People board a Spanish airforce A400 plane as part of an evacuation plan at Kabul airport in Afghanistan
“Countries are still racing to evacuate their citizens from Afghanistan and potentially accommodate an influx of Afghan refugees fleeing Taliban rule. Air carriers from the US, Pakistan and other countries have helped fly hundreds of people to safety. Desperate Afghans and their families are still crowding the airport in the capital city of Kabul, and 12 people have been killed there in the chaos following the city’s fall to the Taliban. Driving the desperation is a fear of what life will be like under renewed Taliban rule. Though the Taliban has tried to present an image that’s more progressive and restrained than before, the group repressed millions during its rule from 1996 to 2001, and violent punishments were common. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden’s decisions regarding the chaotic US troop withdrawal in Afghanistan are under mounting scrutiny.” Read more at CNN
“President Biden said his Aug. 31 deadline for U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan will have to wait if all Americans are not evacuated by then, a situation complicated by Wednesday’s admission by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that U.S. forces are unable to provide safe passage to all Americans who need to venture to the Kabul airport to flee.
Biden told ABC News during a Wednesday interview that he is committed to keeping U.S. troops in Afghanistan until every American who wants to leave is evacuated. Austin told reporters the U.S. military does not have the forces and firepower in Afghanistan to expand its current mission from securing the Kabul airport to collecting Americans and at-risk Afghans elsewhere in the capital and escorting them for flights. ‘We don't have the capability to go out and collect large numbers of people,’ Austin said. There were about 15,000 Americans in Afghanistan when the Taliban seized control on Sunday (The Associated Press).
The U.S. military reported it had evacuated approximately 1,800 people on 10 flights aboard C-17s by Wednesday night, flying a total of at least 6,000 people out of the country since Saturday.
The president continued to defend his decision to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan this month, denying that the exodus was possible ‘without chaos ensuing.’ His remarks to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos appeared to depart from his assertion this week that the administration planned for every contingency as well as his comment July 8 that there would be ‘no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy … from Afghanistan,’ a reference to the frantic airlifts of U.S. personnel from Saigon.
A witness today in the Afghan city of Asadabad described Taliban fighters who fired on people waving the Afghanistan national flag at an Independence Day rally at which several people were killed. Three people were killed during a similar protest on Wednesday (Reuters).
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told reporters that he knew of no U.S. intelligence that had predicted the rapid fall of the Afghan government (Fox News). ‘There was nothing that I or anybody else saw that indicated a collapse of this army and this government in 11 days,’ Milley said.
Both Austin and Milley have been asked by lawmakers to testify to Congress about U.S. intelligence failures and planning to carry out Biden’s order to end U.S. military involvement after two decades.” Read more at The Hill
“The rapid collapse of Afghanistan’s government raised questions about what happened to more than $1 trillion the U.S. spent trying to bring peace and stability to a country wracked by decades of war, Tony Capaccio reports. While most of it went to the U.S. military, a special watchdog set up by Congress found billions were wasted on failed projects, aggravating efforts to build ties with the Afghan people Americans were meant to help.” Read more at Bloomberg
Discarded military uniforms after the Taliban took power in Kabul. Source: Xinhua/Getty Images
“Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who fled the presidential palace over the weekend, is confirmed to be in the United Arab Emirates.” Read more at Politico / Nick Niedzwiadek
“US Covid-19 hospitalization rates have now hit record highs for all age groups under 50. The most affected groups are people 30 to 39, and children under 18. Hospitalizations for both of these groups are 30% above their previous peak, according to the CDC data. Overall, hospitalization numbers are climbing, but are still below the US’ worst pandemic moments this January. However, at this rate, experts predict we could surpass even those grim statistics within a month. The Biden administration has announced that Covid-19 vaccine booster shots will be offered to eligible Americans beginning September 20, subject to authorization from the FDA. While these shots apply to the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines, the US surgeon general has said those who got the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine will likely also need another dose.” Read more at CNN
“The World Health Organization has for months warned against administering booster shots until more of the global population receive vaccines. To date, only 31 percent of the world has received one dose. WHO emergencies chief Mike Ryan put the disparity in stark terms at a Wednesday news conference: ‘We are planning to hand out extra life jackets to people who already have life jackets, while we are leaving other people to drown without a single life jacket.’” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Hospitals across the country are filling up with COVID patients, and some are running out of ICU beds, Axios' Caitlin Owens reports.
One in five ICUs throughout the U.S. had at least 95% of beds occupied last week, The New York Times reported — a figure that had doubled in recent weeks.” Read more at Axios
“MIAMI—Two of Florida’s largest school districts voted Wednesday to implement mask mandates, setting up a clash with the state, which a day earlier moved to punish two other districts that passed similar orders.
The board for Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the largest district in the state, voted 7-1 to require masks when classes start on Monday. Minutes later, the board for Hillsborough County Public Schools, which includes Tampa and is the state’s third-largest district, voted 5-2 to put in place such a requirement.
‘The stakes are too high for us not to do everything that we can to ensure the safety of our children,’ said Marta Pérez, a Miami-Dade County school board member, during discussion of the measure, which she backed.
The decisions intensify a standoff between the state and some local school officials over whether to require masks in schools, at a time when Covid-19 cases are surging in Florida. Days after some school districts in the state started the new school year, hundreds of students and staff have tested positive for the virus and thousands more are in quarantine because of possible exposure.
Florida tallied more than 152,000 Covid-19 cases over the past week, more than any other state and accounting for nearly one in five cases in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“President Biden said his administration will require nursing homes to vaccinate their staff against Covid-19 or risk losing Medicare and Medicaid funding.
In remarks from the White House Wednesday, Mr. Biden said the step was designed to keep people safe as cases rise across the country due to the highly transmissible Delta variant.
‘I’m using the power of the federal government as a payer of healthcare costs to ensure we reduce those risks to our most vulnerable seniors,’ Mr. Biden said.
The administration plans to issue a new regulation through the Department of Health and Human Services that would make Medicare and Medicaid funding for nursing homes conditional on their staffs being vaccinated.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“HOUSTON — In recent days, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas commemorated the anniversary of India’s independence with a crowd in his office. He mingled with hundreds of Republican supporters at a packed campaign event. He posed with the brother of the famed guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Photographs from the events show that few of those who met with the governor wore masks, and neither did Mr. Abbott, who has prohibited local governments from mandating them.
So when Mr. Abbott tested positive for the coronavirus this week, Texans began questioning the circumstances that may have led to his infection and the efforts to identify those who may have been in close contact with the governor, who was fully vaccinated.
At least 10 other sitting governors — four Democrats and six Republicans — have contracted the virus since the pandemic began, but Mr. Abbott’s diagnosis landed in the middle of a pitched battle between the governor and his largest cities over public health measures in schools and as Covid-19 patients are again packing hospitals.” Read more at New York Times
“LES CAYES, Haiti (AP) — Tensions have been growing over the slow pace of aid reaching victims of a powerful weekend earthquake that killed more than 2,100 people in Haiti and was trailed by a drenching tropical depression.
At the small airport in the southwestern community of Les Cayes, throngs of people gathered outside the fence on Wednesday when an aid flight arrived and crews began loading boxes into waiting trucks. One of a small squad of Haitian national police, outfitted in military-style uniforms and posted at the airport to guard the aid shipments, fired two warnings shots to disperse a group of young men.
Angry crowds also massed at collapsed buildings in the city, demanding tarps to create temporary shelters after Tropical Storm Grace brought heavy rain at the beginning of the week.
Haiti’s Civil Protection Agency late Wednesday raised the number of deaths from the earthquake to 2,189 from an earlier count of 1,941 and said 12,268 people were injured. Dozens of people are still missing.” Read more at AP News
“ATLANTA — Georgia’s State Election Board inched forward Wednesday in a process set in motion by Republican lawmakers using a controversial provision of the state’s sweeping new election law that could ultimately lead to a takeover of elections in the state’s most populous county.
Fulton County, a Democratic bastion that includes most of the city of Atlanta, has long been a target of Republicans who complain of sloppiness and say they want to ensure state laws are being followed. Former President Trump fixated on Fulton after the November general election, claiming without evidence that fraud in the county contributed to his narrow loss in the state.
Democrats and voting rights activists have said the takeover provision in the new law invites political interference in local elections and could suppress turnout.
‘We’ll have to wait and see how it plays out, but it does feed the Democrats’ concerns that Republicans are going to interfere with the actions of the board which is in charge of elections in the county which gave Democrats their biggest total margin of votes,’ University of Georgia political science professor Charles Bullock said.” Read more at Boston Globe
“Hurricane Grace is expected to hit Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula this morningafter sweeping through the Caribbean as a tropical storm. It will bring with it dangerous winds, rain and possible storm surges, and is expected to strengthen as it moves past the area on Friday. Then, it could threaten Mexico’s mainland as a Category 1 storm. Fred is still battering the eastern US with rain after being downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone. In North Carolina, 35 people are unaccounted for after the system brought severe flooding. And there’s another storm to look out for: Tropical Storm Henri could make landfall in the US northeast this weekend. Meanwhile, hospitals in Haiti are completely overwhelmed by patients after Saturday's 7.2-magnitude earthquake, and the recent bout of extreme weather in the region is making rebuilding efforts even harder.” Read more at CNN
“Facebook announced it has taken action against the so-called ‘disinformation dozen,’ a group of people named by the White House as being responsible for a majority of coronavirus misinformation. Monika Bickert, vice president of content policy at Facebook, said the company has removed more than three dozen pages, groups and accounts from Facebook and Instagram related to these entities. The White House and Facebook still seem to be at odds over this issue, though. In Facebook’s announcement, Bickert pushed back on the White House’s contention that these 12 people were primarily responsible for the spread of vaccine misinformation. After the announcement, a White House spokesperson continued to strongly criticize the company, implying Facebook needed to be more honest and transparent to protect public health.” Read more at CNN
“A federal judge on Wednesday threw out the permits for a controversial oil project planned for Alaska’s North Slope, faulting the way the federal government had assessed its environmental impact, including how it might harm polar bears.
ConocoPhillips’s Willow project had been backed by both the Trump and Biden administrations, despite a host of concerns environmentalists and others raised about how the large operation might affect wildlife and the Indigenous communities.
U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason — an Obama appointee — wrote in her ruling that the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service incorrectly approved the project because they failed to adequately analyze its climate impact and other possible development plans, and didn’t specify how polar bears would be protected.” Read more at Washington Post
“The Biden administration released its proposal Wednesday for overhauling the asylum system, aiming to speed up the time it takes for asylum-seekers to receive decisions and to reduce a growing backlog of pending cases.
The proposed rule would allow U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services asylum officers to hear and decide applications for migrants. Currently, cases are assigned to immigration courts.
The southern border recently saw its busiest month in 21 years, with Border Patrol making about 200,000 arrests in July, according to figures released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection last week.
With the surge in migrants crossing the border, the backlog of pending cases in immigration courts has been growing. There are 1.4 million pending cases at these courts, according to a tracking tool at Syracuse University.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“The Manhattan district attorney’s office charged former Trump ally Ken Kurson with cybercrimes on Wednesday, making him at least the third person pardoned by former President Donald Trump to face scrutiny from New York state prosecutors.
Mr. Kurson, a 52-year-old New Jersey resident, is a former editor in chief of the New York Observer, the newspaper that was published by Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law. Mr. Kurson served as an adviser to Rudy Giuliani’s 2008 presidential campaign and, during Mr. Trump’s first presidential bid, advised the then-candidate on a speech to the lobbying group American Israel Public Affairs Committee, drawing criticism because he was also working at the Observer.
Prosecutors charged Mr. Kurson in New York state court with eavesdropping and computer trespass, both types of cybercrimes. They accused him of unlawfully accessing communications of his then-wife while at the Observer offices, which were located in Midtown Manhattan. Mr. Kurson used spyware to monitor his wife’s keystrokes, obtained her passwords and accessed her Facebook and Gmail accounts, prosecutors said.
‘We will not accept presidential pardons as get-out-of-jail-free cards for the well-connected in New York,’ Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. , a Democrat, said in a statement.
Mr. Kurson faces a minimum of no jail time and a maximum of four years in prison.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“A federal appeals court yesterday upheld a Texas law banning the most common form of second-trimester abortion.” Read more at New York Times
“The E.P.A. will block the use of the pesticide chlorpyrifos on food crops. Studies have linked it to brain damage in children.” Read more at New York Times
“A cyberattack on T-Mobile exposed the names and social security numbers of over 40 million people.” Read more at New York Times
“New satellite images show Russia may be preparing another test of its nuclear-powered cruise missile, known as "Skyfall.” The controversial weapon is designed to defeat US defense systems. Experts say it’s not just the danger of the missile itself that is cause for concern here. Using nuclear power to test these weapons could pose a danger to the surrounding environment, leading some to call this weapon a “flying Chernobyl.” Researchers have been monitoring the test site, located in the Arctic Circle, in recent months. Russia has been modernizing its strategic nuclear weapons and delivery systems to counter US and NATO and raise its profile as a major military power, stoking fears of another nuclear arms race.” Read more at CNN
“For all the trouble President Xi Jinping faces with the U.S. and its allies, he has another problem at home that could derail his grand plans for China: unmotivated young people.
The rigorous competition to get ahead in China — endless hours of study and work all for a mediocre job and cramped apartment — is prompting more and more young people to embrace the ‘lying flat’ movement, which essentially entails adopting a simple lifestyle and attainable goals.
This is a problem for Xi, who needs to keep the younger generation happy and motivated for several reasons.
China’s aging population means increased productivity will become essential to driving economic growth. And an inspired workforce is crucial to achieving technological breakthroughs in areas like advanced chips as Xi looks to end dependence on the West.
So parts of Xi’s regulatory crackdown are aimed at making it easier for people to learn (banning profits in after-school tutoring) and going after vices (video games, booze, nicotine). He’s also encouraging work in factories instead of offices, while targeting those with high incomes in his bid for ‘common prosperity.’
‘As long as you’re needed by society, as long as you’re respected and earn decent pay, that is a good job,’ Xi said.
Whether China’s youth will agree remains to be seen.”— Dan Ten Kate Read more at Bloomberg
Chinese students at a ceremony marking the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party on July 1 at Tiananmen Square.
Photographer: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images AsiaPac
“Scarlett Johansson is a mom to two now. The ‘Black Widow’ star recently gave birth to a son, Cosmo, with husband Colin Jost, the ‘Saturday Night Live’ star wrote on Instagram Wednesday. This is the first child for the couple, who were married last October.
‘Ok, OK, we had a baby. His name is Cosmo. We love him very much,’ was Jost’s brief note.
People magazine first reported the birth of the baby, which came as a shock to many since news of the pregnancy came out only days earlier after Jost reportedly mentioned it in a stand-up set in Connecticut. No other details were provided.” Read more at AP News
“Mic drop: Garth Brooks canceled his next five tour stops due to the latest COVID wave.” Read more at Axios