Day: June 28, 2024

Former Uvalde chief accused of critical delays while shooter ‘hunted’ children: indictment  KATV

islamabad — President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump sparred over Afghanistan in their Thursday night debate, but both were silent on the worsening human rights crisis following the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country.  

 

During the presidential debate hosted by CNN, Trump blasted Biden for his handling of the August 2021 U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan. Biden defended his record, but neither of them discussed the human rights and women’s rights crisis in the South Asian nation under Taliban rule.  

 

The fundamentalist group stormed back to power as the U.S.-led foreign forces departed the country after almost two decades of war with the Taliban. The de facto Afghan rulers have imposed their harsh interpretation of Islamic law, banning girls from schools beyond the sixth grade and many Afghan women from public and private workplaces, among other curbs on their freedoms. 

 

“Since the U.S. withdrawal, Afghanistan has sadly become out of sight and out of mind in both public and policy debate in the U.S., so it’s not that surprising that the two candidates would fixate on the last days of the pullout instead of the broader and quite depressing state of play in Afghanistan today,” Michael Kugelman, the director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center, told VOA.  

 

The U.S. presidential debate came as the United Nations prepares to host crucial talks between Taliban and international envoys in Doha, Qatar, on Sunday. Afghan civil society and women representatives will not be involved, however, a move drawing strong backlash from global human rights defenders.  

 

“It’s hardly surprising that neither Trump nor Biden has a word to spare for the rights of Afghan women and girls,” said Heather Barr, women’s rights associate director at Human Rights Watch.  

 

“I wish the moderator had asked them specifically about the contributions they both made to creating what is now the world’s most serious women’s crisis, and a crisis that deepens every day,” Barr told VOA via email.  

 

She noted that Trump oversaw the Doha agreement his administration signed with the then-insurgent Taliban in 2020, and those negotiations did not involve Afghan women, nor were their rights on the agenda. The pact set the stage for all American and allied troops to pull out from what is described as the longest war in U.S. history.  

 

“Now Biden is sending his diplomats off to the Doha 3 meeting, where it will be exactly the same — no women on the agenda, no women at the table,” Barr said.

‘Doha process’ 

 

The two-day conference will be the third in Qatar’s capital since U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres initiated what is referred to as the “Doha process” a year ago to try to establish a unified international approach to increase engagement with the Taliban.  

 

The de facto Afghan leaders were not invited to the first Doha meeting in May 2023 and refused an invitation to the second in February.  

 

John Fortier, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said Afghanistan and post-withdrawal issues facing the country are no longer high on the American people’s agenda. 

 

“I think American institutions and foreign policy experts have concerns, but as a political matter … we are not thinking about Afghanistan in the same way as we were after the events of September 11 [2001]. For many years, we do not have troops in the same way that we had for many years,” Fortier told VOA.  

 

Speaking on Thursday, Trump accused Biden of being responsible for the deaths of 13 American soldiers in an Islamic State group-claimed suicide bombing of the Kabul airport just days before the last American troops left Afghanistan.  

 

“No general got fired for the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country, Afghanistan, where we left billions of dollars of equipment behind; we lost 13 beautiful soldiers. … And by the way, we left people behind, too. We left American citizens behind,” Trump stated.

“I was getting out of Afghanistan, but we were getting out with dignity, with strength, with power. He got out, it was the most embarrassing day in the history of our country’s life,” he claimed.

Biden defended his Afghan exit policy, saying he “got over 100,000 Americans and others out of Afghanistan during that airlift” and sharply criticized Trump’s blistering attacks. “I’ve never heard so much malarkey in my whole life,” the president stated. 

 

VOA’s Afghan Service contributed to this report.

From the outset it was clear that President Joe Biden was clearly under the weather during last night’s debate. He missed an opportunity to capitalize on his recent momentum in the polls. But even as the media rushed to declare the whole thing a disaster for Biden, and even began ludicrously hyping the notion that he would be replaced on the ticket, reality told a different story.

For instance, TV networks like to host focus groups of persuadable voters, so they can decide who “won” the debate. CNN, which hosted the debate, had a focus group of fourteen people. It turned out seven of them thought Biden won the debate. Another six thought Trump won, and one of them was undecided about who won.

I’ve always had my problems with these kinds of focus groups. In reality the two kinds of “undecided” voters are 1) those who haven’t decided whether to vote for the Democrat or stay home, and 2) those who haven’t decided whether to vote for the Republican or stay home. When people go on TV and claim to be undecided about whether to vote for the Democrat or the Republican, they’re typically attention seekers, and they most often don’t end up voting at all.

All that said, when it came to these fourteen people who don’t have a political side, half of them said that Biden won the debate. Half. Does that sound like a disaster to you? When you’re up against a guy like Trump, who spends most of his time talking about sharks and batteries, it’s a missed opportunity if only half of the folks think you won the debate. But it’s certainly not a disaster or anything of the sort.

What’s remarkable is that even after half of CNN’s own focus group said that Biden won the debate, CNN (and MSNBC) simply ignored this and instead went into their doomsday hyperbole narratives about how Biden is finished and needs to be replaced. It’s a timely reminder that what you’re hearing on these networks seldom has any connection to reality. It’s also a reminder that you watch these emotionally manipulative ratings driven channels at your own risk.

Back in the real world, was this debate good news for Biden? Absolutely not. He’s only a point or two ahead in the national polling averages, and he missed an opportunity to expand his lead. That’s not the outcome you want. But all available evidence suggests that this debate played to a draw in terms of impact. Neither candidate gained or lost a single vote based on this debate. It was a missed opportunity for them both. Biden was severely ill and an addled Trump still couldn’t outshine him. Given that Trump has a criminal trial sentencing hearing coming up in two weeks, you’d still rather be Biden than Trump right now. And that alone tells you that the debate wasn’t a “disaster” for Biden at all.

The post The Biden debate “disaster” that wasn’t appeared first on Palmer Report.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recommended updated vaccines for the fall to protect against common respiratory diseases. Among the changes: people age 75 and older should get vaccinated against RSV, the COVID-19 vaccine will target a new strain of the virus, and the updated flu shot will include only three strains instead of the four in last year’s shot. It made these changes after a committee that advises the CDC recommended them.

“Our top recommendation for protecting yourself and your loved ones from respiratory illness is to get vaccinated,” said CDC director Dr. Mandy Cohen in a statement supporting the new advice.

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Here’s what to know about the shots you might need—and what’s different from past guidance.

RSV for some

Older adults and young babies are at highest risk for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and last year, vaccines became available for the former group for the first time. The advisory committee at the time recommended that anyone age 60 or older talk to their doctors about whether they should get an RSV shot. This year, it went further, saying that people 75 and older should get vaccinated.

Those who are 60 to 74 should get the vaccine only if they didn’t last year and are at higher risk of RSV, the committee decided. (The RSV shot is not currently an annual vaccination.)

But they didn’t recommend it for younger adults. Earlier this year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved GSK’s RSV vaccine for people 50 and up; however, the committee declined to recommend the shot for that age group, citing the risk of Guillain-Barre syndrome, a condition in which the body’s immune system attacks nerves. While the incidence of the syndrome among those who are vaccinated is small, the risk of RSV complications in younger people is also low—so the risk-benefit calculations don’t obviously favor vaccination, at least for now.

H5N1? Not just yet

The committee discussed the current outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza (also known as bird flu) in dairy cattle. The risk of bird flu in people remains low, according to the CDC scientists presenting the latest data to the advisory committee, so no vaccination plans were adopted. The CDC is preparing, however, to make decisions about vaccination if cases start spreading among people.

Read More: We Are Not Safe from Bird Flu Until We Protect Farmworkers

In the current outbreak, three people—all dairy workers—have tested positive for H5N1. Agency scientists said that existing vaccines that are part of the national emergency stockpile, and two vaccine candidates the CDC is testing, are effective in protecting against the circulating version of H5N1.

Seasonal flu for most

As expected, the committee unanimously voted to recommend the seasonal flu vaccine for everyone age six months and older. The update targets three strains, including a new one, H3N2, that will likely circulate in coming months.

COVID-19 for most

The decision about whether to recommend COVID-19 vaccination for the upcoming season wasn’t as straightforward as it has been in previous years, when the SARS-CoV-2 virus caused more cases and fewer people had immunity against it. But now that almost every has either been exposed to the virus, vaccinated against it, or both, COVID-19 doesn’t have the same health impact on the population as it once did. Even though the virus is mutating into different variants, longer-lasting immunity based on T cells appears to be protecting most people from severe disease and death—which raises the question of how critical a yearly vaccine will continue to be.

However, the CDC provided data showing that the risk of severe COVID-19 remains significant for older people, especially those over 75, who account for most of the hospitalizations and deaths due to the disease. Among younger people, the risk is higher for those with underlying health conditions. But for other healthy adults, the risk-benefit calculations are shifting.

Read More: The Isolation of Having Long COVID as Society Moves On

“We are not thinking here about whether the vaccine protects absolutely, as we did when we had a [COVID-19] naïve population,” said Ruth Link-Gelles, a CDC epidemiologist and its vaccine effectiveness program lead, at the committee meeting. “We are thinking, in a population that already has some immunity, what [protection] can we give beyond that?” She noted that even if the yearly vaccine will always lag behind the currently circulating strain of SARS-CoV-2 because the virus mutates so quickly, a vaccine that reduces the risk of severe disease by 40% to 50% among those at high risk of COVID-19 complications can be important. “It may not be the 95% [reduction] we were seeing in the early days, but we also don’t need that level of protection, because we are looking to increase protection in people who already have existing protection,” she said.

That’s important, since data show that every encounter with COVID-19 can increase the risk of developing Long COVID, and that people who are vaccinated can reduce their risk of Long COVID.

One option the group considered was making a recommendation for high-risk people, rather than a universal recommendation for everyone six months and older to get vaccinated. But committee members expressed concern that the potentially confusing guidance about who should get vaccinated may lead to even an lower immunization rate than the current one; only about 20% of eligible people received the updated COVID-19 vaccine in 2023. In data cited by the CDC from a survey conducted by the agency with University of Iowa and the RAND Corporation, nearly half of physicians surveyed said they did not bring up COVID-19 vaccinations at appointments because they felt their patients would not be interested in getting immunized.

“It can feel very frustrating,” says Dr. Jen Brull, president-elect of the American Academy of Family Physicians, who is not a committee member. “But I still think that family physicians everywhere feel that it’s our responsibility to offer important preventive and and other chronic health treatments.”

In the end, the committee voted unanimously to continue recommending a COVID-19 shot for everyone six months and older. The FDA recently recommended updating the shot to target a newer strain, JN.1—a move that the CDC also supports. For the coming season, two of the shots will be based on mRNA technology, from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, and one, from Novavax, will be protein-based and include a portion of the COVID-19 virus spike protein.

Washington — Donald Trump warned during his debate with Joe Biden and again at a Friday rally that migrants were taking “Black jobs” and “Hispanic jobs” from Americans, angering critics who called it a racist and insulting attempt to expand his appeal beyond his white conservative base.

While President Joe Biden’s halting debate performance on Thursday night stirred widespread concerns among fellow Democrats about his readiness, Trump also repeatedly made false claims and repeated conspiracy theories that he’s long promoted during his campaign.

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Trump suggested without evidence that Democrats want migrants to displace Americans as voters, and he described the state of the nation under Biden as worse than during the deadly 2017 neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia. Trump has often downplayed the racist overtones of the march, once saying there were “fine people on both sides.”

Trump’s depiction of a country on the brink, under siege from unfettered migration and beset by racial strife and economic chaos echoed his longstanding rhetoric about the state of the U.S. It’s a pessimistic vision that has long appealed to the GOP’s largely white, hard-right base but has also alienated other Americans, especially voters of color.

“The fact is that his big kill on the Black people is the millions of people that he’s allowed to come in through the border. They’re taking Black jobs now,” Trump said during the debate on CNN. “They’re taking Black jobs and they’re taking Hispanic jobs. And you haven’t seen it yet, but you’re going to see something that’s going to be the worst in our history,” he warned without specifying the danger.

Yet Trump and his allies believe that such rhetoric may hold greater appeal with Black and Hispanic communities this year dissatisfied with Biden’s performance in office. Trump repeated the comments during a rally Friday in Virginia.

The phrase “Black jobs” was widely condemned by Democrats and Black leaders as vague and insulting.

“I’m still wondering, what is a ‘Black job,’” Jaime Harrison, chair of the Democratic National Committee, quipped on Friday during a news conference with former Georgia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams in Atlanta. Other prominent Biden allies including Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Tx., Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., also condemned Trump’s words following the debate.

“There is no such thing as a Black job. That misinformed characterization is a denial of the ubiquity of Black talent. We are doctors, lawyers, school teachers, police officers and firefighters. The list goes on,” said Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP. “A ‘Black job’ is an American job. It’s concerning that a presidential candidate would seek to make a nonexistent distinction. But the divisive nature of this comment is not surprising for Donald Trump.”

Trump’s allies pushed back on the critiques as missing the president’s broader message.

“He meant the jobs of Black people. And we’ve been using that term for a while,” said Diante Johnson, president of the Black Conservative Federation. “It’s any job. Instead of Black people having unlimited accessibility to all types of jobs, illegal immigrants are taking their jobs from them.”

Much economic research shows that immigration has helped to increase employment, with a 2024 paper by the economists Alessandro Caiumi and Giovanni Peri finding that immigration between 2000 and 2019 had a positive effect on the wages of less educated workers born in the United States. Still, separate research have suggested that greater immigration may have hurt the wages of less educated Black men, though it was one of several factors.

Asked to clarify what Trump meant in describing a “Black job” during an interview with NBC News, Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who is Black and is under consideration to be Trump’s vice presidential nominee, sidestepped the question, instead discussing homeless veterans.

Some Black adults do think there’s a possibility that immigration will affect employment opportunities for workers who are already here. About 4 in 10 Black adults say it’s a “major risk” that the number of jobs available to American workers will be reduced when immigrants come to the U.S. — whether they arrive legally or illegally — according to an AP-NORC poll from March. But the poll also found that about 3 in 10 Black adults think it’s a major benefit that immigrants will take jobs that Americans don’t want.

In some communities like Chicago, an increased number of migrants has generated greater economic anxiety and concern that government resources are not allocated fairly. Yet Black and Hispanic Americans are on average more supportive of immigration than other demographics, and in cities like Chicago, Denver and New York, racial justice groups have been at the forefront of mitigating potential strife between communities of color and undocumented people on issues like jobs.

For some Black activists, the comments changed little about the state of the presidential race.

Michael Blake, founder and CEO of the Kairos Democracy Project, said “It’s hard for someone to believe that (Trump) means they’re taking quality jobs.”

“It is the responsibility for us to then tell the story of the benefits of diversity, rather than the fears of it. And the notion that those people are taking from you is a fear-only message as opposed to asking: How do we all win?,” Blake added. “When you embrace all races, we all win. We should not allow fear of the past to supersede the prosperity of the future, because we all can win.”

Yellowstone National Park officials said Friday a rare white buffalo sacred to Native Americans has not been seen since its birth on June 4.

The birth of the white buffalo, which fulfilled a Lakota prophecy that portends better times, was the first recorded in Yellowstone history and is a landmark event for the recovery of buffalo, said park officials in confirming the birth for the first time.

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It is an extraordinarily rare occurrence: A white buffalo, also known as bison, is born in the wild once in every 1 million births, or even less frequently, the park said.

Whether the calf — named Wakan Gli, which means “Return Sacred” in Lakota — is still alive is unknown.

The park’s statement mentioned that each spring, about one in five calves die shortly after birth due to natural hazards but officials declined to directly respond to questions about whether they believed it has died.

They confirmed the birth of the white buffalo after receiving photos and reports from multiple park visitors, professional wildlife watchers, commercial guides and researchers. But since June 4, park staffers have not been able to find it and officials are not aware of any other confirmed sightings in the park, one of the last sanctuaries for free-roaming American bison.

Rangers that regularly work in the more accessible areas of the park, as well as its backcountry, have not seen the animal, park spokesperson Morgan Warthin said.

Native American leaders earlier this week held a ceremony to honor the sacred birth of the animal and give the name. Lakota members caution that the prophecy tied to the birth of the white buffalo is also a signal that more must be done to protect the earth and its animals.

Suspicion about the calf’s fate has grown as weeks have passed without another sighting since its birth in the Lamar Valley, a prime spot for wildlife viewing in Yellowstone. Young buffalo can fall victim to predators, river currents, illness and other hazards.

Mike Mease, a co-founder of the Buffalo Field Campaign, a conservation group that works with tribes to protect and honor wild buffalo and hosted this week’s ceremony, said he thinks the calf is alive somewhere in the park, away from the roads and walkways most visitors stick to. He said a grizzly bear seen by Yellowstone visitors earlier this month with five cubs, an unusually large brood, has not been seen since either.

But the most important thing about the white buffalo is that a prophecy, which is both a warning and a blessing, has been fulfilled, Mease said.

“Whether it’s dead or alive, the message has been relayed from the heavens and times are different now. We have to make changes for the future,” he said.

Elements of the Democratic Party elite are questioning Biden’s ability to defeat Donald Trump in the November election.

They are not questioning his ability and policy decisions when it comes to global crises that are causing massive carnage and threatening even worse: the…

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) June 28, 2024

Sanctioned Russian Interior Minister attends UN meeting in New York https://t.co/PH58077OV5

— Michael Novakhov (@mikenov) June 28, 2024