COVER STORY This issue: The Sequencing Solution. Genetic surveillance is the key to controlling future pandemics. You don’t want to be a virus in Dr. David Ho’s lab. Pretty much every day since COVID-19 pandemic began, Ho and his team have done nothing but find ways to stress SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease. His goal: pressure the virus relentlessly enough that it mutates to survive, to help drug developers understand how the virus might respond to new treatments. As a virologist with decades of experience learning about another obstinate virus, HIV, Ho knows just how to apply that mutation-generation stress…To understand the world we live in, read TIME.

Game Face. A June 16 summit in Geneva marks the President’s first in-person meeting with Russia’s Vladimir Putin since taking office. Vladimir Putin spent much of 2020 orchestrating a brazen influence campaign to stop Biden from becoming the 46th President of the United States. Failing at that, the Russian autocrat spent the first five months of Biden’s term presiding over a series of attacks by criminal organizations and state-led agencies against America’s gas and food supplies at home, and its allies and values abroad…

Airlines take off again–as do emissions. Vaccinated Americans will be able to visit Europe this summer, after E.U. leaders agreed to open the bloc’s borders to foreign tourists on May 18. Although the E.U. hasn’t set an exact date for the reopening, the news is a boon for the air-travel industry, which suffered plunging revenues due to COVID-19 restrictions. Bookings for highly lucrative transatlantic routes have surged, and executives are enthusiastically touting the concept of “revenge travel,” predicting passengers will fly more than usual in 2021…