USA
Rush of troops to Kabul tests Biden's withdrawal deadline
The last-minute decision to send 3,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan to help partially evacuate the U.S. Embassy is calling into question whether President Joe Biden will meet his Aug. 31 deadline for fully withdrawing combat forces. The vanguard of a Marine contingent arrived in Kabul on Friday and most of the rest of the 3,000 are due by Sunday.
Officials have stressed that the newly arriving troops’ mission is limited to assisting the airlift of embassy personnel and Afghan allies, and they expect to complete it by month’s end. But they might have to stay longer if the embassy is threatened by a Taliban takeover of Kabul by then. On Friday the Taliban seemed nearly within reach of contesting the capital.
“Clearly from their actions, it appears as if they are trying to get Kabul isolated,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said, referring to the Taliban’s speedy and efficient takedown of major provincial capitals across the country in recent days.
Biden had given the Pentagon until Aug. 31 to complete the withdrawal of the 2,500 to 3,000 troops that were in Afghanistan when he announced in April that he was ending U.S. involvement in the war. That number has dropped to just under 1,000, and all but about 650 are scheduled to be gone by the end of the month; the 650 are to remain to help protect the U.S. diplomatic presence, including with aircraft and defensive weapons at Kabul airport.
READ: Biden lands win, but virus surge threatens to derail agenda
But Thursday’s decision to dispatch 3,000 fresh troops to the airport adds a new twist to the U.S. withdrawal. There is no discussion of rejoining the war, but the number of troops needed for security will depend on decisions about keeping the embassy open and the extent of a Taliban threat to the capital in coming days.
Having the Aug. 31 deadline pass with thousands of U.S. troops in the country would be awkward for Biden given his insistence on ending the 20-year U.S. war by that date. Republicans have already criticized the withdrawal as a mistake and ill-planned, though there’s little political appetite by either party to send fresh troops to fight the Taliban.
Kirby declined to discuss any assessment of whether the Taliban are likely soon to converge on Kabul, but the urgent movement of extra U.S. troops into Afghanistan to assist the embassy drawdown is clear evidence of Washington’s worry that after the rapid fall of major cities this week with relatively little Afghan government resistance, Kabul is endangered.
Kirby reiterated the Biden administration’s assertion that Afghan security forces have tangible advantages over the insurgents, including a viable air force and superior numbers. The statement serves to highlight the fact that what the Afghan forces lack is motivation to fight in a circumstance where the Taliban seem to have decisive momentum.
Stephen Biddle, a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University, said in an interview the announcement that 3,000 U.S. troops are heading to Kabul to help pull out American diplomats and embassy staff likely made Afghan morale even worse.
“The message that sent to Afghans is: ‘The city of Kabul is going to fall so fast that we can’t organize an orderly withdrawal from the embassy,’” Biddle said. This suggests to Afghans that the Americans see little future for the government and that “this place could be toast within hours.”
Kirby said lead “elements” of a Marine battalion arrived in Kabul on Friday as the U.S. speeds up evacuation flights for some American diplomats and thousands of Afghans. The rest of that battalion and two others are due in coming days.
“Clearly from their actions, it appears as if they are trying to get Kabul isolated,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said, referring to the Taliban’s speedy and efficient takedown of major provincial capitals across the country in recent days.
Biden had given the Pentagon until Aug. 31 to complete the withdrawal of the 2,500 to 3,000 troops that were in Afghanistan when he announced in April that he was ending U.S. involvement in the war. That number has dropped to just under 1,000, and all but about 650 are scheduled to be gone by the end of the month; the 650 are to remain to help protect the U.S. diplomatic presence, including with aircraft and defensive weapons at Kabul airport.
But Thursday’s decision to dispatch 3,000 fresh troops to the airport adds a new twist to the U.S. withdrawal. There is no discussion of rejoining the war, but the number of troops needed for security will depend on decisions about keeping the embassy open and the extent of a Taliban threat to the capital in coming days.
Having the Aug. 31 deadline pass with thousands of U.S. troops in the country would be awkward for Biden given his insistence on ending the 20-year U.S. war by that date. Republicans have already criticized the withdrawal as a mistake and ill-planned, though there’s little political appetite by either party to send fresh troops to fight the Taliban.
Kirby declined to discuss any assessment of whether the Taliban are likely soon to converge on Kabul, but the urgent movement of extra U.S. troops into Afghanistan to assist the embassy drawdown is clear evidence of Washington’s worry that after the rapid fall of major cities this week with relatively little Afghan government resistance, Kabul is endangered.
Kirby reiterated the Biden administration’s assertion that Afghan security forces have tangible advantages over the insurgents, including a viable air force and superior numbers. The statement serves to highlight the fact that what the Afghan forces lack is motivation to fight in a circumstance where the Taliban seem to have decisive momentum.
Stephen Biddle, a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University, said in an interview the announcement that 3,000 U.S. troops are heading to Kabul to help pull out American diplomats and embassy staff likely made Afghan morale even worse.
“The message that sent to Afghans is: ‘The city of Kabul is going to fall so fast that we can’t organize an orderly withdrawal from the embassy,’” Biddle said. This suggests to Afghans that the Americans see little future for the government and that “this place could be toast within hours.”
READ: Biden to launch vaccine push for millions of federal workers
Kirby said lead “elements” of a Marine battalion arrived in Kabul on Friday as the U.S. speeds up evacuation flights for some American diplomats and thousands of Afghans. The rest of that battalion and two others are due in coming days.
US okays Covid booster dose for those with weak immune systems
Transplant recipients and others with severely weakened immune systems can get an extra dose of the Pfizer or Moderna Covid-19 vaccines to better protect them as the Delta variant continues to surge, US regulators said Thursday.
The late-night announcement by the Food and Drug Administration applies to several million Americans who are especially vulnerable because of organ transplants, certain cancers or other disorders. Several other countries, including France and Israel, have similar recommendations.
It is harder for vaccines to rev up an immune system suppressed by certain medications and diseases, so those patients do not always get the same protection as otherwise healthy people – and small studies suggest for at least some, an extra dose may be the solution.
"Today's action allows doctors to boost immunity in certain immunocompromised individuals who need extra protection from Covid-19," Dr Janet Woodcock, the FDA's acting commissioner, said.
The FDA determined that transplant recipients and others with a similar level of compromised immunity can receive a third dose of the vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna at least 28 days after getting their second shot. The FDA made no mention of immune-compromised patients who received the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
The announcement comes as the extra-contagious Delta version of the coronavirus surges through much of the country, pushing new cases, hospitalisations and deaths to heights not seen since last winter.
Read: Why might COVID-19 vaccine boosters be necessary?
However, the FDA's decision only applies to this high-risk group, estimated to be no more than 3% of US adults. It’s not an opening for booster doses for the general population.
Health authorities consider the extra dose part of the initial prescription for the immune-compromised. For example, France since April has encouraged that such patients get a third dose four weeks after their regular second shot. Israel and Germany also recently began recommending a third dose of two-dose vaccines.
Separately, US health officials are continuing to closely monitor if and when average people's immunity wanes enough to require boosters for everyone – but for now, the vaccines continue to offer robust protection for the general population.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to formally recommend the extra shots for certain immune-compromised groups after a meeting Friday of its outside advisers.
Transplant recipients and others with suppressed immune systems know they are at more risk than the average American, and some have been seeking out extra doses on their own, even if it means lying about their vaccination status. The change means now the high-risk groups can more easily get another shot – but experts caution it is not yet clear exactly who should.
"This is all going to be very personalised," cautioned Dr Dorry Segev, a transplant surgeon at Johns Hopkins University who is running a major National Institutes of Health study of extra shots for organ recipients. For some people, a third dose "increases their immune response. Yet for some people, it does not seem to. We do not quite know who is who yet."
Read: Head of UN health agency seeks vaccine booster moratorium
One recent study of more than 650 transplant recipients found just over half harboured virus-fighting antibodies after two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines – although generally less than in otherwise healthy vaccinated people. Another study of people with rheumatoid arthritis and similar autoimmune diseases found only those who use particular medications have very poor vaccine responses.
There is little data on how well a third dose works, and if it causes any safety problems such as an increased risk of organ rejection.
Wednesday, Canadian researchers reported that transplant recipients were more likely to have high levels of antibodies if they got a third dose than those given a dummy shot for comparison. Other small studies have similarly found that some transplant recipients respond to
Climate-fueled wildfires take toll on tropical Pacific isles
A metal roof sits atop the burned remains of a homestead on the once-lush slopes of Hawaii’s Mauna Kea — a dormant volcano and the state’s tallest peak — charred cars and motorcycles strewn about as wind-whipped sand and ash blast the scorched landscape.
Generations of Kumu Micah Kamohoalii’s family have lived on these lands reserved for Native Hawaiians, and his cousin owns this house destroyed by the state’s largest-ever wildfire.
“I’ve never seen a fire this big,” Kamohoalii said. “Waimea has had fires, many of them before and some maybe a few hundred acres, but not this size.”
The fire has burned more than 70 square miles (181 square kilometers) in the two weeks it has been going. But it wasn’t the first time this area has burned, and won’t be the last. Like many islands in the Pacific, Hawaii’s dry seasons are getting more extreme with climate change.
Read:Wildfire bears down on Montana towns as West burns
“Everyone knows Waimea to be the pasturelands and to be all the green rolling hills. And so when I was young, all of this was always green,” Kamohoalii said. “In the last 10 to 15 years, it has been really, really dry.”
Huge wildfires highlight the dangers of climate change-related heat and drought for many communities throughout the U.S. West and other hotspots around the world. But experts say relatively small fires on typically wet, tropical islands in the Pacific are also on the rise, creating a cycle of ecological damage that affects vital and limited resources for millions of residents.
From Micronesia to Hawaii, wildfires have been a growing problem for decades. With scarce funding to prevent and suppress these fires, island communities have struggled to address the problem.
“On tropical islands, fires have a unique set of impacts,” said Clay Trauernicht, an ecosystems and wildfire researcher at the University of Hawaii. “First and foremost, fires were very rare prior to human arrival on any Pacific island. The vegetation, the native ecosystems, really evolved in the absence of frequent fires. And so when you do get these fires, they tend to kind of wreak havoc.”
But it’s not just burnt land that is affected. Fires on islands harm environments from the top of mountains to below the ocean’s surface.
“Once a fire occurs, what you’re doing is removing vegetation,” Trauernicht said. “And we often get heavy rainfall events. All of that exposed soil gets carried downstream and we have these direct impacts of erosion, sedimentation on our marine ecosystems. So it really hammers our coral reefs as well.”
Pacific island reefs support local food production, create barriers to large storm surges and are a critical part of tourism that keeps many islands running.
The wet season on tropical islands also causes fire-adapted grasses to grow tall and thick, building fuel for the next summer’s wildfires.
“Guinea grass grows six inches a day in optimal conditions and a six-foot tall patch of grass can throw 20-foot flame lengths,” said Michael Walker, Hawaii’s state fire protection forester. “So what we have here are really fast-moving, very hot, very dangerous fires.”
Read: Wildfires in Algeria leave 42 dead, including 25 soldiers
Walker said such non-native grasses that have proliferated in Hawaii are adapted to fire, but native species and shrubs are not.
“While (these wildfires) may not compare to the size and duration of what folks have in the western United States, we burn a significant portion of our lands every year because of these grass fires, and they’re altering our natural ecosystems and converting forests to grass,” he said.
The latest wildfire on Hawaii’s Big Island burned about 1% of the state’s total land, and other islands in the Pacific such as Palau, Saipan and Guam burn even more — up to 10% in severe fire years.
On average, Guam has nearly 700 wildfires a year, Palau about 175 and Saipan about 20, according to data from 2018.
Guam, like many other places, has long used fire as a tool. Farmers sometimes use it to clear fields and hunters have been known to burn areas while poaching.
The U.S. territory’s forestry chief Christine Camacho Fejeran said fires on the island are mostly caused by arson. “So all of Guam’s wildfires are human-caused issues, whether it’s an intentional or an escaped backyard fire or another (cause),” she said.
On average, Fejeran said, 6,000 to 7,000 acres (2,430 to 2,830 hectares) of the island burns each year, amounting to about 5% of its land.
While no homes have been lost to recent wildfires on Guam, Fejeran believes that trend will come to an end — unless more is done to combat the fires.
The island has made some changes in fire legislation, management, education and enforcement. Arson has become a chargeable offense, but Fejeran says enforcement remains an obstacle in the tight-knit community.
Read: 'We fought a great battle': Greece defends wildfire response
Back in Hawaii, last week’s blaze destroyed three homes, but the fire threatened many more.
Mikiala Brand, who has lived for two decades on a 50-acre homestead, watched as flames came within a few hundred yards (meters) of her house.
As the fire grew closer, she saw firefighters, neighbors and the National Guard racing into her rural neighborhood to fight it. She had to evacuate her beloved home twice in less than 24 hours.
“Of course it was scary,” she said. “But I had faith that the strong, the brave and the talented, and along with nature and Akua, which is our name for the universal spirit, would take care.”
Demonstrating the tenacity of many Native Hawaiians in her farming and ranching community, Brand said, “I only worry about what I have control over.”
Down the mountain in Waikoloa Village, a community of about 7,000, Linda Hunt was also forced to evacuate. She works at a horse stable and scrambled to save the animals as flames whipped closer.
“We only have one and a half roads to get out — you have the main road and then you have the emergency access,” Hunt said of a narrow dirt road. “Everybody was trying to evacuate, there was a lot of confusion.”
The fire was eventually put out just short of the densely populated neighborhood, but had flames reached the homes, it could have been disastrous on the parched landscape.
“When you have high winds like we get here, it’s difficult no matter how big your fire break is, it’s going to blow right through,” Hunt said.
Read: Wildfires rampage in Greek forests, cut large island in half
While fires are becoming more difficult to fight because of dry and hot conditions associated with climate change, experts say the Pacific islands still can help prevent these blazes from causing ecological damage and property losses.
“Fire presents a pretty interesting component of kind of all these climate change impacts that we’re dealing with in the sense that they are manageable,” said Trauernicht, the University of Hawaii wildfire expert.
In addition to education and arson prevention, he said, land use — such as grazing practices and reforestation that reduce volatile grasses — could help.
“It’s within our control, potentially, to reduce the impacts that we’re seeing with fires,” Trauernicht said. “Both in terms of forest loss as well as the impacts on coral reefs.”
US OK’d extra Covid vaccine dose for those with weak immune systems
U.S. regulators say transplant recipients and others with severely weakened immune systems can get an extra dose of the Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 vaccines to better protect them as the delta variant continues to surge.
The late-night announcement Thursday by the Food and Drug Administration applies to several million Americans who are especially vulnerable because of organ transplants, certain cancers or other disorders. Several other countries, including France and Israel, have similar recommendations.
It’s harder for vaccines to rev up an immune system suppressed by certain medications and diseases, so those patients don’t always get the same protection as otherwise healthy people — and small studies suggest for at least some, an extra dose may be the solution.
Also read: The link between the COVID-19 vaccine and pregnancy
“Today’s action allows doctors to boost immunity in certain immunocompromised individuals who need extra protection from COVID-19,” Dr. Janet Woodcock, the FDA’s acting commissioner, said in a statement.
The FDA determined that transplant recipients and others with a similar level of compromised immunity can receive a third dose of the vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna at least 28 days after getting their second shot. The FDA made no mention of immune-compromised patients who received the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
The announcement comes as the extra-contagious delta version of the coronavirus surges through much of the country, pushing new cases, hospitalizations and deaths to heights not seen since last winter.
Importantly, the FDA’s decision only applies to this high-risk group, estimated to be no more than 3% of U.S. adults. It’s not an opening for booster doses for the general population.
Also read: Moderna says vaccine 93% effective but seeks 3rd-shot in fall
Instead, health authorities consider the extra dose part of the initial prescription for the immune-compromised. For example, France since April has encouraged that such patients get a third dose four weeks after their regular second shot. Israel and Germany also recently began recommending a third dose of two-dose vaccines.
Separately, U.S. health officials are continuing to closely monitor if and when average people’s immunity wanes enough to require boosters for everyone — but for now, the vaccines continue to offer robust protection for the general population.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to formally recommend the extra shots for certain immune-compromised groups after a meeting Friday of its outside advisers.
Transplant recipients and others with suppressed immune systems know they’re at more risk than the average American and some have been seeking out extra doses on their own, even if it means lying about their vaccination status. The change means now the high-risk groups can more easily get another shot — but experts caution it’s not yet clear exactly who should.
“This is all going to be very personalized,” cautioned Dr. Dorry Segev, a transplant surgeon at Johns Hopkins University who is running a major National Institutes of Health study of extra shots for organ recipients. For some people, a third dose “increases their immune response. Yet for some people it does not seem to. We don’t quite know who’s who yet.”
One recent study of more than 650 transplant recipients found just over half harbored virus-fighting antibodies after two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines — although generally less than in otherwise healthy vaccinated people. Another study of people with rheumatoid arthritis and similar autoimmune diseases found only those who use particular medications have very poor vaccine responses.
There’s little data on how well a third dose works, and if it causes any safety problems such as an increased risk of organ rejection. Wednesday, Canadian researchers reported that transplant recipients were more likely to have high levels of antibodies if they got a third dose than those given a dummy shot for comparison. Other small studies have similarly found that some transplant recipients respond to a third dose while others still lack enough protection.
Census shows US is diversifying, white population shrinking
The U.S. became more diverse and more urban over the past decade, and the non-Hispanic white population dropped for the first time on record, the Census Bureau reported Thursday as it released a trove of demographic data that will be used to redraw the nation’s political maps.
The new figures offered the most detailed portrait yet of how the country has changed since 2010, and they are sure to set off an intense partisan battle over representation at a time of deep national division and fights over voting rights. The numbers could help determine control of the House in the 2022 elections and provide an electoral edge for years to come. The data will also shape how $1.5 trillion in annual federal spending is distributed.
Americans continued to migrate to the South and West at the expense of the Midwest and Northeast, the figures showed. The share of the white population fell from 63.7% in 2010 to 57.8% in 2020, the lowest on record, driven by falling birthrates among white women compared with Hispanic and Asian women. The number of non-Hispanic white people shrank from 196 million in 2010 to 191 million.
White people continue to be the most prevalent racial or ethnic group, though that changed in California, where Hispanics became the largest racial or ethnic group, growing from 37.6% to 39.4% over the decade, while the share of white people dropped from 40.1% to 34.7%. California, the nation’s most populous state, joined Hawaii, New Mexico and the District of Columbia as a place where non-Hispanic white people are no longer the dominant group.
“The U.S. population is much more multiracial and much more racially and ethnically diverse than what we have measured in the past,” said Nicholas Jones, a Census Bureau official.
Some demographers cautioned that the white population was not shrinking as much as shifting to multiracial identities. The number of people who identified as belonging to two or more races more than tripled from 9 million people in 2010 to 33.8 million in 2020. They now account for 10% of the U.S. population.
People who identify as a race other than white, Black, Asian, American Indian, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander — either alone or in combination with one of those races — jumped to 49.9 million people, surpassing the Black population of 46.9 million people as the nation’s second-largest racial group, according to the Census Bureau.
But demographers said that may have to do with Hispanic uncertainty about how to answer the race question on the census form, as well as changes the Census Bureau made in processing responses and how it asked about race and ethnicity.
Asians were the next most populous racial group, reaching 24 million people in 2020, a jump of more than a third.
The Hispanic population boomed over the decade, growing by almost a quarter to 62.1 million residents in 2020 and accounting for almost half of the overall U.S. population growth, which was the slowest since the Great Depression. By comparison, the non-Hispanic growth rate over the decade was 4.3%.
The data “demonstrates that the Latino community is a huge and increasing part of our nation’s future,” said Thomas Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
Almost all of the growth of the past 10 years happened in metropolitan areas. About 80% of metropolitan areas saw population gains as more people in smaller counties moved to larger, more urban counties.
The share of children in the U.S. declined because of falling birth rates, while the share of adults grew, driven by aging baby boomers. Adults over age 18 made up more than three-quarters of the population in 2020, or 258.3 million people, an increase of more than 10% from 2010. However, the population of children under age 18 dropped from 74.2 million in 2010 to 73.1 million in 2020.
In addition, there is now no majority racial or ethnic group for people younger than 18, as the share of non-Hispanic whites in the age group dropped from 53.5% to 47.3% over the decade.
“If not for Hispanics, Asians, people of two or more races, those are the only groups underage that are growing,” said William Frey, a senior fellow at Brookings’ Metropolitan Policy Program. “A lot of these young minorities are important for our future growth, not only for the child population but for our future labor force.”
The data comes from compiling forms filled out last year by tens of millions of Americans, with the help of census takers and government statisticians to fill in the blanks when forms were not turned in or questions were left unanswered. The numbers reflect countless decisions made over the past 10 years by individuals to have children, move to another part of the country or to come to the U.S. from elsewhere.
The release offers states the first chance to redraw their political districts in a process that is expected to be particularly brutish since control over Congress and statehouses is at stake.
It also provides the first opportunity to see, on a limited basis, how well the Census Bureau fulfilled its goal of counting every U.S. resident during what many consider the most difficult once-a-decade census in recent memory. Communities of color have been undercounted in past censuses. The agency likely will not know how good a job it did until next year, when it releases a survey showing undercounts and overcounts.
“The data we are releasing today meet our high quality data standards,” acting Census Bureau Director Ron Jarmin said.
Even before it began, the headcount was challenged by attempted political interference from the Trump administration’s failed efforts to add a citizenship question to the census form, a move that critics feared would have a chilling effect on immigrant or Hispanic participation. The effort was stopped by the Supreme Court.
The information was originally supposed to be released by the end of March, but that deadline was pushed back because of delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
The start of the 2020 census for most U.S. residents coincided with the spread of the virus last year, forcing the Census Bureau to delay operations and extend the count’s schedule. Because census data is tied to where people were on April 1, 2020, the numbers will not reflect the loss of nearly 620,000 people in the U.S. who died from COVID-19.
On top of the pandemic, census takers in the West contended with wildfires, and those in Louisiana faced repeated hurricanes. Then, there were court battles over the Trump administration’s effort to end the count early that repeatedly changed the plan for concluding field operations.
Back in April, the Census Bureau released state population totals showing how many congressional seats each state gets.
US sending 3K troops for partial Afghan embassy evacuation
Just weeks before the U.S. is scheduled to end its war in Afghanistan, the Biden administration is rushing 3,000 fresh troops to the Kabul airport to help with a partial evacuation of the U.S. Embassy. The move highlights the stunning speed of a Taliban takeover of much of the country, including their capture on Thursday of Kandahar, the second-largest city and the birthplace of the Taliban movement.
The State Department said the embassy will continue functioning, but Thursday’s dramatic decision to bring in thousands of additional U.S. troops is a sign of waning confidence in the Afghan government’s ability to hold off the Taliban surge. The announcement came just hours after the Taliban captured the western city of Herat as well as Ghazni, a strategic provincial capital south of Kabul. The advance, and the partial U.S. Embassy evacuation, increasingly isolate the nation’s capital, home to millions of Afghans.
“This is not abandonment. This is not an evacuation. This is not a wholesale withdrawal,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said. “What this is is a reduction in the size of our civilian footprint.”
Also read: Taliban take 10th Afghan provincial capital in blitz
Price rejected the idea that Thursday’s moves sent encouraging signals to an already emboldened Taliban, or demoralizing ones to frightened Afghan civilians. “The message we are sending to the people of Afghanistan is one of enduring partnership,” Price insisted.
President Joe Biden, who has remained adamant about ending the 19-year U.S. mission in Afghanistan at the end of this month despite the Taliban sweep, conferred with senior national security officials overnight, then gave the order for the additional temporary troops Thursday morning.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Thursday. The U.S. also warned Taliban officials directly that the U.S. would respond if the Taliban attacked Americans during the temporary U.S. military deployments.
Britain’s ministry of defense said Thursday that it will send around 600 troops to Afghanistan on a short-term basis to help U.K. nationals leave the country. And Canadian special forces will deploy to Afghanistan to help Canadian staff leave Kabul, a source familiar with the plan told The Associated Press. That official, who was not authorized to talk publicly about the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity, did not say how many special forces would be sent.
The Pentagon’s chief spokesman, John Kirby, said that in addition to sending three infantry battalions — two from the Marine Corps and one from the Army — to the airport, the Pentagon will dispatch 3,500 to 4,000 troops from a combat brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division to Kuwait to act as a reserve force. He said they will be on standby “in case we need even more” than the 3,000 going to Kabul.
Also, about 1,000 Army and Air Force troops, including military police and medical personnel, will be sent to Qatar in coming days to support a State Department effort to accelerate its processing of Special Immigrant Visa applications from Afghans who once worked for the U.S. government and feel threated by the Taliban, Kirby said.
Also read: US keeping distance as Afghan forces face Taliban rout
The 3,000 troops who are to arrive at the Kabul airport in the next day or two, Kirby said, are to assist with security at the airport and to help process the departure of embassy personnel — not to get involved in the Afghan government’s war with the Taliban. Biden decided in April to end U.S. military involvement in the war, and the withdrawal is scheduled to be complete by Aug. 31.
The U.S. had already withdrawn most of its troops, but had kept about 650 troops in Afghanistan to support U.S. diplomatic security, including at the airport.
Kirby said the influx of fresh troops does not mean the U.S. is reentering combat with the Taliban.
“This is a temporary mission with a narrow focus,” he told reporters at the Pentagon.
The viability of the U.S.-trained Afghan army, however, is looking increasingly dim. A new military assessment says Kabul could come under Taliban pressure as soon as September and, if current trends hold, the country could fall to the Taliban within a few months.
Price, the State Department spokesman, said diplomatic work will continue at the Kabul embassy.
“Our first responsibility has always been protecting the safety and the security of our citizens serving in Afghanistan, and around the world,” Price said at a briefing, calling the the speed of the Taliban advance and resulting instability “of grave concern.”
Shortly before Price’s announcement, the embassy in Kabul urged U.S. citizens to leave immediately — reiterating a warning it first issued Saturday.
The latest drawdown will further limit the ability of the embassy to conduct business, although Price maintained it would still be able to function. Nonessential personal had already been withdrawn from the embassy in April after Biden’s withdrawal announcement and it was not immediately clear how many staffers would remain on the heavily fortified compound. As of Thursday, there were roughly 4,200 staffers at the embassy, but most of those are Afghan nationals, according to the State Department.
Also read: India begins evacuating its nationals from Afghanistan
Apart from a complete evacuation and shuttering of the embassy, Price said other contingency plans were being weighed, including possibly relocating its operations to the airport.
As the staff reductions take place over the course of the next several weeks, Price said the U.S., led by the special envoy for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, would continue to push for a peace agreement between the Taliban and the Afghan government at talks currently taking place in Doha, Qatar.
The Taliban, who ruled the country from 1996 until U.S. forces invaded after the 9/11 attacks, have taken 12 of Afghanistan’s 34 provincial capitals as part of a weeklong sweep that has given them effective control of about two-thirds of the country.
Wildfire bears down on Montana towns as West burns
A wildfire bore down on rural southeastern Montana towns Thursday as continuing hot, dry weather throughout the West drove flames through more than a dozen states.
Several thousand people remained under evacuation orders as the Richard Spring Fire advanced across the sparsely-populated Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation.
Meanwhile, the Dixie Fire — which started July 13 and is the largest wildfire burning in the nation — threatened a dozen small communities in the northern Sierra Nevada even though its southern end was mostly corralled by fire lines.
Read: Wildfires in Algeria leave 42 dead, including 25 soldiers
The blaze had burned over 780 square miles (over 2,000 square kilometers), destroyed some 550 homes and nearly obliterated the town of Greenville. It was 30% contained.
On Wednesday, the Montana fire displayed extreme behavior and had grown by tens of thousands of acres, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. The blaze, which was only 15% surrounded, began Sunday and powerful gusts caused it to explode across more than 230 square miles (600 square kilometers).
By nightfall, the fire had crept within about 2 miles (3.22 kilometers) of the evacuated town of Lame Deer, leaping over a highway where officials had hoped to stop it.
Rancher Jimmy Peppers sat on his horse east of town, watching an orange glow grow near the site of his house.
“I didn’t think it would cross the highway so I didn’t even move my farm equipment,” said Peppers, who spent the afternoon herding his cattle onto a neighbor’s pasture closer to town. “I don’t know if I’ll have a house in the morning.”
The town of about 2,000 people is home to the tribal headquarters and several subdivisions and is surrounded by rugged, forested terrain. By late Wednesday a second fire was closing in on Lame Deer from the west, while the Richard Spring fire raged to the east.
Read: 'We fought a great battle': Greece defends wildfire response
A few miles from town, Krystal Two Bulls and some friends stuck around to clear brush from her yard in hopes of protecting it from the flames. Thick plumes of smoke rose from behind a tree-covered ridgeline just above the house.
“We’re packed and we’re loaded so if we have to go, we will,” Two Bull said. “I’m not fearful; I’m prepared. Here you don’t just run from fire or abandon your house.”
Also ordered to leave were about 600 people in and around Ashland, a small town just outside the reservation. Local, state and federal firefighters were joined by ranchers using their own heavy equipment to carve out fire lines around houses.
The National Weather Service said a ridge of high pressure moving into the area would pump temperatures into the 90s over the weekend.
Drought conditions have left trees, grass and brush bone-dry throughout many Western states, leaving them ripe for ignition. Montana alone had 25 large wildfires burning, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
At the same time, California and some other states were facing flows of monsoonal moisture that were too high to bring real rain but could create thunderstorms bringing new fire risks from dry lightning and erratic winds.
Read:Wildfires rampage in Greek forests, cut large island in half
In Northern California, a number of wildfires and the threat of more prompted three national forests to close down the Trinity Alps Wilderness Area, a half-million-acre area of granite peaks, lakes and trails, into November.
“Tracking hikers in unsafe areas pulls much-needed aircraft away from firefighting efforts, and adds risk and exposure to first responders. Additionally, forest managers hope to limit the possibility of human-caused fires with this temporary full closure,” said a forest statement.
Scientists have said climate change has made the region much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make the weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive. The more than 100 large wildfires in the American West come as parts of Europe are also burning.
Northwest sizzles as heat wave hits many parts of US
Volunteers and county employees set up cots and stacked hundreds of bottles of water in an air-conditioned cooling center in a vacant building in Portland, Oregon, one of many such places being set up as the Northwest sees another stretch of sizzling temperatures.
Scorching weather also hit other parts of the country this week. The weather service said heat advisories and warnings would be in effect from the Midwest to the Northeast and mid-Atlantic through at least Friday.
In Portland, tempertures neared 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 Celsius) on Wednesday and the mercury could soar past the century mark Thursday and Friday. Authorities trying to provide relief to vulnerable people are mindful of a record-shattering heat wave earlier this summer that killed hundreds in the Pacific Northwest.
Read:Wildfires rage as US West grapples with heat wave, drought
The high temperatures in Portland, part of a usually temperate region, would break all-time records this week if the late June heat wave had not done so already. Seattle will be cooler than Portland, with temperatures in the mid-90s, but it still has a chance to break records, and many people there, like in Oregon, don’t have air conditioning.
People began coming into a 24-hour cooling center in north Portland before it opened Wednesday.
The first few people in were experiencing homelessness, a population vulnerable to extreme heat. Among them was December Snedecor, who slept two nights in the same center in June when temperatures reached 116 F (47 C).
She said she planned to sleep there again this week because the heat in her tent was unbearable.
“I poured water over myself a lot. It was up in the teens, hundred-and-something heat. It made me dizzy. It was not good,” Snedecor said of the June heat. “I’ve just got to stay cool. I don’t want to die.”
Read: Heat wave blankets US West as fires rage in several states
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown has declared a state of emergency and activated an emergency operations center, citing the potential for disruptions to the power grid and transportation. Besides opening cooling centers, city and county governments are extending public library hours and waiving bus fare for those headed to cooling centers. A 24-hour statewide help line will direct callers to the nearest cooling shelter and offer safety tips.
Emergency officials have sent alerts to phones, said Dan Douthit, spokesman for the Portland Bureau of Emergency Management.
The back-to-back heat waves, coupled with a summer that’s been exceptionally warm and dry overall, are pummeling a region where summer highs usually drift into the 70s or 80s. Intense heat waves and a historic drought in the American West reflect climate change that is making weather more extreme.
The June heat in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia killed hundreds of people and served as a wake-up call for what’s ahead in a warming world. It was virtually impossible without human-caused climate change, a detailed scientific analysis found.
Even younger residents struggled with the heat in June and dreaded this week’s sweltering temperatures.
Read: Study: Northwest heat wave impossible without climate change
Katherine Morgan, 27, has no air conditioning in her third-floor apartment and can’t afford a window unit on the money she makes working at a bookstore and as a hostess at a brewery.
She’ll have to walk to work Thursday, the day when temperatures could again soar.
“All my friends and I knew that climate change was real, but it’s getting really scary because it was gradually getting hot — and it suddenly got really hot, really fast,” Morgan said.
Kathy Hochul to be 1st female NY governor after Cuomo leaves
As New York’s lieutenant governor, Kathy Hochul has spent years on the road as the friendly face of the administration, visiting the far-flung coffee shops and factory floors of each of the state’s 62 counties for countless ribbon-cutting ceremonies and civic cheerleading events.
Now, with Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s resignation over sexual harassment allegations Tuesday, her next stop is the state Capitol in Albany.
Hochul will become the state’s first female governor once Cuomo’s resignation is effective in two weeks.
“As someone who has served at all levels of government and is next in the line of succession, I am prepared to lead as New York State’s 57th Governor,” she said in a statement Tuesday.
Read:New York Governor Andrew Cuomo resigns over sexual harassment
A centrist Democrat from western New York, she has worked deep in Cuomo’s shadow for her two terms in office, but last week joined the chorus of politicians denouncing the governor after an independent investigation concluded he had sexually harassed 11 women while in office.
“I believe these brave women,” Hochul wrote, calling Cuomo’s behavior “repulsive and unlawful” in a statement last Tuesday.
After Cuomo announced his decision to step down, Hochul called it “the right thing to do and in the best interest of New Yorkers.”
A spokesperson tells The Associated Press that New York state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins is set to take on the duties of lieutenant governor. No other state has two women leading — though in Oregon, in the absence of a deputy governor, the next in line in succession of Gov. Kate Brown is Secretary of State Shemia Fagan.
Eight states currently have female governors.
To many New Yorkers, Hochul is an unknown quantity, serving since 2015 in a job that is mostly ceremonial. A typical afternoon in late July had her announcing job training funding in Utica, discussing manufacturing in Rome and touring downtown Cazenovia with the small town’s mayor.
That has been nothing like the attention-demanding appearances of the determinedly high-profile Cuomo, who does most of his business in Albany and New York City and whose daily coronavirus briefings were national events at the height of the coronavirus.
Hochul has not been part of Cuomo’s inner circle of aides and allies. Her name wasn’t mentioned in the investigative report, released by Attorney General Letitia James, that detailed not only the harassment allegations against Cuomo but also efforts by his staff to discredit some of his accusers.
But at 62, Hochul is an experienced politician, a veteran of 11 campaigns that have taken her from town board to Congress, the latter representing a conservative western New York district after a surprising 2011 win in a special election to fill a vacancy in the U.S. House.
She received votes of confidence from Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Sen. Charles Schumer on Tuesday in Washington, and from numerous elected officials and others in New York including Attorney General Letitia James, who oversaw the investigation.
“Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul will be an extraordinary governor,” Gillibrand told reporters at the U.S. Capitol. “She understands the complexities and needs of our state, having been both a congresswoman and having been lieutenant governor for the last several years.”
Former Erie County Democratic Chairman Len Lenihan, a longtime ally in western New York, called her promotion “a happy ending to a very sad situation” and said few people have been as prepared for the office as she is.
“She’s humble and kind, but also tough. And she is going to do a fabulous job. The people in New York are going to come to really admire her abilities, her strength and her personally,” he said.
“Pragmatic would be a good way to describe her,” said Jacob Neiheisel, an associate political science professor at the University at Buffalo. “Someone who is pretty good at reading the tea leaves and coming around to where her constituency is.”
Read: Cuomo’s top aide resigns as governor faces harassment furor
Hochul’s office declined an interview request last week. The Associated Press reached out again Tuesday.
A steelworker’s daughter, Hochul, a lawyer, worked in Washington as an aide to former U.S. Rep. John LaFalce and later, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, both from New York, before holding her first public office, on the town board in Hamburg, near Buffalo.
From there, she became Erie County Clerk, where she made some news in 2007 for resistance to a plan by then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer to allow unauthorized immigrants to get driver’s licenses. Hochul and another western New York clerk explored a plan to have police arrest immigrants who tried to apply.
“It will be a deterrent, and that’s what I’m looking for,” Hochul told The Buffalo News at the time.
Her next move was to Congress, where in 2011 she had a surprising win in a special election in a district that had been in Republican hands for decades. She lost a bid for reelection a year later to Republican Chris Collins, despite an endorsement by the National Rifle Association. Collins later resigned from the U.S. House and pleaded guilty to insider trading.
Hochul moved to the left, politically, when Cuomo tapped her as his running mate in 2014 after his first lieutenant governor, former Rochester Mayor Robert Duffy, decided not to run for reelection.
She backed New York’s SAFE Act, one of the nation’s toughest gun control laws, as well as the state’s Green Light Law, which let unauthorized immigrants get driver’s licenses.
Hochul has not publicly expressed whether she would pursue a full term as governor in 2022.
An upstate candidate running for any statewide office in New York faces a daunting challenge, but even more so for the governor’s office, which has historically drawn from New York City.
LaFalce, whom Hochul considers a mentor, said in her frequent travels and while presiding over the Senate as lieutenant governor, Hochul has gotten to know the state’s party chairs and elected officials from both parties.
“She will have a tremendous army for the spring primary in 2022,” he said.
LaFalce noted that she won against strong opponents in her two Democratic primaries for lieutenant governor, Columbia University law professorTimothy Wu and Jumaane Williams, now the New York City public advocate.
“No one should dismiss Kathy as a weak candidate. She’s proven her mettle in statewide races,” LaFalce said. “And she now has a war chest of about $1.7 million, which as the governor ... she will be able to amass millions more. She will be formidable in any Democratic primary and I think she will prevail.”
Neiheisel said given her record, it is difficult to predict what a “distinctly Hochul agenda” might look like, especially when faced with the state’s still-active pandemic response and a recovery that will involve billions of dollars in federal aid.
“Given how little she’s historically been in the news cycle, I really don’t think she has the kind of name recognition that you would expect of somebody who is suddenly being thrust into a position of maybe being governor,” Neiheisel said “She’s going to have to do an awful lot, really fast, in order for there to be a serious conversation for keeping that job.”
Read: New York Gov. Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women, probe finds
At a news briefing last Wednesday, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has a famously contentious relationship with Cuomo, said he’s gotten to know Hochul over the last few years and “she strikes me as a very reasonable person.”
“I believe if Kathy Hochul becomes governor, she’ll be an honest broker,” he said then. “We’ll be able to work together.”
In Buffalo, Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz worked alongside Hochul when he was county comptroller and she was Erie County Clerk. He said he saw Hochul easily stepping into the governor’s office.
“I know she has the work ethic, determination, and skill set to not only succeed as governor,” he said Tuesday, “but to take the Empire State to new heights.”
Nearly 900 buildings destroyed by massive California fire
California’s largest single wildfire in recorded history kept pushing through forestlands on Tuesday as fire crews tried to protect rural communities from flames that have destroyed hundreds of homes.
Clear skies over parts of the month-old Dixie Fire have allowed aircraft to rejoin nearly 6,000 firefighters in the attack this week.
“Whether or not we can fly depends very much on where the smoke is. There’s still some areas where it’s just too smoky,” fire spokesman Edwin Zuniga said.
Heavy smoke reduced visibility on the fire’s west end while the east end saw renewed action as afternoon winds took hold, fire officials said.
Read: Wildfires in Algeria leave 42 dead, including 25 soldiers
Burning through bone-dry trees, brush and grass, the fire by Tuesday had destroyed more than 1,000 buildings, including nearly 550 homes. Much of the small community of Greenville was incinerated during an explosive run of flames last week.
But the reports are “definitely subject to change” because assessment teams still can’t get into many areas to count what burned, Zuniga said.
The Dixie Fire, named for the road where it started, also threatened 14,000 buildings in more than a dozen small mountain and rural communities in the northern Sierra Nevada.
Crews have cut thousands of acres of new fire lines aimed at preventing the fire from spreading. Officials believe the fire lines created on the blaze’s southern side will hold the fire at bay there, but the fire’s future is unknown, authorities said.
“We don’t know where this fire is going to end and where it’s going to land. It continues to challenge us,” said Chris Carlton, supervisor for Plumas National Forest.
Temperatures are expected to rise and the humidity is expected to fall over the next few days, with triple-digit high temperatures possible later in the week along with a return of strong afternoon winds, fire meteorologist Rich Thompson warned Monday evening.
Read: Wildfires rampage in Greek forests, cut large island in half
The fire that broke out July 14 grew slightly on Tuesday to an area of 766 square miles (1,984 square kilometers) but containment increased to 27%, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
The Dixie Fire is about half the size of the August Complex, a series of lightning-caused 2020 fires across seven counties that were fought together and that state officials consider California’s largest wildfire overall.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday declared a state of emergency for northern Shasta, Trinity and Tehama counties. The declaration frees up state resources to help fight fires in those counties and give assistance to residents affected by he blazes.
California’s raging wildfires are among some 100 large blazes burning across 15 states, mostly in the West, where historic drought conditions have left lands parched and ripe for ignition.
The Dixie Fire is the largest single fire in California history and the largest currently burning in the U.S. Nearly a quarter of all firefighters assigned to Western fires are fighting California blazes, said Rocky Oplinger, an incident commander.
Heat waves and historic drought tied to climate change have made wildfires harder to fight in the American West. Scientists have said climate change has made the region much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make the weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive. The fires across the West come as parts of Europe are also fighting large blazes spurred by tinder-dry conditions.
Read: Thousands flee homes outside Athens as heat fuels wildfires
In southeastern Montana, the small towns of Ashland and Lame Deer were ordered evacuated Tuesday as a wildfire threatened hundreds of homes outside the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation. Rosebud County Sheriff Allen Fulton said flames were being driven by strong, erratic winds.
“We’re actually pretty worried about it,” Fulton said. “It’s jumping highways, it’s jumping streams. A paved road is about a good a fire line as we could ask for, and it’s going over that in spots.”
Northwest of the Dixie Fire in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, hundreds of homes remained threatened by two fires. However, nearly 50% of the McFarland Fire was contained. New evacuation orders were issued Monday for residents near the Monument Fire, which was only about 3% contained.
South of the Dixie Fire, firefighters prevented further growth of the River Fire, which broke out last Wednesday near the community of Colfax and destroyed 68 homes. It was nearly 80% contained.