World
Trump targeting GOP impeachment voter at Ohio revenge rally
Former President Donald Trump will return to the rally stage this weekend, holding his first campaign-style event since leaving the White House as he makes good on his pledge to exact revenge on those who voted for his historic second impeachment.
Trump’s event at Ohio’s Lorain County Fairgrounds, not far from Cleveland, will be held Saturday to support Max Miller, a former White House aide who is challenging Republican Rep. Anthony Gonzalez for his congressional seat. Gonzalez was one of 10 GOP House members who voted to impeach Trump for his role in inciting the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol building.
Trump wants them to pay.
The rally, held five months after Trump left office under a cloud of violence, marks the beginning of a new, more public phase of his post-presidency. After spending much of his time behind closed doors building a political operation and fuming about the last election, Trump is planning a flurry of public appearances in the coming weeks. He’ll hold another rally in Florida over the July Fourth weekend unattached to a midterm candidate and will travel to the southern border next week to protest President Joe Biden’s immigration policies.
The rally also comes as Trump is facing immediate legal jeopardy. Manhattan prosecutors informed his company Thursday that it could soon face criminal charges stemming from a wide-ranging investigation into the former president’s business dealings. The New York Times, citing sources familiar with the matter, reported that charges could be filed against the Trump Organization as early as next week. Trump has denounced the investigations as nothing more than a “witch hunt” aimed as damaging him politically.
Although Trump remains a deeply polarizing figure, he is extremely popular with the Republican base, and candidates have flocked to his homes in Florida and New Jersey seeking his endorsement as he has tried to positioned himself as his party’s kingmaker.
Trump has said he is committed to helping Republicans regain control of Congress in next year’s midterm elections. But his efforts to support — and recruit — candidates to challenge incumbent Republicans who have crossed him put him at odds with other Republican leaders who have been trying to unify the party after a brutal year in which they lost control of the White House and failed to gain control of either chamber of Congress.
READ: ‘Fire and Fury’ author writes new Trump book ‘Landslide’
So far, nine of the 10 House Republicans who voted for Trump’s impeachment have drawn primary challengers. And Trump has offered to support anyone who steps forward to challenge the remaining candidate, Rep. John Katko of New York, syracuse.com reported.
“We’re giving tremendous endorsements,” Trump boasted Friday morning as he called into the conservative Newsmax channel and explained his endorsement rationale.
“Fake Republicans, anybody that voted for the impeachment doesn’t get it,” he said. “But there weren’t too many of them. And I think most of them are being, if not all, are being primaried right now, so that’s good. I’ll be helping their opponent.”
Gonzalez, a former college and professional football player, has stood by his impeachment vote in the face of fierce criticism from his party’s conservative wing, including his censure by the Ohio Republican Party.
At the same time, Trump continues to obsess over his ongoing efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which he insists he won, even though top election officials, his own attorney general and numerous judges have said there is no evidence of the mass voter fraud he alleges.
On Monday, he told the conservative Real America’s Voice that he had never conceded the race or admitted defeat. And he publicly entertained the idea that he could somehow be reinstated into office, even though no legal or constitutional basis for doing so exists.
At the same time, he continues to tease the possibility that he will mount a comeback run for the White House in 2024. Aides say Trump, who was banned from Twitter and Facebook after Jan. 6, will make a decision after the midterms next fall.
Trump’s rallies have been an instrumental part of his political brand since he launched his 2016 campaign. The former reality star is energized by performing in front of his audiences and often test-drives new material and talking points to see how they resonate with the crowd. His political operation also uses the events to collect critical voter contact information from attendees and as fundraising tools.
READ: Seized House records show just how far Trump admin would go
And they have spawned a group of hardcore fans who traveled the country, attending dozens of rallies, often camping out overnight to snag prime spots. Some of those supporters began lining up outside the venue days early this week as they reunited for the event.
Chauvin gets 22 1/2 years in prison for George Floyd’s death
Former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin has been sentenced to 22 1/2 years in prison for the murder of George Floyd, whose dying gasps under Chauvin’s knee led to the biggest outcry against racial injustice in the U.S. in generations.
The punishment handed out Friday fell short of the 30 years that prosecutors had requested.
Read: Floyd verdict gives hope, if only fleeting, to Black America
With good behavior, Chauvin, 45, could be paroled after serving two-thirds of his sentence, or about 15 years.
Former police Officer Derek Chauvin broke his long courtroom silence Friday as he faced sentencing for the murder of George Floyd, offering condolences to Floyd’s family and saying he hopes more information coming out will give them “some peace of mind.”
Chauvin, who did not testify at his trial, removed his COVID-19 and turned toward the Floyd family, speaking only briefly because of what he called “some additional legal matters at hand” — an apparent reference to the federal civil rights trial he still faces.
Read: Biden to America after Floyd verdict: 'We can't stop here'
“But very briefly, though, I do want to give my condolences to the Floyd family. There’s going to be some other information in the future that would be of interest. And I hope things will give you some some peace of mind,” he said, without elaborating.
Hisattorney Eric Nelson called Floyd’s death “tragic,” and that Chauvin”s “brain is littered with what-ifs” from the day: “What if I just did not agree to go in that day? What if things had gone differently? What if I never responded to that call? What if what if what if?”
Floyd’s family members took the stand and expressed sorrow about his death. They asked for the maximum penalty.
“We don’t want to see no more slaps on the wrist. We’ve been through that already,” said a tearful Terrence Floyd, one of Floyd’s brothers.
India’s covid curve could raise the world’s
As India recovers from a brutal second wave of the Covid pandemic, it faces a new challenge: Can it quickly vaccinate enough people to minimize the risk of a third?
Over the first three days of this week, India jabbed 21 million people—a significant acceleration. Stepping up vaccinations, combined with protection gained from a large number of Covid infections, could carry the country toward herd immunity by year’s end. But this week’s surge in vaccinations may not be sustainable, and the duration of protection provided by previous exposure to the virus remains uncertain.
Read: India's COVID-19 tally crosses 30 million
The high stakes for India are self-evident. Covid has battered the country’s economy, diminished its international standing, and raised serious questions about its government’s competence. Officially, about 392,000 Indians had died of Covid as of Wednesday. But many experts say that figure is a gross underestimate.
India’s battle against the disease also matters disproportionately to the global effort against Covid. The longer the virus continues to spread, the more variants can emerge, and a nation with one-sixth of the world’s population is a potentially huge incubator.
The highly contagious Delta variant sweeping the world was first detected in India. This mutation has already led to an uptick in cases in the U.K. and is set to become the dominant strain in the U.S. This week, White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci said the Delta variant is the “greatest threat” to eliminating Covid in America. He expects the strain to be “quite dominant” in the U.S. within several weeks to a month. The longer India’s vaccination effort takes, the higher the odds of other variants emerging there, including some that may be immune to current vaccines.
“It’s safe to say that India is the most important challenge that we know of in the world today,” says Jerome Kim, director general of the International Vaccine Institute, in a phone interview. “So far we’ve been lucky, but a vaccine-resistant mutant could undermine $18 billion worth of U.S. government investment in vaccines.”
India’s troubles have also set back vaccination efforts in other poor countries. As the world’s largest manufacturer of vaccines, India had been poised to supply the World Health Organization with hundreds of millions of doses earmarked for the developing world. But since March India has diverted vaccine supplies to its domestic market. After coming under attack for an ill-judged vaccine-diplomacy effort that critics say gave priority to global grandstanding over citizens’ health, New Delhi will be loath to resume exports until India’s own population is inoculated.
It’s easy to be skeptical about India’s prospects. The best India has done before this month was 84 million Covid vaccinations in April, on average 2.8 million shots a day. As of Wednesday, only 3.7% of India’s 1.4 billion people were fully vaccinated. About 17.5% had received one dose of vaccine.
Read: Why India is shattering global infection records
In a phone interview, Gagandeep Kang, a virologist at the Christian Medical College in Tamil Nadu, points out that historically the bulk of Indian vaccination efforts have been aimed at children or pregnant women. Reaching all adults poses a new challenge. She also worries about “huge resistance” to vaccination in rural areas rife with ill-founded rumors about the dangers the shots present. Dr. Kang estimates that India does not yet have sufficient vaccine production to consistently vaccinate even four million people a day. She doesn’t expect the country to start administering eight million to 10 million doses a day before the end of the year.
It’s unlikely that international help can cover the gap. Dr. Kim expects global supplies to remain constrained for at least the next three to six months. Should people need booster shots or fresh vaccinations for variants, global demand could reach 30 billion doses over the next two years. To put this in perspective, so far about 2.79 billion doses have been administered across the world.
Nor does New Delhi’s response to the pandemic so far inspire confidence. In an email interview, T. Jacob John, an Indian virologist, says the Indian government’s response to the pandemic has been marked by a mix of “denial, [a longing for] God’s help, wishful thinking and pseudoscience.”
Unlike better-prepared nations, India failed to order sufficient vaccines in advance or boost manufacturing capacity with grants. Its haphazard pacing seems to favor appearances over reality: India made all adults eligible for vaccines almost seven weeks before Britain, despite having vaccinated a much smaller proportion of the population. A hastily approved domestic vaccine appeared to privilege vaccine nationalism over scientific rigor.
Nonetheless, there’s reason for cautious optimism. The scale of the pandemic in India—an estimated 637 million cases, according to the Seattle-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation compared with the official estimate of 30 million—means that the country may already be relatively close to herd immunity.
Indian private companies have decades of experience producing vaccines. Dr. Kim believes that top Indian companies, including Pune-based Serum Institute of India and Hyderabad-based Biological E and Bharat Biotech, have the capacity to ramp up production of high-quality vaccines. A clutch of new shots will likely become available before the end of the year. The U.S. vaccine Novavax has been licensed to Serum Institute; Biological E will manufacture Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot vaccine.
There’s no question that India flubbed its management of the second wave. But with a little luck and a lot of effort, it may still dodge a repetition of this spring’s devastation.
This article was first published in WSJ
Toll in Florida collapse rises to 4; 159 remain missing
Officials say there are still 159 people unaccounted for after the partial collapse of a beachside building in Florida.
Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava noted Friday that rescue officials were still searching for survivors from the condo building collapse in Surfside, saying that a search and rescue mission was ongoing.
Raide Jadallah, an assistant Miami-Dade County fire chief, said rescue operations continued throughout the night. He said that 130 firefighters are working at the site.
Miami-Dade Police Director Freddy Ramirez said they are working with the medical examiner’s office to identify the four victims.
The Champlain Towers South drew people from around the globe to enjoy life on South Florida’s Atlantic Coast, some for a night, some to live. A couple from Argentina and their young daughter. A beloved retired Miami-area teacher and his wife. Orthodox Jews from Russia. Israelis. The sister of Paraguay’s first lady. Others from South America.
They were among the nearly 100 people who remained missing Friday morning, a day after the 12-story building collapsed into rubble early Thursday. Much of the Champlain’s beach side sheared off for unknown reasons, pancaking into a pile of concrete and metal more than 30 feet (10 meters) high.
Three bodies were pulled from the rubble overnight, bringing the death toll to four, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said on “Good Morning America” Friday. Officials feared that number could skyrocket. Eleven injuries were reported, with four people treated at hospitals.
“These are very difficult times, and things are going to get more difficult as we move forward,” Miami-Dade Police Director Freddy Ramirez said.
Fire Rescue personnel and others worked through the night in hopes of finding survivors.
State Sen. Jason Pizzo of Miami Beach told the Miami Herald he watched as tactical teams of six worked early Friday to sift through the debris. He said he saw one body taken in a yellow body bag and another that was marked. They were taken to a homicide unit tent that was set up along the beach.
Many people remained at the reunification center set up near the collapse site early Friday morning, awaiting results of DNA swabs that could help identify victims.
Officials said no cause for the collapse has been determined.
Video of the collapse showed the center of the building appearing to tumble down first and a section nearest to the ocean teetering and coming down seconds later, as a huge dust cloud swallowed the neighborhood.
About half the building’s roughly 130 units were affected, and rescuers pulled at least 35 people from the wreckage in the first hours after the collapse.
Television video early Friday showed crews still fighting flareups of fires on the rubble piles. Intermittent rain over South Florida is also hampering the search.
Raide Jadallah, an assistant Miami-Dade County fire chief, said that while listening devices placed on and in the wreckage had picked up no voices, they had detected possible banging noises, giving rescuers hope some are alive. Rescuers were tunneling into the wreckage from below, going through the building’s underground parking garage.
Personal belongings were evidence of shattered lives amid the wreckage of the Champlain, which was built in 1981 in Surfside, a small suburb north of Miami Beach. A children’s bunk bed perched precariously on a top floor, bent but intact and apparently inches from falling into the rubble. A comforter lay on the edge of a lower floor. Televisions. Computers. Chairs.
Argentines Dr. Andres Galfrascoli, his husband, Fabian Nuñez, and their 6-year-old daughter, Sofia, had spent Wednesday night there at an apartment belonging to a friend, Nicolas Fernandez.
Galfrascoli, a Buenos Aires plastic surgeon, and Nuñez, a theater producer and accountant, had come to Florida to get away from a COVID-19 resurgence in Argentina and its strict lockdowns. They had worked hard to adopt Sofia, Fernandez said.
“Of all days, they chose the worst to stay there,” Fernandez said. “I hope it’s not the case, but if they die like this, that would be so unfair.”
They weren’t the only South Americans missing. Foreign ministries and consulates of four countries said 22 nationals were missing in the collapse: nine from Argentina, six from Paraguay, four from Venezuela and three from Uruguay.
The Paraguayans included Sophia López Moreira — the sister of first lady Silvana Abdo and sister-in-law of President Mario Abdo Benítez — and her family.
Israeli media said the country’s consul general in Miami, Maor Elbaz, believes that 20 citizens of that country are missing.
Also missing was Arnie Notkin, a retired Miami-area elementary school physical education teacher, and his wife, Myriam. They lived on the third floor.
“Everyone’s been posting, ‘Oh my God, he was my coach,’” said Fortuna Smukler, a friend who turned to Facebook in hopes of finding someone who would report them safe.
“They were also such happy, joyful people. He always had a story to tell, and she always spoke so kindly of my mother,” Smukler said. “Originally there were rumors that he had been found, but it was a case of mistaken identity. It would be a miracle if they’re found alive.”
Microsoft unveils Windows 11 operating system
Microsoft on Thursday unveiled Windows 11, the next entry in the Windows operating systems' line-up.
Sputnik reported, citing media, that the next iteration of the operating system will feature a new user interface, a simplified start menu, and an updated taskbar. Windows 11 is also said to have new snap controls, a Widgets panel and a starting sound.
According to Carmen Zlateff, director of User Experience for Windows, the new Start menu is optimised in a way that allows a user to quickly find whatever they need. The menu uses cloud technology allowing one to see their recent files on various devices.
The operating system also has new snap layouts, which can be tailored to one's screen. It also enables use of extra monitors for greater screen space, as well as easy switching between different devices back and forth at one's convenience.
Windows 11 allows use of several different desktops which can have different apps and wallpapers for various purposes.
Significant parts of the canceled Windows 10X are reported to have been used in the development of the version.
Lava streams from crater as Indonesia's Mount Merapi erupts
Indonesia’s most volatile volcano erupted Friday, releasing plumes of ash high into the air and sending streams of lava with searing gas clouds flowing down its slopes. No casualties were reported.
Clouds of hot ash shot 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) into the sky and an avalanche of lava and searing gas spilled down Mount Merapi’s trembling slopes up to 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) at least six times since the morning as the volcano groaned and rumbled, said Hanik Humaida, the head of Yogyakarta’s Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation Center.
READ: Volcano spews lava on Galapagos island
A series of strong pyroclastic flows were released from the actively growing lava dome in the inner summit crater of the 2,968-meter (9,737-foot) high volcano, Humaida said.
Pyroclastic flow is a volcanic phenomenon includes turbulent and hot avalanches of hot lava rocks, ash and volcanic gasses mixed together.
She described the volcano’s lava dome as growing rapidly, causing hot lava and gas clouds to flow down its slopes. Parts of the lava dome were collapsing, sending rocks and ash flowing down the southwest flank of the volcano.
Ash covered several villages and nearby towns, she said.
Mount Merapi has seen increased volcanic activity in recent weeks and ash plumes extended about 1.8 kilometers (1.2 miles) to the southwest of the volcano before dawn, Humaida said.
Indonesia’s Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation Center did not raise Merapi’s alert status, which already was at the second-highest of four levels since it began erupting last November.
Villagers living on Merapi’s fertile slopes are advised to stay 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) from the crater’s mouth and should be aware of the peril of lava, the agency said.
READ: Philippine volcano trembles more, spews lava half-mile high
The volcano is on densely populated Java island near the ancient city of Yogyakarta. It is the most active of more than 120 active volcanoes in Indonesia and has repeatedly erupted with lava and gas clouds recently.
Merapi’s last major eruption in 2010 killed 347 people.
Indonesia, an archipelago of 270 million people, is prone to earthquakes and volcanic activity because it sits along the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a horseshoe-shaped series of seismic fault lines around the ocean.
Storm floods German vaccine center, 5 injured by heavy hail
Officials say a vaccination center was flooded and five people were injured by hail the size of tennis balls during heavy storms in southwestern Germany overnight.
All appointments for Thursday at the vaccination center in Tuebingen were canceled after torrential rain late Wednesday.
Police said five people were injured in the nearby town of Reutlingen after they were struck and injured by large hailstones.
Firefighters were out in force across the region pumping water out of flooded basements and removing toppled trees from roads, police said.
The downpour also drenched players and spectators at the Germany-Hungary Euro 2020 match held in Munich on Wednesday evening, forcing some public viewings to be abandoned. The game ended in a tie.
READ: Dhaka wakes up to flooded roads
In the neighboring Czech Republic, a rare tornado hit towns and villages in southeast part of the country, injuring some 150 people and damaging hundreds of houses. Some 200 police officers have been deployed in the region to help the rescue workers.
Earlier in the day, thunderstorms before dawn Thursday left some 100,000 households in central and southern areas of the Czech Republic without electricity, while fallen trees blocked the tracks on some 30 train routes. About 45,000 households were still without power later Thursday.
READ: New areas flooded as Jamuna continues to swell in Sirajganj
UNESCO watching as Venice grapples with over-tourism
Away from the once-maddening crowds of St. Mark’s Square, tiny Certosa island could be a template for building a sustainable future in Venice as it tries to relaunch its tourism industry without boomeranging back to pre-pandemic day-tripping hordes.
Private investment has converted the forgotten public island just a 15-minute waterbus ride from St. Mark’s Square into a multi-faceted urban park where Venetians and Venice conoscenti can mix, free from the tensions inherent to the lagoon city’s perennial plague of mass tourism.
“This is the B-side of the Venetian LP,” said Alberto Sonino, who heads the development project that includes a hotel, marina, restaurant and woodland. “Everyone knows the first song of the A-side of our long-play, almost nobody, not even the most expert or locals, know the lagoon as an interesting natural and cultural environment.”
It may be now or never for Venice, whose fragile city and lagoon environment alike are protected as a UNESCO world heritage site. Citing overtourism, UNESCO took the rare step this week of recommending Venice be placed on its list of World Heritage in Danger sites. A decision is expected next month.
After a 15-month pause in mass international travel, Venetians are contemplating how to welcome visitors back to its picture-postcard canals and Byzantine backdrops without suffering the past indignities of crowds clogging narrow alleyways, day-trippers picnicking on stoops and selfie-takers crowding the Rialto Bridge.
The recommendation by UNESCO’s World Heritage Center took into account mass tourism, in particular the passage of cruise ships through the historic center, a steady decline in permanent residents as well as governance and management problems.
READ: UNESCO DG lauds commitments made by Bangladesh, Brazil, Egypt, Jordan
“This is not something we propose lightly,” Mechtild Roessler, director of the World Heritage Center, told AP. “It is to alert the international community to do more to address these matters together.”
Veneto regional officials have submitted a plan for relaunching the tourism-dependent city to Rome that calls for controlling arrivals of day-trippers, boosting permanent residents, encouraging startups, limiting the stock of private apartment rentals and gaining control over commercial zoning to protect Venetian artisans.
The proposal, submitted in March, aims to make Venice a “world sustainability capital,” and hopes to tap some of the 222 million euros ($265 million) in EU recovery funds to help hard-hit Italy relaunch from the pandemic.
“Venice is in danger of disappearing. If we don’t stop and reverse this, Venice in 10 years will be a desert, where you turn the lights on in the morning, and turn them off in the evening,” said Nicola Pianon, a Venice native and managing director of the Boston Consulting Group whose strategic plan for Venice informed the region’s proposal.
The proposal responds to Venetians’ urgency to reclaim their city from the mass tourism that peaked at some 25 million individual visitors in 2019, and stanch the exodus of 1,000 Venetians each year. It envisions investments of up to 4 billion euros to attract 12,000 new residents and create 20,000 new jobs.
As much as Venetians groan at the huge tourist flows, the pandemic also revealed the extent to which the relationship is symbiotic.
Along with lost tourist revenue, Venetians suffered a drastic reduction in public transport, heavily subsidized by tourist traffic. Even city museums could not afford to reopen to residents when lockdowns eased.
“Venice without tourists became a city that could not serve its own citizens,” said Anna Moretti, an expert in destination management at Venice’s Ca’ Foscari University.
The pandemic paused the city’s plans to introduce a day-tripper tax last year on visitors who sleep elsewhere — 80% of the total tourist footfall.
Some 19 million day-trippers visited in 2019 , spending just 5 euros ($6) to 20 euros each, according to Boston Consulting. On the other side of that equation, the 20% of tourists who spend at least one night in Venice contribute more than two-thirds of all tourist revenue.
A reservation system with an access fee is expected to launch sometime in 2022 to manage day visitors.
With an eye on monitoring daily tourist arrivals, the city set up a state-of-the-art Smart Control Room near the main railroad bridge last year that identifies how many visitors are in Venice at any moment using cell-phone data that also reveals their country of origin and location in the city.
The technology means that future reservations can be monitored with QR codes downloaded on phones, without the need to set up check points. Pianon said the plan is feasible in a city like Venice, which has a limited number of access points and is just 5 square kilometers (2 square miles) in area.
Relaunching more sustainable tourism in Venice would require diverting tourists to new destinations, encouraging more over-night stays, discouraging day trips and enabling the repopulation of the city with new residents.
Much could go wrong. Tourist operators are desperate for business to return, and there is a pent-up global desire to travel. In addition, many changes being sought by regional and city officials must be decided in Rome, including any limits on commercial zoning or Airbnb rental properties.
“I think the level of dystopia that we had reached was of such a scale that there has to be a reaction,” said Carlo Bagnoli, head of an innovation lab, VeniSia, at Ca Foscari University. “There are many projects emerging from many places.”
Certosa island, after more than a decade, is still a work in progress, but its success is in the numbers: 3,000 visitors each weekend.
READ: 40 pc of world's inhabitants don’t have access to education in language they speak: UNESCO
Sonino sees another 10 public sites in the lagoon with redevelopment potential, including former hospitals, abandoned islands and military bases.
He blames Venetians themselves for the city’s predicament, being long on talk, short on action. But he feels the pandemic -- coupled with the world’s abiding interest in Venice’s future -- might just be the push the city needs to change.
“I prefer to hope that we catch the opportunity. Carpe diem is not only a slogan but an opportunity,” Sonino said. “We need a lot of ideas and a lot of passion to take Venice from the past to the future.”
Taliban gains drive Afghan government to recruit militias
For two days the fighting was blistering. Rockets and heavy machine gun fire pounded Imam Sahib, a key district on Afghanistan’s northern border with Tajikistan.
When the explosions died down and Syed Akram finally emerged from his home earlier this week, three of his neighbor’s children had been killed, and a tank was burning on a nearby street corner. Several shops and a petrol station were still smoldering. In the streets, the Taliban were in control.
There were maybe 300 of them, he said. That had been plenty to overwhelm the government troops defending the town, who had numbered fewer than 100. Akram saw several bodies of soldiers in the street, but many had fled the district center.
In recent days, the Taliban have made quick gains in Afghanistan’s north, overrunning multiple districts, some of them reportedly with hardly a fight, even as the U.S. and NATO press forward with their final withdrawal from Afghanistan. By all accounts their departure will be complete long before the Sept. 11 deadline set by President Joe Biden when he announced in mid-April an end to America’s “forever war.”
READ: Taliban take key Afghan district, adding to string of gains
The Taliban gains are significant because of the transportation routes they provide the insurgents. But equally significant is that the north is the traditional stronghold of Afghanistan’s minority ethnic groups, who aided the U.S.-led invasion that drove the Taliban from power nearly 20 years ago and have been part of the ruling leadership since.
The traditional stronghold of the Taliban, who are mostly ethnic Pashtuns, has been in the country’s south and east.
With the recent gains, Taliban now control the main border crossing with Tajikistan, a main trade route. They also hold the strategic district of Doshi, critical because the one road linking Kabul to northern Afghanistan runs through it.
As a result, a worried government this week launched what it called National Mobilization, arming local volunteers. Observers say the move only resurrects militias that will be loyal to local commanders or powerful Kabul-allied warlords, who wrecked the Afghan capital during the inter-factional fighting of the 1990s and killed thousands of civilians.
“The fact that the government has put out the call for the militias is a clear admission of the failure of the security forces ... most certainly an act of desperation,” said Bill Roggio, senior fellow at the U.S.-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Roggio tracks militant groups and is editor of the foundation’s Long War Journal.
“The Afghan military and police have abandoned numerous outposts, bases, and district centers, and it is difficult to imagine that these hastily organized militias can perform better than organized security forces,” he said.
On Wednesday at Koh Daman on Kabul’s northern edge, dozens of armed villagers in one of the first National Mobilization militias gathered at a rally. “Death to criminals!” and “Death to Taliban!” they shouted, waving automatic rifles. Some had rocket propelled grenade launchers resting casually on their shoulders.
A handful of uniformed Afghan National Police officers watched. “We need them, we have no leadership, we have no help,” said Moman, one of the policemen.
He criticized the Defense and Interior Ministries, saying they were stuffed with overpaid officials while the front-line troops receive little pay.
“I’m the one standing here for 24 hours like this with all this equipment to defend my country,” he said, indicating his weapons and vest jammed with ammunition. “But in the ministries, officials earn thousands” of dollars. He spoke on condition he be identified only by his first name for fear of reprisals.
The other police standing nearby joined in with the criticism, others nodding in agreement. New recruits in the security forces get 12,000 Afghanis a month, about $152, with higher ranks getting the equivalent of about $380.
The U.S. and NATO have committed to paying $4 billion annually until 2024 to support the Afghanistan National Security and Defense Forces. Still, even Washington’s official watchdog auditing spending says Afghan troops are disillusioned and demoralized with corruption rife throughout the government.
As the districts fell, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani swept through his Defense and Interior Ministries, appointing new senior leadership, including reinstating Bismillah Khan as defense minister. Khan was previously removed for corruption, and his militias have been criticized for summary killings. They were also deeply involved in the brutal civil war that led to the Taliban’s takeover in 1996.
READ: US-backed Afghan peace meeting postponed, as Taliban balk
Afghan and international observers fear a similar conflict could erupt once more. During the 1990’s war, multiple warlords battled for power, nearly destroying Kabul and killing at least 50,000 people — mostly civilians — in the process.
Those warlords returned to power after the Taliban’s fall and have gained wealth and strength since. They are jealous of their domains, deeply distrustful of each other, and their loyalties to Ghani are fluid. Ethnic Uzbek warlord Rashid Dostum Uzbek, for example, violently ousted the president’s choice for governor of his Uzbek-controlled province of Faryab earlier this year.
A former adviser to the Afghan government, Torek Farhadi, called the national mobilization “a recipe for future generalized violence.”
He noted the government has promised to pay the militias, even as official security forces complain salaries are often delayed for months. He predicted the same corruption would eat away at the funds meant for militias, and as a result “local commanders and warlords will quickly turn against him (Ghani) and we will have fiefdoms and chaos.”
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told The Associated Press on Thursday that the insurgents captured 104 districts since May 1, including at least 29 in recent fighting. That brought the total area of Taliban control to 165 of Afghanistan’s 471 districts nationwide.
There was no way to immediately verify his statements, and some areas often change hands back and forth. Most analysts tracking the front lines say the Taliban control or hold sway in roughly half the country. Their areas of control are mostly in rural areas.
Officials and observers say many across the country have allegiance to neither side and are deeply disillusioned by corruption, which has resulted in ordinary Afghans benefiting little from the trillions of dollars in international assistance pumped into the country the past 20 years.
“There is no stability. There is no peace,” said Abdul Khasani, an employee at a bus station not far from the Koh Daman militia gathering.
“In Afghanistan, under the Taliban people are suffering, and under the government people are suffering,” he said.
Collapsed Florida building drew global visitors, residents
The Champlain Towers South drew people from around the globe to enjoy life on South Florida’s Atlantic Coast, some for a night, some to live. A couple from Argentina and their young daughter. A beloved retired Miami-area teacher and his wife. Orthodox Jews from Russia. Israelis. The sister of Paraguay’s first lady. Others from South America.
They were among the nearly 100 people who remained missing Friday morning, a day after the 12-story building collapsed into rubble early Thursday. Much of the Champlain’s beach side sheared off for unknown reasons, pancaking into a pile of concrete and metal more than 30 feet (10 meters) high.
Only one person had been confirmed dead, but officials feared that number could skyrocket. Eleven injuries were reported, with four people treated at hospitals.
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“These are very difficult times, and things are going to get more difficult as we move forward,” Miami-Dade Police Director Freddy Ramirez said.
Fire Rescue personnel and others worked through the night in hopes of finding survivors. Officials said no cause for the collapse has been determined.
Video of the collapse showed the center of the building appearing to tumble down first and a section nearest to the ocean teetering and coming down seconds later, as a huge dust cloud swallowed the neighborhood.
Youtube video thumbnailAbout half the building’s roughly 130 units were affected, and rescuers pulled at least 35 people from the wreckage in the first hours after the collapse.
Raide Jadallah, an assistant Miami-Dade County fire chief, said that while listening devices placed on and in the wreckage had picked up no voices, they had detected possible banging noises, giving rescuers hope some are alive. Rescuers were tunneling into the wreckage from below, going through the building’s underground parking garage.
Personal belongings were evidence of shattered lives amid the wreckage of the Champlain, which was built in 1981 in Surfside, a small suburb northwest of Miami. A children’s bunk bed perched precariously on a top floor, bent but intact and apparently inches from falling into the rubble. A comforter lay on the edge of a lower floor. Televisions. Computers. Chairs.
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Argentines Dr. Andres Galfrascoli, his husband, Fabian Nuñez and their 6-year-old daughter, Sofia, had spent Wednesday night there at an apartment belonging to a friend, Nicolas Fernandez.
Galfrascoli, a Buenos Aires plastic surgeon, and Nunez, a theater producer and accountant, had come to Florida to get away from a COVID-19 resurgence in Argentina and its strict lockdowns. They had worked hard to adopt Sofia, Fernandez said.
“Of all days, they chose the worst to stay there,” Fernandez said. “I hope it’s not the case, but if they die like this, that would be so unfair.”
They weren’t the only South Americans missing. Foreign ministries and consulates of four countries said 22 nationals were missing in the collapse: nine from Argentina, six from Paraguay, four from Venezuela and three from Uruguay.
The Paraguayans included Sophia López Moreira — the sister of first lady Silvana Abdo and sister-in-law of President Mario Abdo Benítez — and her family.
Israeli media said the country’s consul general in Miami, Maor Elbaz, believes that 20 citizens of that country are missing.
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Also missing was Arnie Notkin, a retired Miami-area elementary school physical education teacher, and his wife, Myriam. They lived on the third floor.
“Everyone’s been posting, ‘Oh my God, he was my coach,’” said Fortuna Smukler, a friend who turned to Facebook in hopes of finding someone who would report them safe.
“They were also such happy, joyful people. He always had a story to tell, and she always spoke so kindly of my mother,” Smukler said. “Originally there were rumors that he had been found, but it was a case of mistaken identity. It would be a miracle if they’re found alive.”