Good morning.
Joe Biden is standing by his 31 August deadline to withdraw from Afghanistan, rejecting the pleas of domestic and international allies to keep troops there for evacuation efforts beyond the end of the month.
“We are currently on a pace to finish by August the 31st,” the president said in an address from the White House on Tuesday. “The sooner we can finish, the better. Each day of operations brings added risk to our troops.”
Biden acknowledged that making the deadline depends on the Taliban continuing to cooperate and allow access to the airport.
Troops on the ground face possible terrorist attacks by Isis-K, the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate, which is also a sworn enemy of the Taliban, Biden has said.
Since 14 August, 70,700 people have been evacuated from Kabul, Biden said. It is unclear how many more Americans and their Afghan allies are left to evacuate.
Biden is receiving a lot of criticism, at home and abroad, for sticking by the 31 August deadline. In rejecting the pleas of his international allies, he may have damaged already fractured relations with Europe.
Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts dies at 80
Charlie Watts, drummer for the Rolling Stones, “passed away peacefully in a London hospital earlier today surrounded by his family”, his publicist announced yesterday.
Watts had announced this month that he would miss the band’s forthcoming US tour as he recovered from an unspecified medical procedure. He spent more than 60 years as the heartbeat of the Stones, a calm presence in all the rock’n’roll madness.
House passes voting rights bill restoring a critical provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act
The US House of Representatives passed the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, voting 219-212 on party lines. The bill would require that areas with a history of voting rights violations be under federal supervision, restoring a critical provisional of the landmark civil rights law, the 1965 Voting Rights Act. It may still fail in the Senate, however, as it requires the support of 10 Republicans in order to pass, and so far only Lisa Murkowski of Alaska has indicated she would vote for it.
The bill is one of two voting rights bills that the Democrats are working to pass. Voting rights experts say the John Lewis act and the sweeping For the People Act are needed to fully protect voting rights.
US intelligence study inconclusive on origins of Covid-19
In part due to a lack of information from China, a classified US intelligence report delivered to the White House was inconclusive on the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, two US officials familiar with the matter told the Washington Post.
Donald Trump and his aides repeatedly pushed a theory that coronavirus had been leaked from a lab in Wuhan, despite US intelligence agencies’ conclusion that the virus was “not manmade or genetically modified”. The unfounded theory helped fuel anti-Asian hate attacks throughout the country, which skyrocketed because of the pandemic.
Joe Biden directed the intelligence community to “redouble their efforts” to untangle the origin debate, but the 90-day review brought them no closer to consensus.
In other news …
Kamala Harris’s trip from Singapore to Vietnam was delayed by several hours on Tuesday after two US officials reported Havana syndrome symptoms in Hanoi. The investigation into the two cases is in its early stages.
Breathing wildfire smoke during pregnancy increases the risk of premature birth, according to a study that estimated the effects of wildfire smoke may have resulted in as many as 7,000 extra preterm births in California between 2007 and 2012.
The US Capitol police did not adequately respond to officers’ calls for help during the 6 January attack on the US Capitol, according to an inspector general’s report.
Stat of the day: the number of dangerous ‘fire weather’ days have nearly tripled in California’s Sacramento region since 1973
Since 1973, global heating has driven increases in dangerous “fire weather” days in which communities are put on high alert because of hot, dry and windy weather conditions known for fuelling wildfires. The Sacramento region, which is still battling the Dixie fire, had 19 fire weather days in 2020, a sharp uptick from the seven reported in 1973.
Don’t miss this: long Covid limbo
Some patients with a range of debilitating long Covid symptoms are finding themselves waiting for months for a diagnosis and treatment. That is because for many of these patients, they probably caught Covid-19 too early in the pandemic, when testing was not as available. Without a positive test, they have to fight for acknowledgment from the medical community.
Climate Check: sustainable sustenance
Chris Newman and his wife, Annie, left their jobs in 2013 to found Sylvanaqua Farms, a 120-acre operation in northern Virginia that produces pasture-raised chicken, eggs, pork, and grass-fed beef. Their focus is to produce animal food in ways that do not exploit people or the environment, and to make sure they feed as many people as possible – not just those who can typically afford pricier sustainable farm-to-table options.
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Last Thing: purrfect 10
LondonCats Worldwide celebrated its 150th show this year, with 200 cats flocking – or darting, pouncing and/or lazily meandering over when they felt like it – to the Crystal Palace national sports center for a feline extravaganza. The first-ever feline fancy – a Victorian term for an animal competition that is still in use today – took place in 1871, and many of the rules set up by Harrison Weir, “the father of the cat fancy”, are still largely upheld today.
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