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First Task For Afghan Forces Is To Slow Taliban's Momentum: Pentagon Chief

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US military is set to end its mission in Afghanistan on August 31
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Alaska:
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Saturday that the Afghan security forces' first job was to make sure they could slow the Taliban's momentum before attempting to retake territory, as Afghan forces plan to consolidate forces around strategically important parts of the country.
Reuters reported that Afghanistan's military is overhauling its war strategy against the Taliban to concentrate forces around the most critical areas like Kabul and other cities, border crossings and vital infrastructure.
"They are consolidating their forces around the key population centers," Austin told reporters during a visit to Alaska.
"In terms of whether or not it will stop the Taliban, I think the first thing to do is to make sure that they can slow the momentum," Austin said, speaking as the U.S. military is set to end its mission in Afghanistan on Aug. 31, on orders from President Joe Biden.
Austin added that he believed the Afghans had the capability and the capacity to make progress, but "we'll see what happens."
The politically perilous strategy appears to be a military necessity as over-stretched Afghan troops try to prevent the loss of provincial capitals, which could deeply fracture the country.
Taliban insurgents are gaining control of more and more territory, which the Pentagon estimated on Wednesday now extends to over half of half Afghanistan's district centers. The Taliban are also putting pressure on the outskirts of half of the provincial capitals, trying to isolate them.
The Taliban's swift territorial gains are rattling Afghans just as the United States withdraws from a war that succeeded in punishing al Qaeda following its Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington but failed to deliver anything close to peace for Afghanistan.
The United States has continued to carry out air strikes to support Afghan government forces that have been under pressure from the Taliban as U.S.-led foreign forces carry out the final stages of their withdrawal from the country.
Biden has promised to provide financial assistance to Afghan forces and to redouble diplomatic efforts to revive stalled peace talks.
Biden on Friday authorized up to $100 million from an emergency fund to meet "unexpected urgent" refugee needs stemming from the situation in Afghanistan, including for Afghan special immigration visa applicants.
For years, the U.S. military has been trying to get Afghan troops off of far-flung checkpoints - static positions that can easily be overrun by Taliban forces.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/first-task-for-afghan-forces-is-to-slow-talibans-momentum-pentagon-chief-2493930">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/first-task-for-afghan-forces-is-to-slow-talibans-momentum-pentagon-chief-2493930</a>

news world First Task For Afghan Forces Is To Slow Taliban's Momentum: Pentagon Chief

US military is set to end its mission in Afghanistan on August 31 Alaska: U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Saturday that the...

Angered Brazilians Protest Against President Bolsonaro Over Covid Response

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Jair Bolsonaro is enduring his worst stretch since coming to power in 2019 (File)
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Rio de Janeiro:
Tens of thousands of Brazilians took to the streets Saturday to demand the impeachment of President Jair Bolsonaro, who is facing increasing pressure as the pandemic exacts a devastating toll.
It was the fourth weekend of protests called by leftist political parties, labor unions and social groups against Bolsonaro, who is being investigated for allegedly turning a blind eye to a scheme to embezzle government funds in the purchase of vaccines.
Protest marches were planned in 400 cities and towns.
In Rio de Janeiro, thousands of people in red clothes and wearing face masks marched with banners bearing slogans berating the embattled leader, including "No one can take any more" and "Get out corrupt criminal."
Organizers said they were part of a day intended to galvanize the country "in defense of democracy, the lives of Brazilians and getting Bolsonaro out."
In Rio and elsewhere, protesters complained about Brazil's late-starting vaccination program and high unemployment rate, and demanded more emergency aid for poor people grappling with the pandemic.
"It is very important that everyone who feels offended or oppressed by this government comes out to the streets, because we need to fight for the return to democracy," Laise de Oliveira, a 65-year-old social worker, told AFP.
Brazilian press carried images and reports of streets thronged with anti-Bolsonaro demonstrators in 20 of Brazil's 26 states through early afternoon.
Record low approval
Neither the organizers nor the authorities have released an overall estimate of the number of people attending the marches.
But large demonstrations were planned in Sao Paulo, Brazil's most populous city with 12.3 million residents, and the capital Brasilia.
Bolsonaro, criticized for remarks in favor of exploiting protected areas of the Amazon, his views on guns, and an ambitious privatization program, is enduring his worst stretch since coming to power in 2019.
His approval rating is at a record low 24 percent and polls suggest he could lose October's presidential election to his main rival, leftist former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, whose Workers Party was one of the forces behind Saturday's demonstrations.
Brazil has suffered nearly 550,000 deaths because of Covid, a toll surpassed only by that of the United States, which has almost 120 million more people.
Bolsonaro has been famously dismissive of the health crisis, the need to wear face masks, and lockdown measures to halt the spread of the virus.
On June 30 the opposition in congress presented an impeachment complaint that is an amalgam of some 100 others already filed with more than 20 different charges against the president.
But Bolsonaro still has enough support in congress to block these initiatives, including that of the speaker, who decides whether the complaints are allowed to proceed.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/angered-brazilians-protest-against-president-jair-bolsonaro-over-covid-response-2493925">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/angered-brazilians-protest-against-president-jair-bolsonaro-over-covid-response-2493925</a>

news world Angered Brazilians Protest Against President Bolsonaro Over Covid Response

Jair Bolsonaro is enduring his worst stretch since coming to power in 2019 (File) Rio de Janeiro: Tens of thousands of Brazilians took ...

France's "King Of Lighthouses" Wins UNESCO Heritage Listing

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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="France's 'King Of Lighthouses' Wins UNESCO Heritage Listing" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-07/22sukeg4_cordouan-lighthouse-france-afp_625x300_25_July_21.jpeg" title="France's 'King Of Lighthouses' Wins UNESCO Heritage Listing" /></div>
The lighthouse was designed by engineer Louis de Foix
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Le Verdon-sur-Mer, France:
Battered by the wind and swell for 400 years and nicknamed the "king of lighthouses", France's Cordouan beacon on Saturday won recognition from UNESCO.
The lighthouse, which will be added to UNESCO's World Heritage List, is the last to be inhabited in France and only the second after Spain's La Coruna to win the plaudit from the world heritage body.
Cordouan was built at the very end of the 16th century and stands in the Atlantic Ocean at the mouth of the Gironde estuary in southwestern France in a "highly exposed and hostile environment", according to UNESCO's World Heritage Committee which announced its decision on Saturday.
The lighthouse was designed by engineer Louis de Foix, and was later remodelled by engineer Joseph Teulere in the late 18th century.
Describing it as a "masterpiece of maritime signalling", the committee added: "Cordouan's monumental tower is decorated with pilasters, columns modillions and gargoyles.
"It embodies the great stages of the architectural and technological history of lighthouses and was built with the ambition of continuing the tradition of famous beacons of antiquity, illustrating the art of building lighthouses in a period of renewed navigation, when beacons played an important role as territorial markers and as instruments of safety."
The increase in its height in the late 18th century and changes to its light chamber at the same time were also noteworthy, the committee said.
They "attest to the progress of science and technology of the period. Its architectural forms drew inspiration from ancient models, Renaissance Mannerism and the specific architectural language of France's engineering school Ecole des Ponts et Chaussees".
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/frances-king-of-lighthouses-wins-unesco-heritage-listing-2493924">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/frances-king-of-lighthouses-wins-unesco-heritage-listing-2493924</a>

news world France's "King Of Lighthouses" Wins UNESCO Heritage Listing

The lighthouse was designed by engineer Louis de Foix Le Verdon-sur-Mer, France: Battered by the wind and swell for 400 years and nickn...

Relocate 2022 Winter Olympics If China Does Not End Abuses: US Lawmakers

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The US lawmakers said it is "not a matter of whether the Olympics should be immune from politics"
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Washington:
A group of US lawmakers has called on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to postpone the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and relocate the games unless China ends the ongoing "genocide" against Uyghurs and other minority groups.
Senator Jeff Merkley and Representative James McGovern, released a letter on Friday to Thomas Bach, President of the IOC asking him to postpone the 2022 Winter Olympics and to relocate them if the host government does not end its "egregious human rights abuses".
The letter said, "No Olympics should be held in a country whose government is committing genocide and crimes against humanity." The Chairs were joined on the letter by Senator Marco Rubio and Representative Christopher Smith, both former Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) Chairs.
"This action would also be in the best interests of the athletes," said the CECC Commissioners. "We find it unfair for the IOC to force athletes to sacrifice their conscience in order to pursue their competitive goals, or vice versa."
To proceed with business as usual is implied consent and suggests the IOC has learned nothing from the Chinese government's use of the 2008 Beijing Olympics to score propaganda wins and distract from its appalling human rights record, the letter further read.
"This is not a matter of whether the Olympics should be immune from politics. Taking action against genocide is not politics. It is about basic morality and human dignity. Again, we urge you to postpone the Beijing Winter Games and relocate them to a different country if the host government does not stop committing genocide and crimes against humanity," the lawmakers added.
Last week, the UK House of Commons had unanimously passed a motion calling for the British government to stage a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics unless China ends the "atrocities" taking place in Xinjiang province.
The motion referenced accusations of mass atrocity crimes in the Uyghur region and urged the UK Government and its representatives to decline invitations to attend the Beijing Games, according to a statement by Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC).
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/relocate-2022-winter-olympics-if-china-does-not-end-abuses-us-lawmakers-2493921">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/relocate-2022-winter-olympics-if-china-does-not-end-abuses-us-lawmakers-2493921</a>

news world Relocate 2022 Winter Olympics If China Does Not End Abuses: US Lawmakers

The US lawmakers said it is "not a matter of whether the Olympics should be immune from politics" Washington: A group of US l...

UK Will Be Exposed To Paying Pandemic Cost Risks For Decades: Report

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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="UK Will Be Exposed To Paying Pandemic Cost Risks For Decades: Report" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2020-12/efs0e66g_uk-coronavirus-generic_625x300_29_December_20.jpg" title="UK Will Be Exposed To Paying Pandemic Cost Risks For Decades: Report" /></div>
Report stated there had been "unacceptably high" levels of wasteful spending (File)
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London:
The British government will be exposed to financial risks from its 372 billion pound pandemic spending for decades, according to lawmakers' reports on Sunday that also said more than 2 billion pounds had been spent on unusable protective equipment.
In two reports on the response by Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government to the COVID-19 pandemic, parliament's Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said lessons needed to be learned before a promised public inquiry due to be held in 2022.
"With eye-watering sums of money spent on COVID measures so far the government needs to be clear, now, how this will be managed going forward, and over what period of time," Meg Hillier, the PAC chair, said.
"The ongoing risk to the taxpayer will run for 20 years on things like arts and culture recovery loans, let alone the other new risks that departments across government must quickly learn to manage."
The PAC highlighted an estimated loss of 26 billion pounds through fraud and repayment default from loans handed to businesses to help cope with the pandemic as an example of the ongoing financial risk.
In a second report, the committee said there had also been "unacceptably high" levels of wasteful spending, with 2.1 billion items of unsuitable personal protective equipment (PPE) purchased, equating to more than 2 billion pounds of public money.
The government said only 0.84% of all PPE had been found to be unusable, and it had plans to repurpose that which could not be used in the health service.
"There are robust processes in place to ensure that government spending always provides value for money for the taxpayer," a Department of Health spokesperson said.
The opposition Labour Party said the findings were further evidence of failings by the government and said the inquiry into the pandemic needed to start immediately.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/uk-will-be-exposed-to-paying-pandemic-cost-risks-for-decades-report-2493919">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/uk-will-be-exposed-to-paying-pandemic-cost-risks-for-decades-report-2493919</a>

news world UK Will Be Exposed To Paying Pandemic Cost Risks For Decades: Report

Report stated there had been "unacceptably high" levels of wasteful spending (File) London: The British government will be ex...

Anti-abortion lawyers are finally being honest about what they want from the Supreme Court

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The state of Mississippi begins its <a href="https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21014766/dobbs-v-jackson-womens-health-organization-brief-for-petitioners-final.pdf">brief in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization</a> with a bold claim: The case for overruling Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), two seminal Supreme Court decisions protecting the right to an abortion, is “overwhelming.”
Dobbs, which the Court will hear this fall, concerns a Mississippi law that prohibits nearly all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. It’s the first major abortion case to receive a full briefing and oral argument since Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation gave the Court a 6-3 conservative majority. And abortion opponents have every reason to be optimistic that the Court’s new majority will <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/5/17/22233440/supreme-court-abortion-roe-wade-dobbs-jackson-womens-health-amy-coney-barrett">use Dobbs to undo the right to an abortion</a>.
That probably explains why Mississippi’s brief, which argues that “the Constitution does not protect a right to abortion or limit States’ authority to restrict it,” breaks with the tactics anti-abortion lawyers have used to defend restrictions on reproductive freedom. Rather than explicitly asking the Court to overrule Roe, in the past, these lawyers tried to chip away at the abortion right until it is functionally impossible to obtain an abortion in many states.
Take, for example, <a href="https://casetext.com/case/whole-womans-health-v-hellerstedt?ref=Sb!OeQcZi">Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt</a>, the Court’s 2016 decision striking down two provisions of a Texas law that imposed expensive architectural requirements on abortion clinics, while also requiring abortion providers to obtain a difficult-to-acquire credential. The goal of this law wasn’t to explicitly ban abortion, it was to secure the Supreme Court’s permission to ban abortion indirectly — by layering so many legal burdens on top of abortion providers that they are eventually unable to comply with the law.
The law at issue in Dobbs doesn’t explicitly ban all abortions either. But Mississippi’s litigation strategy hopes to make such a ban permissible. If the Court overrules Roe and Casey, that’s the ballgame. State lawmakers will be free to ban abortion outright, and without having to dress their ban up as an attempt to <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/5/30/18644611/missouri-last-abortion-clinic-2019-planned-parenthood">regulate the width of hallways in abortion clinics</a>.
Anti-abortion lawyers, in other words, are finally being honest about their ultimate goal. Rather than asking the Court to place some arcane and nonsensical limit on Roe and Casey, while simultaneously pretending that these two cases remain good law, Mississippi just asked the Court to eliminate the right to an abortion altogether.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, who retired from the Court in 2018, held the <a href="https://www.vox.com/22227912/supreme-court-anti-abortion-amy-coney-barrett-era-fda-american-college-sonia-sotomayor-john-roberts">pivotal vote on the Supreme Court in abortion cases</a> for many years.
Kennedy is quite conservative, and he tended to be skeptical of abortion rights. As David Cohen, a law professor at Drexel University, noted in 2013, Kennedy “has voted to <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2013/11/justice-anthony-kennedy-abortion-swing-vote.html">strike down only one of the 21 abortion restrictions</a> that have come before the Supreme Court since he became a justice.”
Yet, while Kennedy was open to many laws making it harder to obtain an abortion, he refused to overrule Roe outright. Kennedy was one of three co-authors of the Court’s decision in Casey, which weakened Roe, while also <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/505/833">retaining “Roe’s essential holding”</a> affirming “the right of the woman to choose to have an abortion before [fetal] viability and to obtain it without undue interference from the State.”
Kennedy, in other words, would not have upheld an explicit ban on abortions. But he was willing to uphold many laws burdening abortion rights. So abortion opponents spent the years when Kennedy held the balance of power on the Court drafting more and more aggressive abortion restrictions that purported to be something other than an outright ban.
The culmination of this strategy was the two provisions of the Texas law struck down in Whole Woman’s Health. That law required physicians who perform abortions to <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/10/4/20874618/roe-wade-supreme-court-louisiana-abortion-gee">obtain admitting privileges at a nearby hospital</a>, and it also required abortion clinics to comply with the same rules that apply to “<a href="https://www.vox.com/2015/11/13/9731550/supreme-court-abortion-texas">ambulatory surgical centers</a>,” facilities that are equipped to perform medical and surgical procedures that are far riskier and more complicated than an abortion.
Abortion-rights advocates often deride these kinds of laws as “targeted restrictions on abortion providers,” or <a href="https://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/issues/abortion/trap-laws">“TRAP” laws</a>, because they masquerade as regulations intended to make abortion safer, when their real purpose is simply to increase the cost of operating an abortion clinic and drive many clinics out of business.
As the Court explained in <a href="https://casetext.com/case/whole-womans-health-v-hellerstedt?ref=Sb!OeQcZi">Whole Woman’s Health</a>, the burdens imposed by Texas’s law did little, if anything, to actually improve health outcomes. A major reason why it is difficult for abortion providers to obtain admitting privileges at hospitals, for example, is that hospitals often require doctors to actually admit a certain number of patients in order to maintain those privileges. But abortions are so safe that they rarely result in complications that could lead to hospitalization.
As Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in Whole Woman’s Health, one clinic in Texas performed more than 17,000 abortions over a decade, and “not a single one of those patients had to be transferred to a hospital for emergency treatment, much less admitted to the hospital.”
Similarly, the Texas law required all abortion clinics to house expensive surgical facilities. But many of Texas’s abortion clinics <a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/9/26/20873873/supreme-court-gut-roe-v-wade-next-week-abortion">do not even perform surgeries</a> — they exclusively offer medication abortions where abortion is induced by pills.
It should be obvious why, if the Supreme Court had upheld the law at issue in Whole Woman’s Health, that could have been the death knell for abortion rights. If states can enact regulations whose sole purpose is to drive up the cost of performing abortions, they eventually would be able to drive all abortion clinics out of business. Perhaps Texas might have required all abortion clinics to be built out of solid gold.
And yet, even in a world of 24-karat surgical centers, the Supreme Court could have claimed that Roe and Casey remain good law. States still would be forbidden from writing a law that states explicitly that “no one may perform an abortion.” But those states would still be free to ban abortion as long as they were sufficiently dishonest about what they were up to.
It’s worth noting, moreover, that while Whole Woman’s Health was one of the most closely watched cases involving an attempt to restrict abortions through deceptive means, it was hardly a unique case. Abortion opponents both on and off the Court have proposed a raft of limits on abortion rights — ranging from <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/2/26/21143844/supreme-court-june-medical-russo-abortion-roe-v-wade">limiting who is allowed to sue</a> in order to challenge an abortion restriction to requiring each individual person who wants an abortion to <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/1/8/21051739/abortion-june-medical-gee-third-party-standing-supreme-court-roe-wade">file their own lawsuit</a> in order to obtain one — that would nominally leave Roe and Casey in place while potentially rendering them unenforceable.
Yet, with Kennedy gone and Republican appointees controlling a supermajority of the seats on the Court, it’s far from clear that abortion opponents still need to engage in such subterfuge.
Although Mississippi’s lawyers are betting that they have five votes to explicitly overrule Roe and Casey, it’s possible that the Court will fall back on the strategy advanced by abortion opponents in cases like Whole Woman’s Health. Perhaps some members of the Court’s GOP-appointed majority will fear that a decision explicitly overruling Roe will inspire more Democrats to vote in future elections. Or maybe some members of the Court want to maintain the illusion of continuity within the law.
I don’t know what the Court will do in Dobbs and neither does anyone else. But it’s important to note that, even if the Court does not take Mississippi up on its invitation to openly and honestly abolish the right to an abortion, that doesn’t mean that abortion rights are safe — or even that any vestige of them will still exist.
Indeed, while Mississippi’s lawyers <a href="https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21014766/dobbs-v-jackson-womens-health-organization-brief-for-petitioners-final.pdf">devote the bulk of their brief</a> to their argument that Roe should be overruled, they do spend a few pages at the end creating a fallback argument — that the Court should “reject any rule barring a State from prohibiting elective abortions before viability.”
Ever since Roe, the Court has held that the state may impose stricter restrictions on abortions later in pregnancy than it can early in the fetus’s development. Roe <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/410/113">divided pregnancy up into trimesters</a>, permitting greater regulation of abortion in the latter two-thirds of the pregnancy. Casey abandoned this framework to focus on “viability,” giving the government broader authority over abortion once a fetus can survive outside of the womb.
If the Court permits states to impose the same kind of restrictions on pre-viability abortions that those states may currently impose on post-viability abortions, that would severely hobble abortion rights and allow states to forbid most abortions — even if the Court does not explicitly overrule Roe or Casey.
The point, in other words, is that abortion rights are still in very grave danger, even if the Court pretends to keep Roe or Casey alive.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/22590262/supreme-court-anti-abortion-lawyers">https://www.vox.com/22590262/supreme-court-anti-abortion-lawyers</a>

vox Anti-abortion lawyers are finally being honest about what they want from the Supreme Court

The state of Mississippi begins its brief in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization with a bold claim: The case for overruling Roe v...