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“Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom” was filmed on a shoestring budget in a remote Himalayan village. It’s now an Academy Award nominee, a first for Bhutan. Feb. 12, 2022 The director Pawo Choyning Dorji, right, talked with Pem Zam, a young first-time actress from rural Bhutan, during the shooting of his film “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom.” Kinley Wangchuk  THIMPHU, Bhutan — As a crew of 35 people prepared to make a movie in Bhutan’s remote Lunana Valley, they faced a slew of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. The valley had no electricity. It could only be reached by walking eight days from the nearest village. And the schoolchildren who were expected to star in the film knew nothing about acting or cinema. “They did not even know what a camera was or what it looked like,” Namgay Dorji, the village schoolteacher, said in a telephone interview. On Tuesday, the movie, “ Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom ,” was nominated for an Academy Award — a first for Bhutan. Its director, Pawo Choyn...

  Zhao Xiaoqing, right, with Zhao Fei in Xianyang, China. Zhao Xiaoqing When Zhao Xiaoqing first met Zhao Fei on a blind date, the sparks didn’t really fly. When they met for a second time at his home in northwest China in December, it lasted longer than they both expected. Facing a new outbreak of coronavirus cases, the health authorities announced a lockdown so sudden and severe that she didn’t have time to scurry home. So for nearly four weeks, Zhao Xiaoqing has lived in the city of Xianyang, in Shaanxi Province, with the family of Zhao Fei, a man she had barely known. (They share a last name but are not related.) “Initially, I was quite worried about things being awkward,” said Ms. Zhao, who is from Baoji, about 93 miles away, or a two-hour drive by car. “But I got along well with his family.” Chinese officials have employed swift lockdowns across the country as one of its top strategies to rapidly stamp out infections. Last month, officials  locked down 13 million people ...

  The stunning Covid vaccines manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna drew upon long-buried discoveries made in the hopes of ending past epidemics. Updated  Jan. 16, 2022, 9:33 p.m. ET Jan. 16, 2022 A 3D plaster model of a coronavirus spike protein in the office of Dr. Barney Graham, an immunologist and virologist recently retired from the Vaccine Research Center of the National Institutes of Health. Johnathon Kelso for The New York Times Thousands of miles from Dr. Barney Graham’s lab in Bethesda, Md., a frightening new coronavirus had jumped from camels to humans in the Middle East, killing one out of every three people infected. An expert on the world’s most intractable viruses, Dr. Graham had been working for months to develop a vaccine, but had gotten nowhere. Now he was terrified that the virus, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, had infected one of his lab’s own scientists, who was sick with a fever and a cough in the fall of 2013 after a pilgrimage to the h...

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Novak Djokovic remained in limbo even after he was included in the draw for the Australian Open on Thursday, with the tennis star still awaiting a government decision on whether to deport him for not being vaccinated for COVID-19. Despite the cloud hanging over Djokovic’s ability to compete, Australian Open organizers included the top seed in the draw. He is slated to play fellow Serb Miomir Kecmanovic, who is ranked world No. 78., in the opening round next week. No. 1-ranked Djokovic had his visa canceled on arrival in Melbourne last week when his vaccination exemption was rejected, but he won a legal battle on procedural grounds that allowed him to stay in the country. Immigration Minister Alex Hawke has been considering the question since a judge reinstated Djokovic’s visa on Monday. Expectations of a pending decision were raised when Prime Minister Scott Morrison called an afternoon news conference after a national Cabinet meeting. Speculation heightened...