who caused it. And I wish them all the worst.”

Scoffing at masks, social distancing and crowd avoidance — all measures recommended by health experts, including in the Trump administration — has become a test of loyalty for fervent supporters of the president, who mocked Mr. Biden’s masks during their debate last week and, on returning to the White House on Monday from the hospital, ripped his off, despite being highly contagious.

Increasingly, it feels possible to take stock not just of what happened but also of the inadequacy of some of the stories we told ourselves to make sense of the mess.

This week, I want to consider two prominent frameworks about the pandemic that are nevertheless rarely considered alongside each other: disparities in Covid mortality by race and by partisanship.

Partisanship was a huge driver of that more significant second-year failure, since Republican resistance to vaccination explains a large share of cumulative American Covid mortality

The “new normal” will arrive when we acknowledge that COVID’s risks have become more in line with those of smoking cigarettes—and that many COVID deaths, like many smoking-related deaths, could be prevented with a single intervention.

The pandemic’s greatest source of danger has transformed from a pathogen into a behavior. Choosing not to get vaccinated against COVID is, right now, a modifiable health risk on par with smoking, which kills more than 400,000 people each year in the United States.

if COVID continues to account for a few hundred thousand American deaths every year—“a realistic worst-case scenario,” he calls it—that would wipe out all of the life-expectancy gains we’ve accrued from the past two decades’ worth of smoking-prevention efforts.