Joe Biden
US COVID-19 cases rising again, doubling over three weeks
The COVID-19 curve in the U.S. is rising again after months of decline, with the number of new cases per day doubling over the past three weeks, driven by the fast-spreading delta variant, lagging vaccination rates and Fourth of July gatherings.
Confirmed infections climbed to an average of about 23,600 a day on Monday, up from 11,300 on June 23, according to Johns Hopkins University data. And all but two states — Maine and South Dakota — reported that case numbers have gone up over the past two weeks.
“It is certainly no coincidence that we are looking at exactly the time that we would expect cases to be occurring after the July Fourth weekend,” said Dr. Bill Powderly, co-director of the infectious-disease division at Washington University’s School of Medicine in St. Louis.
At the same time, parts of the country are running up against deep vaccine resistance, while the highly contagious mutant version of the coronavirus that was first detected in India is accounting for an ever-larger share of infections.
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Nationally, 55.6% of all Americans have received at least one COVID-19 shot, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The five states with the biggest two-week jump in cases per capita all had lower vaccination rates: Missouri, 45.9%; Arkansas, 43%; Nevada, 50.9%; Louisiana, 39.2%; and Utah, 49.5%.
Even with the latest surge, cases in the U.S. are nowhere near their peak of a quarter-million per day in January. And deaths are running at under 260 per day on average after topping out at more than 3,400 over the winter — a testament to how effectively the vaccine can prevent serious illness and death in those who happen to become infected.
Still, amid the rise, health authorities in places such as Los Angeles County and St. Louis are begging even immunized people to resume wearing masks in public. And Chicago officials announced Tuesday that unvaccinated travelers from Missouri and Arkansas must either quarantine for 10 days or have a negative COVID-19 test.
Meanwhile, the Health Department in Mississippi, which ranks dead last nationally for vaccinations, began blocking posts about COVID-19 on its Facebook page because of a “rise of misinformation” about the virus and the vaccine.
Mississippi officials are also recommending that people 65 and older and those with chronic underlying conditions stay away from large indoor gatherings because of a 150% rise in hospitalizations over the past three weeks.
In Louisiana, which also has one of the nation’s lowest vaccination rates, officials in the city of New Orleans said Tuesday that they are likely to extend until fall virus-mitigation efforts currently in place at large sporting and entertainment gatherings, including mask mandates or requirements that attendees be vaccinated or have a negative COVID-19 test. State health officials said cases of the coronavirus are surging, largely among nonvaccinated people.
But the political will may not be there in many states fatigued by months of restrictions.
Read:Mystery grows with key suspect in Haiti president killing
In Michigan, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is facing a drive to repeal a law that she used to set major restrictions during the early stages of the pandemic.
And Republican Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama pushed back against the idea that the state might need to reimpose preventive measures as vaccinations lag and hospitalizations rise.
“Alabama is OPEN for business. Vaccines are readily available, and I encourage folks to get one. The state of emergency and health orders have expired. We are moving forward,” she said on social media.
Dr. James Lawler, a leader of the Global Center for Health Security at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, said bringing back masks and limiting gatherings would help. But he acknowledged that most of the places seeing higher rates of the virus “are exactly the areas of the country that don’t want to do any of these things.”
Lawler warned that what is happening in Britain is a preview of what’s to come in the U.S.
“The descriptions from regions of the world where the delta variant has taken hold and become the predominant virus are pictures of ICUs full of 30-year-olds. That’s what the critical care doctors describe and that’s what’s coming to the U.S.,” he said.
He added: “I think people have no clue what’s about to hit us.”
Read:FDA adds warning about rare reaction to J&J COVID-19 vaccine
President Joe Biden is putting a dose of star power behind the administration’s efforts to get young people vaccinated. Eighteen-year-old actress, singer and songwriter Olivia Rodrigo will meet with Biden and Dr. Anthony Fauci on Wednesday.
While the administration has had success vaccinating older Americans, young adults have shown less urgency to get the shots.
Some, at least, are heeding the call in Missouri after weeks of begging, said Erik Frederick, chief administrative officer of Mercy Hospital Springfield. He tweeted that the number of people getting immunized at its vaccine clinic has jumped from 150 to 250 daily.
“That gives me hope,” he said.
Mystery grows with key suspect in Haiti president killing
A physician. A church pastor. A failed Florida businessman who filed for bankruptcy.
New details that have emerged about a man considered a key player in the killing of Haiti’s president deepened the mystery over the assassination that shocked this nation of more than 11 million people as it faces an uncertain future.
Local authorities identified the suspect as Christian Emmanuel Sanon, 62, a Haitian who once expressed a desire to lead his country in a YouTube video. However he is unknown in Haitian political circles, and associates suggested he was duped by those really behind the slaying of President Jovenel Moïse in an attack last week that critically wounded his wife, Martine.
A Florida friend of Sanon told The Associated Press the suspect is an evangelical Christian pastor and also is a licensed physician in Haiti, but not in the U.S. The associate, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of safety concerns, said Sanon told him he was approached by people claiming to represent the U.S. State and Justice departments who wanted to install him as president.
Read:Florida suspect in Haiti president killing deepens mystery
He said the plan was only for Moïse to be arrested, and Sanon would not have participated if he knew Moïse would be killed.
“I guarantee you that,” the associate said. “This was supposed to be a mission to save Haiti from hell, with support from the U.S. government.”
Echoing those sentiments was the Rev. Larry Caldwell, a Florida pastor, who said he worked with Sanon setting up churches and medical clinics in Haiti in 2000-2010. He doesn’t believe Sanon would have been involved in violence.
“I know the character of the man,” Caldwell said. “You take a man like that and you’re then going to say he participated in a brutal crime of murder, knowing that being associated with that would send him to the pits of hell? ... If there was one man who would be willing to stand in the breach to help his country, it would be Christian.”
Haiti’s National Police chief, Léon Charles, said Moïse’s killers were protecting Sanon, whom he accused of working with those who plotted the assassination.
Charles said officers found a hat with the logo of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, 20 boxes of bullets, gun parts, four license plates from the Dominican Republic, two cars and correspondence, among other things, in Sanon’s house in Haiti.
Twenty-six former Colombian soldiers are suspected in the killing, and 23 have been arrested, along with three Haitians. Charles said five suspects are still at large and at least three have been killed.
A U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration official told AP that one of the suspects in Moïse’s assassination was at times a confidential source to the agency, and that the suspect reached out to his contacts at the DEA after the killing and was urged to surrender. The official said the DEA and a U.S. State Department official provided information to Haiti’s government that led to the surrender and arrest of one suspect and one other individual, whom it didn’t identify.
Meanwhile, Colombia’s national police chief, Gen. Jorge Luis Vargas, said that a Florida-based enterprise, CTU Security, used its company credit card to buy 19 plane tickets from Bogota to Santo Domingo for Colombian suspects. Most arrived in the Dominican Republic in June and moved into Haiti within weeks, Vargas said.
He said Dimitri Hérard, head of general security at Haiti’s National Palace, flew to Colombia, Ecuador and Panama in the months before the assassination, and Colombian police are investigating whether he had any role in recruiting the mercenaries. In Haiti, prosecutors are seeking to interrogate Hérard as part of the assassination investigation.
Charles said that Sanon was in contact with CTU Security and that the company recruited the suspects in the killing. He said Sanon flew into Haiti in June on a private jet accompanied by several of the alleged gunmen.
The suspects were told their job was to protect Sanon, but they were later ordered to arrest the president, Charles said.
Charles said that after Moïse was killed, one suspect called Sanon, who got in touch with two people believed to be masterminds of the plot. He did not identify the masterminds or say if police know who they are.
Read: Haitian arrested as alleged tie to assassination masterminds
Sanon’s associate said he attended a recent meeting in Florida with Sanon and about a dozen other people, including Antonio Enmanuel Intriago Valera, a Venezuelan émigré to Miami who runs CTU Security. He said a presentation was made for rebuilding Haiti, including its water system, converting trash into energy and fixing roads.
He said Sanon asked why the security team accompanying him to Haiti were all Colombians. Sanon was told that Haitians couldn’t be trusted and that the system is corrupt, the associate said. He said Sanon called him from Haiti a few days before the assassination and said the Colombians had disappeared.
“I’m all by myself. Who are these people? I don’t know what they are doing,” the associate quoted Sanon as saying.
Sanon “is completely gullible,” the associate added. “He thinks God is going to save everything.”
Sanon has lived in Kansas City, Missouri and in Florida, where he filed for bankruptcy in 2013 and identified himself as a medical doctor in a YouTube video titled “Leadership for Haiti” in which he denounced the country’s leadership as corrupt and accused them of stripping the country’s resources.
However, records show Sanon has never been licensed to practice medicine or any other occupation covered by Florida’s Department of Health.
Sanon said in court papers filed in his 2013 bankruptcy case that he was a physician and a pastor at the Tabarre Evangelical Tabernacle in Haiti. He said he had stakes in enterprises including the Organization of Rome Haiti, which he identified as a non-governmental group, a radio station in Haiti and medical facilities in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
At the time of his bankruptcy, he and his wife reported income of $5,000 per month, and a home in Brandon, Florida, valued at about $143,000, with a mortgage of more than $367,000. A federal bankruptcy trustee later determined they hid ownership of about 35 acres in Haiti from creditors.
Florida records show Sanon started about a dozen businesses over the last 20 years, all of which failed, including ones that appeared related to medical imaging, physical therapy, fossil fuel trading, real estate and veganism.
Sanon’s arrest comes as a growing number of politicians have challenged interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph, who is currently in charge of Haiti with backing from police and the military.
U.S. officials, including representatives from the U.S. Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security, met Sunday with Joseph, designated Prime Minister Ariel Henry and Joseph Lambert, the head of Haiti’s dismantled Senate, whom supporters have named as provisional president in a challenge to Joseph, according to the White House National Security Council.
The delegation also met with Haiti’s National Police and reviewed the security of critical infrastructure, it said.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the delegation received a request for additional assistance. She said deployment of U.S. troops remained “under review,” but also suggested that Haiti’s political uncertainty was a complicating factor.
Read: Gangs complicate Haiti effort to recover from assassination
“What was clear from their trip is that there is a lack of clarity about the future of political leadership,” Psaki said.
U.S. President Joe Biden said he was closely following developments, adding: “The people of Haiti deserve peace and security, and Haiti’s political leaders need to come together for the good of their country.”
Meanwhile, U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said Haiti’s request for security assistance is being examined.
The United Nations has been involved in Haiti on and off since 1990, but the last U.N. military peacekeepers left the country in 2017.
Taliban surge in north Afghanistan sends thousands fleeing
Sakina, who is 11, maybe 12, walked with her family for 10 days after the Taliban seized her village in northern Afghanistan and burned down the local school.
They are now among around 50 families living in a makeshift camp on a rocky patch of land on the edge of the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif. They roast in plastic tents under scorching heat that reaches 44 degrees Celsius (110 degrees Fahrenheit) at midday. There are no trees, and the only bathroom for the entire camp is a tattered tent pitched over a foul-smelling hole.
As the Taliban surge through northern Afghanistan — a traditional stronghold of U.S.-allied warlords and an area dominated by the country’s ethnic minorities — thousands of families like Sakina’s are fleeing their homes, fearful of living under the insurgents’ rule.
In the last 15 days, Taliban advances have driven more than 5,600 families from their homes, most of them in the northern reaches of the country, according to the government’s Refugee and Repatriations Ministry.
Read: US left Afghan airfield at night, didn’t tell new commander
In Camp Istiqlal, family after family, all from the Hazara ethnic minority, told of Taliban commanders using heavy-handed tactics as they overran their towns and villages — raising doubts among many over their persistent promises amid negotiations that they will not repeat their harsh rule of the past.
Sakina said it was the middle of the night when her parents packed up their belongings and fled their village of Abdulgan in Balkh province, but not before the invading Taliban set fire to her school. Sakina said she doesn’t understand why her school was burned.
In Camp Istiqlal, there’s not a single light, and sometimes she hears noises in the pitch blackness of night. “I think maybe it’s the Taliban and they have come here. I am afraid,” said the girl, who hopes one day to be an engineer.
Yaqub Maradi fled his village of Sang Shanda, not far from Abdulgan, when the Taliban arrived. He said they tried to intimidate villagers into staying. Maradi’s brother and several members of his family were arrested, “held hostage to stop them from leaving,” he said.
“Maybe he is released today, but he cannot leave,” Maradi said from inside his small sweltering plastic tent pitched over a sunbaked mud floor, with mattresses folded in one corner.
A howling, brutally hot wind ripped through the tent as Mohammad Rahimi, the self-appointed camp leader, who also fled from Abdulgan, recalled how a poorly equipped militia force in his Zari district tried to defend against a larger Taliban force. Rahimi named a handful of militia fighters he said died defending their district.
In areas they control, the Taliban have imposed their own fees and taxes. Ashor Ali, a truck driver, told The Associated Press he pays the Taliban a 12,000 Afghani ($147) toll for every load of coal he brings from a Taliban-controlled part of neighboring Samangan province to Mazar-e-Sharif. That amounts to more than half of what he makes on each haul.
The Taliban are attending international conferences, even sending their ex-ministers on missions to Afghanistan from Qatar, where they have a political office, to assure Afghans they have nothing to fear from them, especially minorities. The group still espouses Islamic rule but says its methods and tenets are less severe.
But if it’s a gentler face they are seeking to portray, fleeing residents say it seems many Taliban commanders in the field either haven’t gotten the message or aren’t listening.
Read:US vacates key Afghan base; pullout target now 'late August'
A February 2020 agreement the Taliban signed with the United States reportedly prevents the insurgents from capturing provincial capitals. Yet two — Kandahar in the south and Badghis in the north — are under siege. In the capital of Kabul, where many fear an eventual Taliban assault, a rocket defense system has been installed, the Ministry of Interior said over the weekend. The statement offered no detail about its origin or cost.
The U.S., Russia, China and even Afghanistan’s neighbor Pakistan, where the Taliban leadership council is headquartered, have all warned the Taliban against trying for a military victory, warning they will be international pariahs. Taliban leaders have vowed they are not doing so, even as they boast of their gains in recent meetings in Iran and in Russia,
The Taliban blame the Afghan government for foiling efforts to jumpstart stalled talks that would elevate discussions to include leaders on both sides of the conflict.
Suhail Shaheen, the Taliban’s political spokesman and a member of its negotiation team, told the AP that on three different occasions his side waited for a high-level delegation from Kabul to come to Doha for talks. They never came, he said.
The Kabul delegation was to include former President Hamid Karzai, as well as Abdullah Abdullah, the head of the National Reconciliation Council, and senior warlords like Ata Mohammad Noor, one of the most powerful northern commanders.
Afghan officials familiar with the planned meetings confirmed their intent to travel to Doha and participate, but said President Ashraf Ghani has been reluctant, often obstructing efforts. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the negotiations with reporters.
Last week, President Joe Biden urged Afghanistan’s leaders to find unity and said it was up to Afghans to bring an end to decades of war. With 90% of the final U.S. and NATO withdrawal completed and its top commander Gen. Scott Miller having relinquished his command, Washington is nearing the end of its “forever war.”
Maradi, whose brother was refused permission to leave, said he doesn’t trust the Taliban promises.
Many are still haunted by memories of the tit-for-tat massacres that had characterized the Taliban rule in areas dominated by Afghanistan’s ethnic minorities in the late 1990s.
Read:Taliban gains drive Afghan government to recruit militias
Mazar-e-Sharif was the scene of horrific bloodletting. In 1997, Uzbek and Hazara fighters killed some 2,000 ethnic Pashtun Taliban, who were captured in the city after a truce deal fell through. In some case, they forced the captives to jump into pits on the plains north of the city, then threw in grenades and sprayed them with automatic weapons. The next year, the Taliban rampaged through Mazar-e-Sharif, killing thousands of Hazaras and driving tens of thousands more out fleeing to Kabul.
At Camp Istiqlal life is brutal. There’s little water to wash, most meals are bread and tea brought to the camp by Rahimi, the leader. Fatima, who cradled her sickly 2-month-old daughter Kobra, said she hadn’t had much food or drink since arriving about one week ago and was unable to produce enough milk to feed her infant. Another mother showed blisters covering the arms and legs of her 2-year-old son, Mohammad Nabi. In the nighttime blackness he knocked over scalding water. They said they have no money for a doctor.
The camp residents say no one has come to help them.
At the edge of the camp, Habibullah Amanullah cried, his 7-year old daughter hiding behind his arm. “She asks me for something to eat. What can I tell her? We have nothing.”
Pfizer to discuss vaccine booster with US officials Monday
Pfizer says it plans to meet with top U.S. health officials Monday to discuss the drugmaker’s request for federal authorization of a third dose of its COVID-19 vaccine as President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser acknowledged that “it is entirely conceivable, maybe likely” that booster shots will be needed.
The company said it was scheduled to have the meeting with the Food and Drug Administration and other officials Monday, days after Pfizer asserted that booster shots would be needed within 12 months.
Pfizer’s Dr. Mikael Dolsten told The Associated Press last week that early data from the company’s booster study suggests people’s antibody levels jump five- to 10-fold after a third dose, compared to their second dose months earlier — evidence it believes supports the need for a booster.
Read:Pfizer to seek OK for 3rd vaccine dose; shots still protect
On Sunday, Dr. Anthony Fauci didn’t rule out the possibility but said it was too soon for the government to recommend another shot. He said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the FDA did the right thing last week by pushing back against Pfizer’s assertion with their statement that they did not view booster shots as necessary “at this time.”
Fauci said clinical studies and laboratory data have yet to fully bear out the need for a booster to the current two-shot Pfizer and Moderna vaccines or the one-shot Johnson & Johnson regimen.
“Right now, given the data and the information we have, we do not need to give people a third shot,” he said. “That doesn’t mean we stop there. ... There are studies being done now ongoing as we speak about looking at the feasibility about if and when we should be boosting people.”
He said it was quite possible in the coming months “as data evolves” that the government may urge a booster based on such factors as age and underlying medical conditions. “Certainly it is entirely conceivable, maybe likely at some time, we will need a boost,″ Fauci said.
Read:AstraZeneca, Pfizer vaccines effective against Delta Covid-19 variants: Study
Monday’s planned meeting between Pfizer and U.S. health officials was first reported by The Washington Post.
Currently only about 48% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated. Some parts of the country have far lower immunization rates, and in those places the delta variant is surging. Last week, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC director, said that’s leading to “two truths” — highly immunized swaths of America are getting back to normal while hospitalizations are rising in other places.
Fauci said it was inexplicable that some Americans are so resistant to getting a vaccine when scientific data show how effective it is in staving off COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations, and he was dismayed by efforts to block making vaccinations more accessible, such as Biden’s suggestion of door-to-door outreach.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson, R-Ark., agreed Sunday that there is a vaccine resistance in Southern and rural states like his because “you have that more conservative approach, skepticism about government.”
Read:AP source: US to buy 500M Pfizer vaccines to share globally
Describing his efforts to boost vaccinations in his state, which is seeing rising infections, Hutchinson said “no one wants an agent knocking on a door,” but “we do want those that do not have access otherwise to make sure they know about it.”
The grassroots component of the federal vaccination campaign has been in operation since April, when supplies of shots began outpacing demand. It was outlined and funded by Congress in the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill passed in March and overwhelmingly is carried out by local officials and private sector workers and volunteers.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., blasted opposition to vaccination efforts from some GOP lawmakers as “absolute insanity.” He said House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy of California and others in the party need to speak out against “these absolute clown politicians playing on your vaccine fears for their own selfish gain.”
Fauci appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union,” ABC’s “This Week” and CBS’ “Face the Nation”; Hutchinson spoke on ABC, and Kinzinger was on CNN.
Peter Haas nominated next US Ambassador to Bangladesh
US President Joe Biden has named Peter D. Haas as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Bangladesh, says the White House.
The US President has also named three individuals to serve as Ambassadors of the US, including Eric M. Garcetti, a nominee for Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, to India.
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Haas, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, class of Minister-Counselor, currently serves as acting Assistant Secretary of State and concurrently as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, for Economic and Business Affairs for the Department of State, said the White House in a statement.
Previously, Haas was Senior Advisor/Deputy Assistant Secretary for Trade Policy and Negotiations for the State Department and prior to that was the Deputy Permanent Representative to the US Mission to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, France.
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Over his career he has served in positions across five geographic bureaus of the State Department including as Consul General of the US Consulate General Mumbai, India.
Haas holds a BA in International Studies and German from Illinois Wesleyan University. He attended the London School of Economics as a Marshall Scholar, where he earned MSc (Econ) degrees in both the Politics of the World Economy and Comparative Government.
Read Outgoing US ambassador says world must end Taiwan’s exclusion
He is the recipient of the James Clement Dunn Award for Excellence and the Cordell Hull Award for Economic Achievement by Senior Officers. His foreign languages are French and German.
Ambassador Earl R Miller is approaching the end of his three-year assignment as U.S. Ambassador to Bangladesh.
Read Working on how US companies can invest in Sylhet: US Ambassador
"These nomination announcements are a regular part of the confirmation process for new U.S. ambassadors," said a spokesperson at the US Embassy in Dhaka.
Drone attacks by Iraqi militias reflect Iran’s waning hold
Iran’s expeditionary Quds Force commander brought one main directive for Iraqi militia faction leaders long beholden to Tehran, when he gathered with them in Baghdad last month: Maintain calm, until after nuclear talks between Iran and the United States.
But he was met with defiance. One of the six faction leaders spoke up in their meeting: They could not stay quiet while the death of his predecessor Qassim Soleimani and senior Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in a U.S. drone strike went unavenged.
Militia attacks have only been increasing against the U.S. in military bases in both Iraq and Syria. Three missile attacks in the last week alone resulted in minor injuries, stoking fears of escalation.
The details from Esmail Ghaani’s visit, confirmed to The Associated Press by three Shiite political officials and two senior militia officials, demonstrate how Iranian-aligned Iraqi militia groups are asserting a degree of independence, sometimes even flouting orders from Tehran. Iran now relies on Lebanon’s Hezbollah for support in reining them in, and there is potential that Iran’s new president could play a role in doing the same.
Read:US airstrikes target Iran-backed militias in Syria, Iraq
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private meetings.
Iran’s influence, sustained by ideological ties and military support, has frayed because of the U.S. killing of Soleimani and al-Muhandis last year, because of differing interests and because of financial strains in Tehran. With nuclear talks restarting following U.S. President Joe Biden’s inauguration this year, these differences have come to the fore.
“Iran isn’t the way it used to be, with 100% control over the militia commanders,” said one Shiite political leader.
Increasing rocket and drone attacks targeting American troops in Iraq and Syria have alarmed Western and coalition officials. There have been at least eight drone attacks targeting the U.S. presence since Biden took office in January, as well as 17 rocket attacks, according to coalition officials.
The attacks are blamed on the Iranian-backed militias that make up the bulk of Iraq’s state-supported Popular Mobilization Forces. The Biden administration has responded by twice targeting Iraqi militia groups operating inside Syria, including close to the Iraqi border.
“What is taking place now is when Ghaani asks for calm, the brigade leaders agree with him. But as soon as he leaves the meeting, they disregard his recommendations,” said another Shiite political leader.
The loudest of the defiant militia voices has been Qais al-Khazali, leader of the Asaib Ahl al-Haq faction, which also maintains a political party. On June 17, only days after Ghaani’s meetings with the militias, he said in a televised address that they would continue to target the U.S. “occupier” and that they will not take into consideration nuclear talks.
“And that decision is an Iraqi one,” he said.
Read:Iraq Interior Ministry: 82 killed in Baghdad hospital fire
The coalition has formally ended combat operations and reduced troop levels significantly in the last year. Only 2,500 U.S. troops remain in Iraq and discussions are ongoing with NATO to transfer to an advisory mission. Iraq still needs coalition support in surveillance and intelligence gathering and airstrikes against Islamic State group targets.
Some argue the ongoing attacks benefit Iran by maintaining pressure on the U.S.
During talks with Shiite political officials during his visit, Ghani said Iran doesn’t interfere in their political work, but that military matters were different. “These must be approved by the Revolutionary Guard,” one political leader recounted him saying.
Still, Ghaani did not reprimand the militia groups during the meeting. Instead, he told them he understood their concerns.
Iran has struggled to fill in the gap left in the absence of Soleimani and al-Muhandis, who were commanding figures able to push factions into line and resolve disputes among them.
“Ghaani has a different style and capabilities,” said Michael Knights, a fellow at The Washington Institute. He has a looser framework, establishing broad red lines on some matters, while “other things are ’don’t ask, don’t tell,” he said.
Along with asking for less, cash-strapped Iran has been giving less as well. Assistance to the groups has been significantly downgraded since U.S. sanctions began crippling Iran’s economy last year.
Divisions among factions have deepened, with growing competition among militias and Shiite politicians.
Read: A growing challenge for Iraq: Iran-aligned Shiite militias
Ghaani came to meet the militia leaders to mend tensions that were sparked weeks earlier when Iraqi authorities arrested a paramilitary commander, Qassim Musleh, prompting a standoff between PMF fighters and security forces. Ghaani brought a letter from Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, criticizing the PMF for its reaction, saying it weakened their position.
To apply pressure on the factions, Iran has come to rely on Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah in Lebanon, a figure the militias highly respect. Almost weekly, various factional leaders hold face-to-face meetings with him in Lebanon, said Shiite political leaders.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, elected in June, also may be a unifying figure for the militias, which hold him in high esteem, political and militia officials said. When Raisi visited Baghdad in February, he met with PMF commanders and told them, in fluent Arabic, “Our flesh is your flesh, and our blood is your blood.” Ghaani communicates with brigade leaders through an interpreter.
“The resistance will grow in power and will see its best of times due to the election victory of Raisi,” said Abu Alaa al-Walae, commander of Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada, in a recent interview.
8 more dead pulled from rubble of collapsed Florida condo
The search for victims of the collapse of a Miami-area high-rise condominium reached its 14th day on Wednesday, with the death toll at three dozen, more than 100 people still unaccounted for and authorities sounding more and more grim.
Crews on Tuesday dug through pulverized concrete where the Champlain Towers South building in Surfside once stood, filling buckets that were passed down a line to be emptied and then returned.
The up-close look at the search, compliments of video released by the Miami-Dade County Fire Rescue Department, came as eight more deaths were announced — the most for a single day since the search began. It also came as rain and wind from Tropical Storm Elsa disrupted the effort, though the storm was on track to make landfall far across the state.
Read:Searchers at collapse site ‘not seeing anything positive’
Searchers have found no new signs of survivors, and although authorities said their mission was still geared toward finding people alive, they sounded increasingly somber.
“Right now, we’re in search and rescue mode,” the county’s police director, Freddy Ramirez, said at a news conference Tuesday evening. He soon added: “Our primary goal right now is to bring closure to the families.”
No one has been rescued from the site since the first hours after the building collapsed on June 24 when many of its residents were asleep.
Searchers were still looking for any open spaces within the mounds of rubble where additional survivors might be found, said the county’s fire chief, Alan Cominsky.
“Unfortunately, we are not seeing anything positive,” he said.
Read:Florida condo collapse: Death toll climbs to 28, 117 still missing
Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said the families of the missing were preparing for news of “tragic loss.” She said President Joe Biden, who visited the area last week, called Tuesday to offer his continued support.
“I think everybody will be ready when it’s time to move to the next phase,” she said.
Reporters got their closest in-person look at the site Tuesday, though it was limited to the portion of the building that workers tore down Sunday after the initial collapse left it standing but dangerously unstable. A pile of shattered concrete and twisted steel stood about 30 feet (9 meters) high and spanned roughly half the length of a football field. A pair of backhoes pulled rubble off the pile, which blocked any view of the search effort.
Severe weather from Elsa hindered search efforts to a degree. Lightning forced rescuers to pause their work for two hours early Tuesday, Assistant Fire Chief Raide Jadallah said. And winds of 20 mph (32 kph), with stronger gusts, hampered efforts to move heavy debris with cranes, officials said.
Read:Search back on after rest of South Florida condo demolished
However, the storm’s heaviest winds and rain would bypass Surfside and neighboring Miami as Elsa weakened along its path to an expected landfall somewhere between Tampa Bay and Florida’s Big Bend.
Crews have removed 124 tons (112 metric tonnes) of debris from the site, Cominsky said. The debris was being sorted and stored in a warehouse as potential evidence in the investigation into why the building collapsed, officials said.
Workers have been freed to search a broader area since the unstable remaining portion of the building was demolished.
Searchers at collapse site ‘not seeing anything positive’
Officials overseeing the search at the site of the Florida condominium collapse sounded increasingly somber Tuesday about the prospects for finding anyone alive, saying they have detected no new signs of life in the rubble as the death toll climbed to 36.
Crews in yellow helmets and blue jumpsuits searched the debris for a 13th day while wind and rain from the outer bands of Hurricane Elsa complicated their efforts. Video released by the Miami-Dade County Fire Rescue Department showed workers lugging pickaxes and power saws through piles of concrete rubble barbed with snapped steel rebar. Other searchers could be seen digging with gloved hands through pulverized concrete and dumping shovels of debris into large buckets.
Search-and-rescue workers continued to look for open spaces where people might be found alive nearly two weeks after the disaster struck at the Champlain Towers South building in Surfside.
Read:Florida condo collapse: Death toll climbs to 28, 117 still missing
“We’re actively searching as aggressively as we can,” Miami-Dade County Fire Chief Alan Cominsky said at a news conference. But he added: “Unfortunately, we are not seeing anything positive. The key things — void spaces, living spaces — we’re not seeing anything like that.”
Reporters got their closest look at the site Tuesday, though it was limited to the portion of the building that demolition workers tore down Sunday after the initial collapse left it standing but dangerously unstable. A pile of shattered concrete and twisted steel stood about 30 feet (9 meters) tall, topped by a couple of air conditioning units, and spanned roughly half the length of a football field. A pair of backhoes pulled rubble off the pile, which blocked any view of the search effort.
While officials still call the efforts a search-and-rescue operation, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said families of those still missing are preparing for news of “tragic loss.” She said President Joe Biden, who visited the area last week, called Tuesday to offer his continued support.
“I think everybody will be ready when it’s time to move to the next phase,” said Levine Cava, who stressed that crews would use the same care as they go through the rubble even after their focus shifts from searching for survivors to recovering the dead.
Read:Search back on after rest of South Florida condo demolished
“Really, you will not see a difference,” she said. “We will carefully search for bodies and belongings, and to catalog and respectfully deal with any remains that we find.”
No one has been rescued alive since the first hours after the collapse, which struck early on June 24, when many of the building’s residents were asleep.
Officials announced Tuesday that teams had recovered eight additional bodies — the highest one-day total since the collapse. More than 100 people remain unaccounted for.
Severe weather from Elsa threatened to hinder search efforts. Lightning forced rescuers to pause their work for two hours early Tuesday, Miami-Dade Assistant Fire Chief Raide Jadallah said. And stiff winds of 20 mph (32 kph), with stronger gusts, hampered efforts to move heavy debris with cranes, officials said.
Read:Florida Collapse: Demolition of condominium set; rescue work to resume after
However, the storm’s heaviest winds and rain were expected to bypass Surfside and neighboring Miami as Elsa strengthened before making landfall somewhere between Tampa Bay and Florida’s Big Bend on a path across northern Florida.
“Active search and rescue continued throughout the night, and these teams continue through extremely adverse and challenging conditions,” Levine Cava said. “Through the rain and through the wind, they have continued searching.”
Crews have removed 124 tons (112 metric tonnes) of debris from the site, Cominsky said. The debris was being sorted and stored in a warehouse as potential evidence in the investigation into why the building collapsed, officials said.
Workers have been freed to search a broader area since the weekend demolition of the unstable remaining portion of the condo building. Officials said that gave rescuers access to spaces that were previously closed off, including bedrooms where people were believed to be sleeping at the time of the disaster.
Rural Kentucky health officials press on, one shot at a time
John Rogers waited months after becoming eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine. It was only after talking with friends that the 66-year-old retiree from rural Spencer County, Kentucky, was persuaded to get the shot.
“They said, ‘You know, the vaccine may not be 100%, but if you get COVID, you’re in bad shape,’” Rogers said. “You can die from it.”
With the nation falling just short of President Joe Biden’s goal of dispensing at least one shot to 70% of all American adults by the Fourth of July, public health officials in places like Spencer County have shifted the emphasis away from mass vaccination clinics toward getting more information out in a more targeted way about the benefits of getting inoculated.
Health departments have offered the vaccine at concerts, parades and fairs and plan to make it available at back-to-school events. They have encouraged local doctors to raise the issue with patients and promoted shots by way of printed materials and social media.
Read:Vaccination 'most patriotic thing', COVID not yet finished: Biden
The hope is that word of mouth will ease fears and misperceptions about the vaccine and change people’s minds, one person at a time if necessary.
That’s especially important in places like Spencer County, an area of rolling green hills and farmland southeast of Louisville, where the state reports that about 22% of eligible adults are at least partially vaccinated. Public health officials there think the numbers are improving and may already be higher.
Biden administration officials are increasingly turning their attention nationwide to some 55 million unvaccinated adults seen as persuadable, a group they have dubbed the “movable middle.”
Many of those being targeted are under 30, an age group that has an especially low vaccination rate. But they also include people like Rogers, who said many people in his community are hesitant to get shots because “they just don’t trust the government.”
Rogers, who worked for a packaging supplier in nearby Shelbyville, said he shook off the skepticism and is now looking forward to a summer of “things going back to normal as they can be.”
Nationally, resistance to getting vaccinated tends to run higher in conservative and rural parts of the country. Overall, 49% of all Kentuckians have received at least one dose, compared with about 55% nationwide.
Stephanie Lokits, who oversees vaccination efforts in the county for the public health department, has watched immunizations slow since a peak in March, when clinics drew hundreds of residents. Now only 10 to 20 trickle through a weekly vaccine clinic held in the county seat of Taylorsville, a town of 1,600 with an old theater, a courthouse, some empty storefronts and a few small businesses slowly finding their way out of the pandemic.
Read:Biden urges shots for young adults as variant concern grows
While Kentucky has seen a decline in cases in the past seven weeks, nearly all confirmed infections and deaths reported in the past month have been in unvaccinated residents.
“I think that the philosophy that we have really tried to go by is that every single shot that we can get administered to a person is a positive thing,” Lokits said. “I think that’s kind of the place where a lot of health departments and a lot of providers are at.”
Lauren Slone, a nurse practitioner leading the vaccine effort at a community health center in Taylorsville, said she has learned through conversations with her patients that misconceptions about long-term effects pose real problems.
She has found that most people she talks to eventually get vaccinated. The challenge, she said, is “getting people to talk to me about it in the first place.”
While appointments in the center aren’t filling up as quickly as she would like, Slone thinks an effort to distribute information at local middle and high schools led to more vaccine appointments.
“I thought, you know, one way to get adults in is when teenagers know about it,“ Slone said. ”If your teenager asks to get it, then maybe that encourages you a little bit as well.”
A June drive-thru clinic held after the information push was well-attended by young adults. That’s another good sign, Slone said. Only one-third of Kentuckians 18 to 29 have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, compared with 83% of residents 65 and up.
Read:Biden promotes milestone of 300M vaccine shots in 150 days
Still, getting the word out can be harder in a rural county, because some residents aren’t on social media or don’t have consistent access to the internet. And in spread-out, sparsely populated places like Spencer County, some people may not feel the need to get the vaccine as quickly, said district health department director Roanya Rice.
Also, Spencer County has lower cases per-capita than neighboring counties and the state as a whole, meaning the threat can seem far away to some.
Rogers, now fully vaccinated, is enjoying the freedom to take off his mask for good, eat at a restaurant or visit with relatives without worrying.
“I waited a long time,” he said. “I should have gotten it a long time ago.”
US left Afghan airfield at night, didn’t tell new commander
The U.S. left Afghanistan’s Bagram Airfield after nearly 20 years by shutting off the electricity and slipping away in the night without notifying the base’s new Afghan commander, who discovered the Americans’ departure more than two hours after they left, Afghan military officials said.
Afghanistan’s army showed off the sprawling air base Monday, providing a rare first glimpse of what had been the epicenter of America’s war to unseat the Taliban and hunt down the al-Qaida perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks on America.
The U.S. announced Friday it had completely vacated its biggest airfield in the country in advance of a final withdrawal the Pentagon says will be completed by the end of August.
“We (heard) some rumor that the Americans had left Bagram ... and finally by seven o’clock in the morning, we understood that it was confirmed that they had already left Bagram,” Gen. Mir Asadullah Kohistani, Bagram’s new commander said.
Read: US vacates key Afghan base; pullout target now 'late August'
U.S. military spokesman Col. Sonny Leggett did not address the specific complaints of many Afghan soldiers who inherited the abandoned airfield, instead referring to a statement last week.
The statement said the handover of the many bases had been in the process soon after President Joe Biden’s mid-April announcement that America was withdrawing the last of its forces. Leggett said in the statement that they had coordinated their departures with Afghanistan’s leaders.
Before the Afghan army could take control of the airfield about an hour’s drive from the Afghan capital Kabul, it was invaded by a small army of looters, who ransacked barrack after barrack and rummaged through giant storage tents before being evicted, according to Afghan military officials.
“At first we thought maybe they were Taliban,” said Abdul Raouf, a soldier of 10 years. He said the the U.S. called from the Kabul airport and said “we are here at the airport in Kabul.”
Kohistani insisted the Afghan National Security and Defense Force could hold on to the heavily fortified base despite a string of Taliban wins on the battlefield. The airfield also includes a prison with about 5,000 prisoners, many of them allegedly Taliban.
The Taliban’s latest surge comes as the last U.S. and NATO forces pull out of the country. As of last week, most NATO soldiers had already quietly left. The last U.S. soldiers are likely to remain until an agreement to protect the Kabul Hamid Karzai International Airport, which is expected to be done by Turkey, is completed.
Meanwhile, in northern Afghanistan, district after district has fallen to the Taliban. In just the last two days hundreds of Afghan soldiers fled across the border into Tajikistan rather than fight the insurgents.
“In battle it is sometimes one step forward and some steps back,” said Kohistani.
Read: US hands Bagram Airfield to Afghans after nearly 20 years
Kohistani said the Afghan military is changing its strategy to focus on the strategic districts. He insisted they would retake them in the coming days without saying how that would be accomplished.
On display on Monday was a massive facility, the size of a small city, that had been exclusively used by the U.S. and NATO. The sheer size is extraordinary, with roadways weaving through barracks and past hangar-like buildings. There are two runways and over 100 parking spots for fighter jets known as revetments because of the blast walls that protect each aircraft. One of the two runways is 12,000 feet (3,660 meters) long and was built in 2006. There’s a passenger lounge, a 50-bed hospital and giant hangar-size tents filled with supplies such as furniture.
Kohistani said the U.S. left behind 3.5 million items, all itemized by the departing U.S. military. They include tens of thousands of bottles of water, energy drinks and military ready-made meals, known as MRE’s.
“When you say 3.5 million items, it is every small items, like every phone, every door knob, every window in every barracks, every door in every barracks,” he said.
The big ticket items left behind include thousands of civilian vehicles, many of them without keys to start them, and hundreds of armored vehicles. Kohistani said the U.S. also left behind small weapons and the ammunition for them, but the departing troops took heavy weapons with them. Ammunition for weapons not being left behind for the Afghan military was blown up before they left.
Afghan soldiers who wandered Monday throughout the base that had once seen as many as 100,000 U.S. troops were deeply critical of how the U.S. left Bagram, leaving in the night without telling the Afghan soldiers tasked with patrolling the perimeter.
“In one night, they lost all the goodwill of 20 years by leaving the way they did, in the night, without telling the Afghan soldiers who were outside patrolling the area,” said Afghan soldier Naematullah, who asked that only his one name be used.
Within 20 minutes of the U.S.’s silent departure on Friday, the electricity was shut down and the base was plunged into darkness, said Raouf, the soldier of 10 years who has also served in Taliban strongholds of Helmand and Kandahar provinces.
Read:Biden vows 'sustained' help as Afghanistan drawdown nears
The sudden darkness was like a signal to the looters, he said. They entered from the north, smashing through the first barrier, ransacking buildings, loading anything that was not nailed down into trucks.
On Monday, three days after the U.S. departure, Afghan soldiers were still collecting piles of garbage that included empty water bottles, cans and empty energy drinks left behind by the looters.
Kohistani, meanwhile, said the nearly 20 years of U.S. and NATO involvement in Afghanistan was appreciated but now it was time for Afghans to step up.
“We have to solve our problem. We have to secure our country and once again build our country with our own hands,” he said.