The Daily

Thousands die in New York every year. Some of them alone. The city might weep when the celebrated die, or the innocent are slain, but for those who pass in an unwatched struggle, there is no one to mourn for them and their names, simply added to a death table. In 2014, George Bell, 72, was among those names. He died alone in his apartment in north central Queens. On today’s Sunday Read, what happens when someone dies, and no one is there to arrange their funeral? And who exactly was George Bell?

Joe Biden has had harsh words for the Saudis and the kingdom’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. It appeared that the period of appeasement toward the Saudis in the Trump administration was over. But the Biden administration’s inaction over a report that implicated the crown prince in the 2018 killing of the dissident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi has disappointed many of his allies. Today, the first of a two-part look at what we’re learning about the Biden administration...

It’s been almost a year since the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. And the virus is persisting: A downward trend in the U.S. caseload has stalled, and concern about the impact of variants is growing. Yet inoculations are on the rise, and the F.D.A. has approved Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose vaccine, the third to be approved in the U.S. Today, we check in on the latest about the coronavirus.

When the coronavirus pandemic hit, the Microsoft founder Bill Gates was the most powerful and provocative private individual operating within global public health. Today, we look at the role he has played in public health and his latest mission: procuring Covid-19 vaccines for countries in the developing world.

The Senate is preparing to vote on another stimulus bill — the third of the pandemic. The bill has the hallmarks of a classic stimulus package: money to help individual Americans, and aid to local and state governments. It also contains provisions that would usher in long-term structural changes that have been pushed for many years by Democrats. Today, we explore the contours of the Biden administration’s stimulus bill and look at the competing arguments...

Even as the cold has lifted and the ice has melted in Texas, the true depth of the devastation left by the state’s winter storm can be difficult to see. Today, we look at the aftermath through the eyes of Iris Cantu, Suzanne Mitchell and Tumaini Criss — three women who, after the destruction of their homes, are reckoning with how they are going to move forward with their lives.

It all started when Sigrid E. Johnson was 62. She got a call from an old friend, asking her to participate in a study about DNA ancestry tests and ethnic identity. She agreed. Ms. Johnson thought she knew what the outcome would be. When she was 16, her mother told her that she had been adopted as an infant. Her biological mother was an Italian woman from South Philadelphia, and her father was a Black man. The results, however, told a different story...

Odessa is a four-part audio documentary series about one West Texas high school reopening during the pandemic — and the teachers, students and nurses affected in the process. For the past six months, The New York Times has documented students’ return to class at Odessa High School from afar through Google hangouts, audio diaries, phone calls and FaceTime tours...

Five years ago, Judge Merrick B. Garland became a high-profile casualty of Washington’s political dysfunction. President Barack Obama selected him to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, but Senate Republicans blocked his nomination. In the process, Mr. Garland became known for the job he didn’t get. Now, after being nominated by the Biden administration to become the next attorney general, Mr...

When the pandemic was bearing down on New York last March, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration issued a directive that allowed Covid-19 patients to be discharged into nursing homes in a bid to free up hospital beds for the sickest patients. It was a decision that had the potential to cost thousands of lives. Today, in the second part of our look at New York nursing homes, we explore the effects of the decisions made by the Cuomo administration and the crisis now facing his leadership.