Taliban forces fired tracer rounds early Tuesday to celebrate their victory.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
“The last United States forces left Afghanistan late Monday, ending a 20-year occupation that began shortly after Al Qaeda’s attacks on 9/11, cost over $2 trillion, took more than 170,000 lives and ultimately failed to defeat the Taliban, the Islamist militants who allowed Al Qaeda to operate there.
Five American C-17 cargo jets flew out of Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul just before midnight, the officials said, completing a hasty evacuation that left behind tens of thousands of Afghans desperate to flee the country, including former members of the security forces and many who held valid visas to enter the United States.
‘A new chapter of America’s engagement with Afghanistan has begun,’ Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Monday evening. ‘It’s one in which we will lead with our diplomacy. The military mission is over.’
But the war prosecuted by four presidents over two decades, which gave Afghans a shot at democracy and freed many women to pursue education and careers, failed in nearly every other goal. Ultimately, the Americans handed the country back to the same militants they drove from power in 2001.” Read more at New York Times
“North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. North Korea appears to have restarted its plutonium-producing nuclear reactor amid stalled negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, a United Nations watchdog. The agency’s report comes after a senior North Korean official warned that U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises could trigger a ‘serious security crisis’ earlier in August.
‘The new indications of the operation … are deeply troubling,’ the report said. ‘The continuation of the DPRK’s nuclear programme is a clear violation of relevant UN Security Council resolutions and is deeply regrettable.’” Read more at Foreign Policy
“NEW ORLEANS — Rescue teams fanned out across Louisiana on Monday searching for people left stranded in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, even as New Orleans emerged from its most serious onslaught since Hurricane Katrina confident that its levees had held.
While city residents could take a measure of relief at having dodged a catastrophic flood, several surrounding communities remained cut off by the storm, with the extent of the devastation in those areas still coming into focus. More than a million people, including most of New Orleans, were left without electricity, more than 300,000 were without water and some 2,000 were in shelters, officials said.
New Orleans did not have a functioning 911 system for more than 12 hours on Monday, leaving officials to advise those in need of emergency assistance to go to their nearest fire station.” Read more at New York Times
“NEW ORLEANS — The levees, floodwalls, and floodgates that protect New Orleans held up against Hurricane Ida’s fury, passing their toughest test since the federal government spent billions of dollars to upgrade a system that catastrophically failed when Hurricane Katrina struck 16 years ago.” Read more at Boston Globe
“The Education Department on Monday opened civil rights investigations into five Republican-led states that have banned or limited mask requirements in schools, saying the policies could amount to discrimination against students with disabilities or health conditions.
The department’s Office for Civil Rights announced the investigations in letters to education chiefs in Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah. Those states have issued varying prohibitions on mask requirements, which the office says could prevent some students from safely attending school.
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona accused the states of ‘putting politics over the health and education of the students they took an oath to serve.’” Read more at Boston Globe
“Most children admitted to intensive care with a serious inflammatory complication after getting Covid-19 didn’t have serious lingering issues a year later, according to a study of data collected from hospitals across the U.K.
As the highly contagious Delta variant sweeps across the world, doctors say they are worried about its effect on children, especially those who are unvaccinated. In some parts of the U.S., more children have been hospitalized for Covid-19 treatment recently than at any time during the pandemic since U.S. authorities began tracking the data last year.
The U.K. study tracked the health of children with multisystem inflammatory syndrome, or MIS-C, a rare condition that can occur in children several weeks after Covid-19 infection. It can involve many different organ systems and lead to issues with the heart, including aneurysms in the coronary arteries, arrhythmias and problems with heart function.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“For the past week, Dr. Gregory Yu, an emergency physician in San Antonio, has received the same daily requests from his patients, some vaccinated for COVID-19 and others unvaccinated: They ask him for ivermectin, a drug typically used to treat parasitic worms that has repeatedly failed in clinical trials to help people infected with the coronavirus.
Yu has refused the ivermectin requests, he said, but he knows some of his colleagues have not. Prescriptions for ivermectin have seen a sharp rise in recent weeks, jumping to more than 88,000 per week in mid-August from a prepandemic baseline average of 3,600 per week, according to researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Some pharmacists are even reporting shortages of the drug. Travis Walthall, a pharmacist in Kuna, Idaho, a town of about 20,000 people, said that this summer alone he had filled more than 20 ivermectin prescriptions, up from two or three in a typical year. For the past week, he has not been able to obtain the drug from his suppliers — they were all out.
Walthall was astonished, he said, at how many people were willing to take an unapproved drug for COVID. ‘I’m like, gosh, this is horrible,’ he said.
Though sometimes given to humans in small doses for head lice, scabies, and other parasites, ivermectin is more commonly used in animals. Physicians are raising alarms about a growing number of people getting the drug from livestock supply centers, where it can come in highly concentrated paste or liquid forms.
Calls to poison control centers about ivermectin exposures have risen dramatically, jumping fivefold over their baseline in July, according to CDC researchers, who cited data from the American Association of Poison Control Centers. Mississippi’s health department said earlier this month that 70 percent of recent calls to the state poison control center had come from people who ingested ivermectin from livestock supply stores.” Read more at Boston Globe
“A wildfire that had burned through remote areas in the Sierra Nevada for two weeks crested a ridge on Monday and began descending toward the major population centers along Lake Tahoe.
As the Caldor fire intensified amid dry and windy conditions, thousands of people along the lake’s southern and western shores were ordered to evacuate. Crews of firefighters sped to put out spot fires only miles from South Lake Tahoe, Calif.
Tourists normally swarm the lake on the California-Nevada border in the summer months for boating, fishing, hiking, eating and drinking. But by sunset on Monday, the community seemed to stand still.
On streets that were clogged only hours earlier, shops and businesses — motels, restaurants, supermarkets — were deserted. Roads were empty except for fire engines and television reporters documenting the eerie calm.” Read more at New York Times
“The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol asked 35 telecommunications and social media companies Monday to retain phone records and other information relevant to its inquiry as the panel ramps up its investigation ahead of the return of Congress next month.
That list was expected to include phones used by some members of Congress, a person familiar with the request, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the investigation, said Friday. Committee spokesman Tim Mulvey on Monday declined to say which individuals were included in the request out of respect for their privacy.” Read more at Washington Post
“Hate crimes in the U.S. rose about 6% last year, fueled by an increase in anti-Asian, anti-Black and antiwhite incidents, according to FBI statistics released Monday, reaching levels not seen in more than a decade.
State and local police reported 7,759 criminal incidents in 2020 motivated by bias, amid a global pandemic and a racial reckoning prompted by the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said. The number of such episodes last year matched levels last seen in 2008, and a rash of high-profile incidents have continued this year.
In March, a white gunman killed eight people at three Atlanta-area spas, including six women of Asian descent. The attack deepened nationwide conversations about racism and a recent rise in anti-Asian bigotry. The gunman pleaded guilty to some charges last month.
The shooter’s killing spree occurred in two different counties, giving two sets of local prosecutors jurisdiction over the crimes. One local prosecutor’s office said last month that the federal, state and local investigation didn’t find evidence of prejudice against Asians. However, another local prosecutor has said she would seek an enhanced punishment against the gunman under Georgia’s new hate-crimes law.
Congress passed new hate-crimes legislation in response to the wave of anti-Asian violence earlier this year. The law is designed to improve data collection around hate crimes and aims to expedite a Justice Department review of such incidents. It also requires the attorney general to issue guidance to state and local law-enforcement agencies for setting up online hate-crime reporting processes, collecting data and raising public awareness about hate crimes during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Major incidents from 2020 are also continuing to reverberate, with prosecutors filing hate crimes charges this year. In April, federal prosecutors charged three men with hate crimes in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who was chased and fatally shot in February 2020 while out jogging in southeast Georgia. The men have pleaded not guilty.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“WASHINGTON—Abortion providers filed an emergency request with the Supreme Court on Monday seeking to prevent a Texas law that bans the procedure after approximately six weeks of pregnancy from going into effect.
The state law, signed by Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in May, says a physician can’t knowingly perform an abortion if there is a detectable fetal heartbeat, which the law defines to include cardiac activity in the embryo that appears about six weeks into a pregnancy.
The law, set to take effect on Sept. 1, has an unusual feature that could complicate court proceedings. Texas lawmakers barred state officials from directly enforcing the measure, effectively deputizing the public to do it instead. The Texas law allows for private civil lawsuits in which members of the public can sue—and collect at least $10,000 in damages—from any person who allegedly performs or aids a banned abortion, or who intends to do so.
Abortion-rights supporters say state lawmakers designed the measure this way to make it more difficult to bring a court challenge against a ban that would be unconstitutional under current Supreme Court precedent.
In a bid to invalidate the ban, a group of providers and abortion-rights advocates in July sued several state officials and a private citizen who had expressed interest in bringing litigation to enforce the abortion law. The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, without detailed explanation, has halted trial-court proceedings in the case for now and declined to block the ban from going into effect.
The plaintiffs on Monday filed an emergency application at the Supreme Court that asks for the ban to be put on hold while litigation continues.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“South Sudan cracks down. After South Sudanese activists planned for nationwide protests on Monday against President Salva Kiir’s administration, which they accused of being corrupt, Kiir hit back. The government disrupted internet services throughout the country on Monday, while security forces took to the streets, reportedly arresting seven people.
Rights groups say the development is emblematic of the country’s broader political crackdown: In recent weeks, a string of journalists and prominent activists have faced detention and arrest.” Read more at Foreign Policy
The end of leaded gasoline. Nearly a century after it was introduced to the world, leaded gasoline—which is linked to serious health issues—has been eliminated worldwide, the U.N. Environment Programme said on Monday. The announcement came after Algeria emptied the last of its stockpile last month.
The U.N. has estimated that the end of leaded gas will save the global economy $2.45 trillion per year and help prevent more than 1.2 million premature deaths.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Trudeau’s troubled campaign trail. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau began campaigning again on Monday ahead of the Sept. 20 election after protests caused him to cancel an election rally on Friday and delay another on Saturday. Trudeau called a snap election earlier this month in the hopes of winning a parliamentary majority, but his Liberal Party is currently trailing the Conservatives in several polls.
The campaign trail has seen protesters outraged with Trudeau’s push for COVID-19 vaccines and restrictions. ‘I’ve never seen this intensity of anger on the campaign trail or in Canada,’ Trudeau said on Friday, after facing crowds hurling death threats and obscenities.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Bali bombers to face trial. After being detained by the United States for 18 years without charge, three prisoners at Guantánamo Bay had their first day in court on Monday. The detainees—one Indonesian and two Malaysians, who have been held for their suspected involvement in deadly bombings in Bali and Jakarta in 2002 and 2003—face charges including murder and terrorism.
Their case, like many Guantánamo cases, is expected to be a long, arduous process.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Beijing is cracking down, this time on online gaming for children. According to new rules, children can now only play online video games between 8 and 9 p.m. on Friday, the weekend, and public holidays—a limit of three hours per week.
The stated goal? Curbing online gaming addiction, which Beijing says runs rampant. This isn’t the first time China has set online gaming restrictions. Beijing previously set limits for 90 minutes of online gaming per weekday and three hours on weekends and public holidays.” Read more at Foreign Policy
This photo provided by New York's Bronx Zoo shows an 11-month-old, 80-pound cougar that was removed from an apartment, in the Bronx borough of New York, where she was being kept illegally as a pet, animal welfare officials said Monday, Aug. 30, 2021. The cougar, nicknamed Sasha, spent the weekend at the Bronx Zoo receiving veterinary care and is now headed to the Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge in Arkansas, officials said. (Courtesy of The Bronx Zoo via AP)
“NEW YORK (AP) — An 80-pound cougar was removed from a New York City apartment where she was being kept illegally as a pet, animal welfare officials said Monday.
The owner of the 11-month-old female cougar surrendered the animal on Thursday, Kelly Donithan, director of animal disaster response for the Humane Society of the United States, said in a news release.
The cougar, nicknamed Sasha, spent the weekend at the Bronx Zoo receiving veterinary care and is now headed to the Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge in Arkansas, officials said.
The Humane Society coordinated with zoo officials, the state Department of Environmental Conservation and the New York Police Department on the big cat’s removal.
‘I’ve never seen a cougar in the wild, but I’ve seen them on leashes, smashed into cages, and crying for their mothers when breeders rip them away,’ the Humane Society’s Donithan said. ‘I’ve also seen the heartbreak of owners, like in this case, after being sold not just a wild animal, but a false dream that they could make a good ‘pet.’’” Read more at AP News
“WASHINGTON (AP) — Despite a few high-profile conservation success stories – like the dramatic comeback of bald eagle populations in North America – birds of prey are in decline worldwide.
A new analysis of data from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and BirdLife International found that 30% of 557 raptor species worldwide are considered near threatened, vulnerable or endangered or critically endangered. Eighteen species are critically endangered, including the Philippine eagle, the hooded vulture and the Annobon scops owl, the researchers found.” Read more at AP News