Friday, December 31, 2021

Fact check: Greenland is still losing ice; no reversal in trend


Kate S. Petersen, USA TODAY

The claim: Greenland's ice loss trend slowed significantly over the last decade, ice mass now growing

Despite widespread reports that the Greenland ice sheet is rapidly losing ice, some social media users are claiming the opposite is true.

“Greenland ice melt slowed significantly during the past decade,” reads a Nov. 18 Facebook post. “The trend has now swung to one of growth.”

The post, which accumulated several hundred interactions in a month, concluded, “Media tizzies of ‘mass ice loss’ are wildly unfounded.”

The post links an article that has been shared on Facebook and Twitter.

However, the claim is wrong.

Satellite observations confirm Greenland continues to lose ice. There has been no reversal in the trend, according to experts.

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USA TODAY reached out to the social media users who shared the claim for comment.

Greenland losing hundreds of billions of metric tons of ice each year

The social media users claim data from Danish Meteorological Institute shows the slowing and reversal of Greenland ice loss.

However, this is wrong, Martin Stendel, a climate scientist at the Danish institute, told USA TODAY in an email.

"There has been no reversal whatsoever," he said. "Unfortunately, it happens all the time that people misinterpret our analyses."

The institute's Greenland ice sheet mass change data shows substantial losses around the margins of the ice sheet since 2002. It also shows small increases in mass at high elevation areas near the center of the ice sheet due to increased precipitation in those areas.

Fact check: Human-generated CO2, not water vapor, drives climate change

However, even with these gains, the Greenland ice sheet has lost trillions of metric tons of ice, according to Stendel.

"Since 2002, the Greenland ice sheet has lost over 5 trillion metric tons of ice," Felix Landerer, a NASA sea and ice research scientist, told USA TODAY in an email. "There are no signs of this trend slowing down or ... reversing."

Blog references incorrect data set to support claims

Claims of a Greenland ice loss "reversal" appear to be based on the Nov. 17 article linked in many of the social media posts. The write-up points to "surface mass balance" data on the Greenland ice sheet from the Danish Meteorological Institute to support its claim of ice loss reversal and new growth.

However, surface mass balance is not a measure of overall ice loss or gain on the Greenland ice sheet. NASA notes, "It does not include ice lost in the lower margins due to calving and thinning from contact with warm ocean waters."

The surface mass balance is only a small part of the overall ice loss equation on the Greenland ice sheet.

Fact check: Climate change theory compatible with laws of thermodynamics

"The annual surface mass balance can fluctuate year to year depending on the weather over Greenland," Michael Wood, a NASA sea and ice postdoctoral fellow, told USA TODAY in an email. "The ice lost from calving glaciers is more constant and outpaces gains from surface mass balance, leading to consistent overall losses from the ice sheet."

USA TODAY previously debunked a related claim that Earth’s polar regions had record high ice levels in 2021. That claim was also based on a misinterpretation of data from the Danish institute.

Our rating: False

Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that Greenland’s ice loss trend has slowed significantly over the last decade and that the ice sheet is now gaining ice. Greenland has steadily lost ice for decades, according to researchers.

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Our fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: Greenland ice sheets melting due to global climate change

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Facebook reportedly told Republicans whistleblower was 'trying to help Democrats'

Brendan Morrow, Staff Writer
Wed, December 29, 2021

Frances Haugen Theo Wargo/Getty Images for TIME

In the wake of a whistleblower coming forward with allegations against the company, Facebook made an effort to "muddy the waters" in Congress and "divide lawmakers," according to a new report in The Wall Street Journal.

The report details Facebook's response to a whistleblower, former employee Frances Haugen, who came forward in October to allege the company prioritizes profits over user safety. Among the claims included in a series of reports based on the documents Haugen provided was the allegation that Facebook, which has since been renamed Meta, is aware that Instagram is "toxic" for many young users.

After Haugen's claims emerged, Facebook's Washington team alleged to Republican lawmakers and advocacy groups that Haugen "was trying to help Democrats," while the company's lobbyists told Democratic staffers that Republicans "were focused on the company's decision to ban expressions of support for Kyle Rittenhouse," The Wall Street Journal reports. The company's goal, the Journal writes, was to "muddy the waters, divide lawmakers along partisan lines and forestall a cross-party alliance" against Facebook in Congress.

Facebook received scrutiny from Republican and Democratic lawmakers after the whistleblower revelations emerged, with multiple hearings since being held on Capitol Hill. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), for example, alleged the whistleblower documents showed Facebook "knew" its platform "promotes extremism and hurts our communities." A recent congressional hearing in December, though, suggested Haugen's "credibility with Republican lawmakers may be starting to wear thin," Politico wrote.

The Journal also reports that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg "has told employees not to apologize" amid the scrutiny, as well as that officials at Meta have considered hiring a "high-ranking outsider" in an attempt to take "pressure" off both Zuckerberg and Meta Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg. A spokesperson told the Journal, "When our work is being mischaracterized, we're not going to apologize. We're going to defend our record."


Facebook’s very bad year. 
No, really, it might be the worst yet

Kari Paul
Wed, December 29, 2021

It’s a now-perennial headline: Facebook has had a very bad year.

Years of mounting pressure from Congress and the public culminated in repeated PR crises, blockbuster whistleblower revelations and pending regulation over the past 12 months.

And while the company’s bottom line has not yet wavered, 2022 is not looking to be any better than 2021 – with more potential privacy and antitrust actions on the horizon.

Here are some of the major battles Facebook has weathered in the past year.
Capitol riots launch a deluge of scandals

Facebook’s year started with allegations that a deadly insurrection on the US Capitol was largely planned on its platform. Regulatory uproar over the incident reverberated for months, leading lawmakers to call CEO Mark Zuckerberg before Congress to answer for his platform’s role in the attack.

Far-right social media users for weeks openly hinted in widely shared posts that chaos would erupt at the US Capitol on 6 January. Photograph: John Minchillo/AP

In the aftermath, Zuckerberg defended his decision not to take action against Donald Trump, though the former president stoked anger and separatist flames on his personal and campaign accounts. Facebook’s inaction led to a rare public employee walkout and Zuckerberg later reversed the hands-off approach to Trump. Barring Trump from Facebook platforms sparked backlash once again – this time from Republican lawmakers alleging censorship.

What ensued was a months-long back-and-forth between Facebook and its independent oversight board, with each entity punting the decision of whether to keep Trump off the platform. Ultimately, Facebook decided to extend Trump’s suspension to two years. Critics said this underscored the ineffectiveness of the body. “What is the point of the oversight board?” asked the Real Oversight Board, an activist group monitoring Facebook, after the non-verdict.
Whistleblowers take on Facebook

The scandal with perhaps the biggest impact on the company this year came in the form of the employee-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen, who leaked internal documents that exposed some of the inner workings of Facebook and just how much the company knew about the harmful effects its platform was having on users and society.

Haugen’s revelations, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, showed Facebook was aware of many of its grave public health impacts and had the means to mitigate them – but chose not to do so.

Frances Haugen, the former Facebook employee-turned-whistleblower, exposed some of the company’s inner workings. Photograph: Drew Angerer/EPA

For instance, documents show that since at least 2019, Facebook has studied the negative impact Instagram had on teenage girls and yet did little to mitigate the harms and publicly denied that was the case. Those findings in particular led Congress to summon company executives to multiple hearings on the platform and teen users.

Facebook has since paused its plans to launch an Instagram app for kids and introduced new safety measures encouraging users to take breaks if they use the app for long periods of time. In a Senate hearing on 8 December, the Instagram executive Adam Mosseri called on Congress to launch an independent body tasked with regulating social media more comprehensively, sidestepping calls for Instagram to regulate itself.

Haugen also alleged Facebook’s tweaks to its algorithm, which turned off some safeguards intended to fight misinformation, may have led to the Capitol attack. She provided information underscoring how little of its resources it dedicates to moderating non-English language content.

In response to the Haugen documents, Congress has promised legislation and drafted a handful of new bills to address Facebook’s power. One controversial measure would target Section 230, a portion of the Communications Decency Act that exempts companies from liability for content posted on their platforms.

Haugen was not the only whistleblower to take on Facebook in 2021. In April, the former Facebook data scientist turned whistleblower Sophie Zhang revealed to the Guardian that Facebook repeatedly allowed world leaders and politicians to use its platform to deceive the public or harass opponents. Zhang has since been called to testify on these findings before parliament in the UK and India.

Lawmakers around the world are eager to hear from the Facebook whistleblowers. Haugen also testified in the UK regarding the documents she leaked, telling MPs Facebook “prioritizes profit over safety”.

Such testimony is likely to influence impending legislation, including the Online Safety Bill: a proposed act in the UK that would task the communications authority Ofcom with regulating content online and requiring tech firms to protect users from harmful posts or face substantial fines.
Zuckerberg and Cook feud over Apple update

Though Apple has had its fair share of regulatory battles, Facebook did not find an ally in its fellow tech firm while facing down the onslaught of consumer and regulatory pressure that 2021 brought.

Apple’s new privacy policy led to conflicts with Facebook, which said the feature would negatively affect small businesses. Photograph: Dpa Picture Alliance/Alamy

The iPhone maker in April launched a new notification system to alert users when and how Facebook was tracking their browsing habits, supposedly as a means to give them more control over their privacy.

Facebook objected to the new policy, arguing Apple was doing so to “self-preference their own services and targeted advertising products”. It said the feature would negatively affect small businesses relying on Facebook to advertise. Apple pressed on anyway, rolling it out in April and promising additional changes in 2022.

Preliminary reports suggest Apple is, indeed, profiting from the change while Google and Facebook have seen advertising profits fall.
Global outage takes out all Facebook products

In early October, just weeks after Haugen’s revelations, things took a sudden turn for the worse when the company faced a global service outage.

Perhaps Facebook’s largest and most sustained tech failure in recent history, the glitch left billions of users unable to access Facebook, Instagram or Whatsapp for six hours on 4 and 5 October.

Facebook’s share price dropped 4.9% that day, cutting Zuckerberg’s personal wealth by $6bn, according to Bloomberg.
Other threats to Facebook

As Facebook faces continuing calls for accountability, its time as the wunderkind of Silicon Valley has come to a close and it has become a subject of bipartisan contempt.

Republicans repeatedly have accused Facebook of being biased against conservatism, while liberals have targeted the platform for its monopolistic tendencies and failure to police misinformation.

Lina Khan was appointed to head of the FTC in a move that spelled trouble for Facebook. Photograph: Graeme Jennings/AFP/Getty Images

In July, the Biden administration began to take a harder line with the company over vaccine misinformation – which Joe Biden said was “killing people” and the US surgeon general said was “spreading like wildfire” on the platform. Meanwhile, the appointment of the antitrust thought leader Lina Khan to head of the FTC spelled trouble for Facebook. She has been publicly critical of the company and other tech giants in the past, and in August refiled a failed FTC case accusing Facebook of anti-competitive practices.

After a year of struggles, Facebook has thrown something of a Hail Mary: changing its name. The company announced it would now be called Meta, a reference to its new “metaverse” project, which will create a virtual environment where users can spend time.

The name change was met with derision and skepticism from critics. But it remains to be seen whether Facebook, by any other name, will beat the reputation that precedes it.
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IT DISCRIMINATES AGAINST WHITE MEN!!
GOP-Led States Slam ‘Crude and Odious’ Nasdaq Diversity Rule

Erik Larson and Rebecca Greenfield
Thu, December 30, 2021


(Bloomberg) -- Nasdaq Inc.’s effort to promote diversity on corporate boards establishes illegal “quotas” that discriminate against men and White people, a group of Republican-led states said in a court filing.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Thursday said Nasdaq-listed companies would have to “overlook a person’s relevant qualifications under the guise of promoting diversity” if forced to follow the rule. Nasdaq is requiring listed firms to disclose the demographics of their boards; those that don’t have any self-identified women and at least one underrepresented minority or LGBTQ person have to explain why not.

“It is unconscionable to see discrimination so blatantly put on display by requiring these companies to hire employees based solely on race, sex, and sexuality,” Paxton said in a statement.

Texas was one of 17 states that this week submitted a brief in the federal appeals court in New Orleans supporting a legal challenge filed against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over its approval of the rule in August.

Republican-led states have repeatedly clashed with the Biden administration over its equity policies, though many trends, including new state laws and investor pressure, have also pushed boards to diversify. Most boards at Nasdaq-listed companies already meet the new standard, though more than a third lacked a racially diverse director and around 10% had no women, as of this summer.

The SEC lacks authority to issue the “crude and odious” rule, the GOP-led states said in their brief supporting the lawsuit by the Alliance for Fair Board Recruitment, adding, “The law is blind -- the same legal standards and protections apply regardless of the race, ethnicity, or sex that is treated differently.”

In its approval of the rule, the SEC said the rule wouldn’t impose “any burden on competition that is not necessary or appropriate.”

The Alliance for Fair Board Recruitment is led by Edward Blum, who has also led several lawsuits over affirmative action in college admissions.

Diversity Uptick

Nasdaq’s plan is the most significant diversity requirement in the U.S. since California passed laws in 2018 and 2020 that mandated diverse boards for companies headquartered in the state. The California rule has also been challenged by Blum’s group.

Other financial industry players have also taken steps to promote board diversity. Institutional Shareholder Services Inc., a leading proxy-advisory firm, said next year it will recommend voting against directors of all Russell 3000 or S&P 1500 companies whose boards aren’t diverse enough. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. since 2020 has refused to underwrite initial public offerings for companies with all-White, all-male boards with no LGBTQ representation.

The pressure has resulted in a notable uptick in board diversity. The all-male board has disappeared from the S&P 500, and women hold a third of seats on a majority of those boards. Racial diversity has also seen a spike. In just the last year, the number of S&P 500 seats held by Black women has increased by more than 25%.

Unlike California’s board diversity law, Nasdaq’s rule isn’t a mandate and the exchange won’t levy fines on companies that don’t comply. Most listed companies would have as many as four years to meet the rule’s standard.

(Updates with background on compliance among Nasdaq companies, other diversity efforts.)
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CRIMINAL CRYPTO  CAPITALI$M
Binance Rebuked by Ontario With Registration Still Pending

Geoffrey Morgan and Layan Odeh
Thu, December 30, 2021



(Bloomberg) -- Binance was reprimanded by the Ontario Securities Commission for telling users of its cryptocurrency trading platform that it was allowed to continue operations in Canada when it still lacks a registration to do so.

“This is unacceptable,” the OSC said in a statement on its website Thursday. “Binance has issued a notice to users, without any notification to the OSC.”

In a message to users, obtained by Bloomberg News, Binance said it “has been successful in taking its first steps on the regulatory path by registering in Canada” and that registration allows the company to continue its operations in Canada.

“As a result of ongoing and positive cooperation with Canadian regulators, there is no need for Ontario users to close their accounts by December 31, 2021,” the letter states.

The OSC said Binance had committed to ensuring no new transactions would be carried out on its platform after Dec. 31, but the correspondence to users rescinds that commitment.

“No entity in the Binance group of companies holds any form of securities registration in Ontario,” the OSC said. Six crypto trading platforms are currently registered in Ontario, after a warning in March of this year to register with the OSC.

In a response to questions, Binance said there was some miscommunication.

“We did not meet directly with the Ontario Securities Commission about our intentions, which was clearly an error that we are correcting. We will provide updated guidance to users as soon as possible.”

The OSC declined to comment further.

The six crypto platforms that already obtained their registrations with the OSC this year are:
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BURMA BURNS
Myanmar military reverts to strategy of massacres, burnings

By SAM McNEIL, DAVID RISING and RISHABH R. JAIN
In this aerial photo released by the Chin Human Rights Organization, fires destroy numerous buildings in the town of Thantlang in Chin State in northwest Myanmar, on Dec. 4, 2021. More than 580 buildings have been burned since September, according to satellite image analysis by Maxar Technologies.
 (Chin Human Rights Organization via AP)


BANGKOK (AP) — When the young farmhand returned to his village in Myanmar, he found the still smoldering corpses in a circle in a burned-out hut, some with their limbs tied.

The Myanmar military had stormed Done Taw at 11 a.m. on Dec. 7, he told the AP, with about 50 soldiers hunting people on foot. The farmhand and other villagers fled to the forest and fields, but 10 were captured and killed, including five teenagers, with one only 14, he said. A photo taken by his friend shows the charred remains of a victim lying face down, holding his head up, suggesting he was burned alive.

“I am very upset, it is unacceptable,” said the 19-year-old, who like others interviewed by the AP asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal.

The carnage at Done Taw is just one of the most recent signs that the Myanmar military is reverting to a strategy of massacres as a weapon of war, according to an AP investigation based on interviews with 40 witnesses, social media, satellite imagery and data on deaths.

The massacres and scorched-earth tactics — such as the razing of entire villages — represent the latest escalation in the military’s violence against both civilians and the growing opposition. Since the military seized power in February, it has cracked down ever more brutally, abducting young men and boys, killing health care workers and torturing prisoners.

The massacres and burnings also signal a return to practices that the military has long used against ethnic minorities such as the Muslim Rohingya, thousands of whom were killed in 2017. The military is now accused of killing at least 35 civilians on Christmas Eve in Mo So village in an eastern region home to the Karenni minority. A witness told the AP that many of the bodies of the men, women and children were burned beyond recognition.

But this time, the military is also using the same methods against people and villages of its own Buddhist Bamar ethnic majority. The focus of most of the latest killings has been in the northwest, including in a Bamar heartland where support for the opposition is strong.


More than 80 people have died in killings of three or more in the Sagaing region alone since August, according to data from the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, or AAPP, a group that monitors verified arrests and deaths in Myanmar. These include the deaths of those in Done Taw, five people in Gaung Kwal village on Dec. 12 and nine in Kalay township on Dec. 23, part of a trend that has made Sagaing the deadliest region in Myanmar.

The military is also reprising a hallmark tactic of destroying entire villages where there may be support for the opposition. Satellite imagery the AP obtained from Maxar Technologies shows that more than 580 buildings have been burned in the northwestern town of Thantlang alone since September.

This combination of two satellite images provided by Maxar Technologies shows a comparison view of Jan. 6, 2018, left, and Dec. 18, 2021, right, before and after of the fires that recently burned numerous homes and structures in the town of Thantlang, Myanmar. (Satellite image ©2021 Maxar Technologies via AP)

The violence appears to be a response to the local resistance forces springing up across the country, but the military is wiping out civilians in the process. In Done Taw, for example, the military moved in after a convoy hit a roadside bomb nearby, but the people killed were not part of any resistance, another villager told the AP.

“They were just normal workers on the betel-leaf plantation,” the 48-year-old welder said. “They hid because they were afraid.”

For the investigation, the AP spoke to dozens of witnesses, family members, a military commander who deserted, human rights groups and officials, along with analyzing data on deaths from the AAPP. The AP also reviewed satellite imagery and dozens of images and videos, with experts checking them against known locations and events.

The numbers likely fall far short of actual killings because they tend to happen in remote locations, and the military suppresses information on them by curtailing Internet access and checking cell phones.

“There are similar cases taking place across the country at this point, especially in the northwest of Myanmar,” Kyaw Moe Tun, who refused to leave his position as Myanmar’s United Nations envoy after the military seized power, told the AP. “Look at the pattern, look at the way it’s happened….it is systematic and widespread.”

The military, known as the Tatmadaw, did not respond to several requests by phone and by email for comment. Three days after the Done Taw attack, the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper dismissed reports of the slayings as “fake news,” accusing unidentified countries of “wishing to disintegrate Myanmar” by inciting bloodshed.

“The nature of how brazen this attack was is really indicative of the scale of violence we can expect in the coming months, and particularly next year,” said Manny Maung, a researcher for Human Rights Watch.

Just in the week of the Done Taw massacre, the military killed 20 more people in Sagaing, the AP analysis shows. And on Dec. 17, soldiers killed nine people, including a child, in Gantgaw township in the neighboring region of Magway, a witness told the AP, confirming AAPP data. Troops brought in by helicopter occupied the village for two days, and those who fled returned to find, identify and cremate rotting bodies, the witness said.

In this Oct. 14, 2021, aerial photo released by the Chin Human Rights Organization, a military convoy approaches Thantlang in Chin State in northwest Myanmar. 
(Chin Human Rights Organization via AP)

The movement of troops suggests that violence in the northwest is likely to pick up. Two military convoys of more than 80 trucks each with troops and supplies from Sagaing have made it to neighboring Chin state, according to an opposition group. And a former military captain told the AP that soldiers in Chin State were resupplied and reinforced in October, and the army is now stockpiling munition, fuel and rations in Sagaing.

The captain, who goes by the nom de guerre Zin Yaw, or Seagull, is a 20-year military veteran who deserted in March and now trains opposition forces. He said he continues to receive updates from friends still in the military and has access to defense documents, several of which he shared with the AP as proof of his access. His identity was also verified by an organization of military deserters.

“What the military worries about most is giving up their power,” said Zin Yaw. “In the military they have a saying, if you retreat, destroy everything. It means that even if they know they are going to lose, they destroy everything.”

____

The Tatmadaw overthrew the enormously popular Aung San Suu Kyi in February, claiming massive fraud in the 2020 democratic election that saw her party win in a landslide. Since then, the military and police have killed more than 1,375 people and arrested more than 11,200, according to the AAPP.

One of the earliest mass killings took place on March 14 in the township of Hlaing Tharyar in Yangon, the biggest city in Myanmar, according to a report this month from Human Rights Watch. Witnesses said that security forces fired on protesters with military assault rifles and killed at least 65, including bystanders.

As the military’s tactics have turned increasingly brutal, civilians have fought back. Opposition started with a national civil disobedience movement and protests, but has grown increasingly violent with attacks on troops and government facilities.

In May, the opposition National Unity Government announced a new military wing, the People’s Defense Force, and in September declared a “defensive war.” Loose-knit guerrilla groups calling themselves PDF have since emerged across the country, with varying degrees of allegiance to the NUG.

An early example of the military unleashing its battle-tested tactics on majority Buddhist areas came just 23 miles up the river from Done Taw in Kani township. In July, images circulated of massacres in four small villages that Myanmar’s ambassador to the United Nations called “crimes against humanity.” Four witnesses told the AP that soldiers killed 43 people in four incidents and discarded their bodies in the jungle.


In this image provided by Myanmar Witness, which is undated and unverified but matches AP reporting and eye-witness testimony, a burned structure with household goods is marked out near where bodies were found burned outside Taung Pauk village in Kani township in the northwestern Sagaing region of Myanmar following reports of a massacre of 11 people on July 28, 2021. (Myanmar Witness via AP)

On July 9, soldiers in trucks rolled into Yin village in Kani, launching an attack that would leave 16 dead, according to three witness accounts. The soldiers started shooting and sent people fleeing. Troops surrounded a group in the nearby jungle, said one woman who was captured with her brother.

She was set free, but would never see her brother alive again. When she returned with others three days later, they discovered his body on the forest floor, already rotting in the heat and showing signs of torture.

“We all live in fear,” said the woman, who like the other villagers asked to remain anonymous for safety. “We are worried that they might come back during the night.”

One 42-year-old man said a search party of 50 villagers found three separate clusters of bodies. Some appeared to have been dragged to death along rocky ground with ropes or with their own clothes. The bodies had been pillaged for gold.

“There were some fleshly remains and the odor was so foul,” the villager said. “We couldn’t even get close because of the smell.”

The village is now terrorized into silence, he said, listening for the next attack with their bags packed and the normal rhythms of life frozen in fear.

Another Kani resident told the AP that when soldiers approached his village of Zee Pin Twin on July 26, he fled into the jungle. He returned to find his home broken and blackened by fire. Precious goods were stolen, and important documents, food, and other belongings like wedding photos lay in a smoldering heap.

Two days later, villagers with search dogs found 12 bodies, some buried in shallow pits in the jungle. A villager told the AP that they saw bruises and other signs of torture on the corpses, and that one man’s hands were tied with military boot laces and his mouth gagged.

The descriptions match photographs and videos of burned and brutalized bodies given to the Myanmar Witness monitoring group.



Myanmar refugees who have fled from violence in Chin state, northwestern Myanmar, watch photos and videos of the violence at an undisclosed location, in India, Monday, Dec. 13, 2021.
 (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

“When there’s image and videos (in) three separate events…it’s very hard to deny,” said Benjamin Strick, head of investigations for the Britain and Thailand-based group.

The AP could not independently verify the grisly images, but they also match incident reports collected by the AAPP. John Quinley, a human rights specialist with Fortify Rights, said the group believes the violence in Kani and in Sagaing is a “direct result” of PDF operations there.

“The Myanmar junta’s strategy is to try to create an environment of terror and try to silence civilians and also try to drive out the PDF,” Quinley said.

That strategy may not be working. Resistance has only stiffened, according to the Kani villagers.

“The whole village plays a role,” one man said. “Some women make gunpowder; people do not work; all the villagers somehow take part in the revolution.”

Another described a few shattered survivors in a village unified by hatred of the military.

“I am not afraid anymore,” he said. “Instead of dying fleeing, I will use my life for a purpose.”

Thousands of army desertions have been reported, although usually of lower ranks, said Quinley from Fortify Rights.

“These atrocities are happening to everyday people, you know, engineers, university students, businesspeople,” he said. “And so I think there’s a growing solidarity movement across religious and ethnic lines.”

The Tatmadaw has the advantage of airpower and automatic weapons. But the opposition in Sagaing and Chin state relies on knowledge of the terrain and the support of locals, some lightly armed with muzzle-loaded home-made traditional guns.

“They just modify their skills of fighting to the defensive war and guerrilla warfare,” said Aung Myo Min, the NUG’s minister for human rights, in an interview from Europe.

The army’s attacks in Sagaing are thought to be the opening salvo in a campaign to stamp out resistance in Myanmar’s northwest, called Operation Anawrahta. Anawrahta was an 11th-century Buddhist king who established a Burmese empire, and the name carries a special meaning to the military, said the deserter, Zin Yaw.

“That means they are going to brutally crush the people,” he said.

More than 51,000 people are already displaced in seven Sagaing townships, including Kani, and another 30,200 in Chin State, according to the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian affairs.

“What we’re seeing in Sagaing is really interesting, because we’re talking about the Bamar heartland that basically should be the core foundation of this military,” said Maung of Human Rights Watch. “It’s telling how worried the military is of its own people.”

There are now growing signs that the military is turning its focus on Chin state. Chin fighters claim to have killed dozens of soldiers, according to social media analysis by Myanmar Witness.


A Myanmar refugee, 21, who fled with her two younger brothers during the violence in the town of Matupi in Chin state in northwestern Myanmar, narrates her ordeal to the Associated Press at an undisclosed location, in India, Monday, Dec. 13, 2021. 
(AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

A Myanmar refugee, 26, who fled during the violence in the town of Thantlang in Chin state, northwestern Myanmar, opens the door at an undisclosed location, in India, Monday, Dec. 13, 2021. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

As fresh soldiers have flowed into Chin state, residents have reported troops putting down protests with live rounds and brutal beatings. A teacher in the town of Mindat said many fled early on, but she was determined not to be forced out.

Then the military fired artillery into the town so the “houses would shake like an earthquake,” she said. Her cousin, a member of the PDF, was killed by a sniper and his body boobytrapped, the teacher said.

That evening, villagers tried to move the body from a distance with a stick. The body blew up.

“We didn’t get back a body,” she said. “Instead we had to collect pieces.”

She fled to neighboring India in October.

A half-day’s drive west from Mindat lies Matupi, a town with two military camps that is now bereft of its young people, according to a college student who fled with her two teenage brothers in October. She said the military had locked people into houses and set them alight, hid bombs in churches and schools, killed three protest leaders she knew and left bodies in the middle of roads to terrorize people.

Yet the resistance has spread, she said.

“People are scared of the military, but they want democracy and they are fighting for democracy,” she said from India, where she now lives. “They are screaming for democracy.”


The Myanmar military is reverting to a strategy of massacres and scorched-earth tactics like the burning of villages as weapons of war, according to an AP investigation based on interviews with 40 witnesses, social media, satellite imagery and data on deaths.

Thantlang, a town near the Indian border, has also been emptied of its people after four months of heavy fighting, according to the Chin Human Rights Organization. Drone footage shot by the group in October and December and seen by the AP shows fires raging inside buildings and charred churches, collapsed schools and ruined homes. The footage matches fires detected by satellites and interviews with villagers.

Rachel, a 23-year-old who had moved home to Thantlang in June to escape the COVID pandemic in Yangon, said residents started hearing explosions and gunfire in the distance. The sounds gradually got closer starting in September.

As the shelling hit the town, she and others hid on the ground floor of their local church for four days, she said.

She then fled for a nearby village. But she sneaked back into town on Dec. 3 to gather belongings. While she was in her home with three friends, small arms fire and explosions suddenly erupted outside.

She felt a hot burn as a bullet tore into her torso. Two of her friends bolted, leaving her alone with a cousin who has trouble walking due to a birth defect.

She told him she was going to die and asked him to leave. But he stayed, wrapping her scarf around her stomach to stem the bleeding. The two managed to get to her motorbike, and her cousin held her with one hand as he drove with the other.

A local doctor determined that the bullet had hit her cell phone and then gone into the left side of her stomach.

“I think I would have died there if it had not hit the phone,” said Rachel, who asked to be identified by one name only for her safety.

The following day she got across the border to Mizoram in India. In an interview with the AP from Mizoram, she said she would return home despite the danger to look after her ailing 70-year-old mother.

In the meantime, the farmhand who told the AP about the Done Taw massacre is defiant. He had been passively supporting the PDF before, but is now vowing to avenge the killings of his neighbors.

“I have just decided to fight until the end for them,” he said. “I will do whatever I can until I die or until I am arrested.”

_____

McNeil reported from Beijing; Jain reported from New Delhi.

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Hawaii: Don’t burn Christmas trees at sacred Oahu sandbar
December 28, 2021

 In this Aug. 15, 2015, file photo, people stand on the sandbar in Hawaii's Kaneohe Bay. Hawaii's Department of Land and Natural Resources is warning people that they face arrest if found burning Christmas trees at an oceanic sandbar. The sandbar found between the open Pacific Ocean and Kaneohe Bay on Oahu's windward side is a popular gathering place for local boaters and tourists. A tradition of piling up Christmas trees for bonfires on the sandbar is harming the environment, officials said in a statement Tuesday, Dec. 28, 2021. (AP Photo/Caleb Jones, File)


HONOLULU (AP) — Hawaii’s public lands agency is warning people that they face arrest if found burning Christmas trees at an oceanic sandbar.

The sandbar that rests between the open Pacific Ocean and Kaneohe Bay on Oahu’s windward side is a popular gathering place for local boaters and tourists.

A tradition of piling up Christmas trees for bonfires on the sandbar is harming the environment, Department of Land and Natural Resources officials said in a statement Tuesday.

“People haul their trees to (the site) by boat, and burning them is detrimental to the sandbar and the surrounding marine ecosystem,” Hawaii’s environmental law enforcement chief, Jason Redulla, said in the statement.

But it can be hard to track down those responsible, he said.

The state receives tips about tree burnings every year and dispatches crews to He‘eia Kea Small Boat Harbor, the point of departure for boats heading to the sandbar, Redulla said.

“Unfortunately, we can’t always identify the individuals involved in these illegal and disrespectful activities,” he said.

The slim stretch of reef and sand near a military installation is entirely surrounded by deeper ocean water. It offers views of Oahu’s small offshore islands and a mountain range that rises from the coastline.

Leialoha “Rocky” Kaluhiwa, president of the Ko`olaupoko Hawaiian Civic Club, said the site is sacred to many Native Hawaiians, who call the sandbar Ahu O Laka.

“The iwi (remains) of Chief Laka of Maui were brought by his sons and buried there centuries ago,” Kaluhiwa said in the statement. “Once iwi is buried in an area, it is consecrated and considered ‘kapu,’ or sacred to Native Hawaiians.”

Kaluhiwa said Chief Laka is an ancestor to some Native families who live near Kaneohe Bay.

Burning trash in public or in backyards is illegal in Hawaii.

“We strongly discourage anyone from taking their `opala (discarded items like Christmas trees) to light bonfires on Ahu o Laka,” Kaluhiwa said.

The state released video of people burning trees at the sandbar after last Christmas.

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This story has been corrected to show officials made the announcement Tuesday, not Monday.
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US affirms new interpretation for high-level nuclear waste
By KEITH RIDLER
December 29, 2021

FILE - In this May 11, 2015, file photo, nuclear waste is stored in underground containers at the Idaho National Laboratory near Idaho Falls, Idaho. The Biden administration has affirmed a Trump administration interpretation of high-level radioactive waste that is based on the waste's radioactivity rather than how it was produced. The U.S. Department of Energy announcement last week means some radioactive waste from nuclear weapons production stored for decades in Idaho, Washington and South Carolina could be reclassified and moved for permanent storage elsewhere.
 (AP Photo/Keith Ridler, File)

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The Biden administration has affirmed a Trump administration interpretation of high-level radioactive waste that is based on the waste’s radioactivity rather than how it was produced.

The U.S. Department of Energy announcement last week means some radioactive waste from nuclear weapons production stored in Idaho, Washington and South Carolina could be reclassified and moved for permanent storage elsewhere.

“After extensive policy and legal assessment, DOE affirmed that the interpretation is consistent with the law, guided by the best available science and data, and that the views of members of the public and the scientific community were considered in its adoption,” the agency said in a statement to The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The Biden administration’s affirmation of the new interpretation came after various groups offered letters of support and opposition to the agency after Biden became president, leading to the notice in the Federal Register making clear where the administration stood. Biden has reversed Trump policy in other areas.

The policy has to do with nuclear waste generated from the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel to build nuclear bombs. Such waste previously has been characterized as high level. The new interpretation applies to waste that includes such things as sludge, slurry, liquid, debris and contaminated equipment.

The agency said making disposal decisions based on radioactivity characteristics rather than how it became radioactive could allow the Energy Department to focus on other high-priority cleanup projects, reduce how long radioactive waste is stored at Energy Department facilities, and increase safety for workers, communities and the environment.

The department noted that the approach is supported by the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, formed during the Obama administration.

The department identified three sites where waste is being stored that will be affected by the new interpretation.

In Idaho, it’s stored at an 890-square-mile (2,300-square-kilometer) Energy Department site in the southeastern part of the state that includes the Idaho National Laboratory. In Washington, the waste is stored at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, a decommissioned nuclear site in the south-central part of the state that produced plutonium for nuclear bombs. In South Carolina, it’s stored at the 310-square-mile (800-square-kilometer) Savannah River Site, home of the Savannah River National Laboratory.

The department, in the statement to the AP, said it “is committed to utilizing science-driven solutions to continue to achieve success in tackling the environmental legacy of decades of nuclear weapons production and government-sponsored nuclear energy research.”

The agency also last week made public a draft environmental assessment based on the new interpretation to move some contaminated equipment from the Savannah River Site to a commercial low-level radioactive waste disposal facility located outside South Carolina. Potential storage sites are located in Andrews County, Texas, and in Clive, Utah.

Previously, the agency through a public process and using the new interpretation, approved moving up to 10000 gallons (37,854 liters) of wastewater from the Savannah River Site, with some going to Texas.

A similar public process would be used concerning additional waste at the Savannah River Site or in the other two states.

The nation has no permanent storage for high-level radioactive waste. Reclassifying some of the high-level waste under the new interpretation means it can legally be sent to commercial facilities for storing waste deemed less radioactive.

Edwin Lyman, director of Nuclear Power Safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit, said his group agreed that radioactive waste should be classified using technical analysis rather than a legal definition.

But he also said “any decision made under this new interpretation has to be backed up by solid analysis and a strong commitment to public health and safety and environmental protection.”

He also said he was concerned that the new interpretation could hinder development of permanent storage for high-level radioactive waste, which mostly sits above ground at sites where it was produced.

“It shouldn’t be used as an excuse not to move forward with a repository,” Lyman said. “That’s the danger.”

The Energy Department was shipping high-level waste to Idaho until a series of lawsuits between the state and the federal government in the 1990s led to a settlement agreement. The agreement is seen as preventing the state from becoming a high-level nuclear waste repository.

The Idaho site sits above a giant aquifer that supplies water to cities and farms in the region.
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New Mexico tribes concerned about plan to power nuclear lab
By SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN
December 29, 2021

FILE - This undated file photo shows the Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, N.M. New Mexico Indigenous leaders are concerned about a proposed multimillion-dollar transmission line that would cross what they consider sacred lands. The transmission line planned by the U.S. government would bring more electricity to Los Alamos National Laboratory as it looks to power ongoing operations and future missions at the northern New Mexico complex that include manufacturing key components for the nation's nuclear arsenal. (The Albuquerque Journal via AP, File)


ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — New Mexico Indigenous leaders are concerned about a proposed multimillion-dollar transmission line that would cross what they consider sacred lands.

The transmission line planned by the U.S. government would bring more electricity to Los Alamos National Laboratory as it looks to power ongoing operations and future missions at the northern New Mexico complex that include manufacturing key components for the nation’s nuclear arsenal.

The proposed transmission line would stretch more than 12 miles (19 kilometers), crossing national forest land in an area known as the Caja del Rio and spanning the Rio Grande at White Rock Canyon. New structural towers would need to be built on both sides of the canyon.

The All Pueblo Council of Governors — which represents 20 pueblos in New Mexico and Texas — recently adopted a resolution to support the preservation of the Caja del Rio. The organization says the area has a dense concentration of petroglyphs, ancestral homes, ceremonial kivas, roads, irrigation structures and other cultural resources

The tribes say longstanding mismanagement by the federal government has resulted in desecration to sacred sites on the Caja del Rio.

The U.S. Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration announced in April that it would be working with federal land managers to assess the project’s potential environmental effects. But pueblo leaders claim there has not been adequate tribal consultation on the proposed project.

All Pueblo Council of Governors Chairman Wilfred Herrera submitted a letter to the Santa Fe National Forest on Dec. 17, requesting that forest officials comply with consultation requirements.

Herrera, a former governor of Laguna Pueblo, said preservation of the Caja Del Rio’s sacred landscape is a collective priority for the council as it works to protect ancestral homelands around the region. He said Caja del Rio is home to pueblo ancestors and spirits.

“We encourage the federal government to understand that to fully engage with the pueblos, we need your commitment and cooperation, especially during this time of year marked by transition and rest. APCG stands ready to support decision-making that protects pueblo cultural resources in perpetuity,” he said in a statement issued last week.

Federal officials have said they will try to avoid known biological, recreational, cultural and historical resources, such as El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro National Historic Trail. Another goal would be minimizing visibility of the transmission line from residential areas.

The project — which could cost up to $300 million — calls for new overhead poles with an average span of 800 feet (244 meters), access roads for construction and maintenance and staging areas where materials can be stored.

Part of the line would be built along an existing utility corridor, but a new path would have to be cut through forest land to reach an electrical substation.

Environmentalists, residents and others already have voiced concerns about potential effects, saying the area encompasses wide Indigenous landscapes and is a scenic gateway to northern New Mexico.

The area has seen an increase in outdoor recreational use and it serves as a migration corridor for wildlife.

The Los Alamos Study Group, a watchdog group that has been critical of Los Alamos lab’s expansion plans, has said the lack of an overall analysis of the cumulative effects that plutonium core production and more weapons work could have on the surrounding communities is another concern.


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Parents selling children shows desperation of Afghanistan
KIDNEY TRADE IS BIG TOO
By ELENA BECATORO

1 of 17
Qandi Gul holds her brother outside their home housing those displaced by war and drought near Herat, Afghanistan. Dec. 16, 2021. Gul’s father sold her into marriage without telling his wife, taking a down-payment so he could feed his family of five children. Without that money, he told her, they would all starve. He had to sacrifice one to save the rest. (AP Photo/Mstyslav Chernov)

SHEDAI CAMP, Afghanistan (AP) — In a sprawling settlement of mud brick huts in western Afghanistan housing people displaced by drought and war, a woman is fighting to save her daughter.

Aziz Gul’s husband sold their 10-year-old into marriage without telling his wife, taking a down-payment so he could feed his family of five children. Otherwise, he told her, they would all starve. He had to sacrifice one to save the rest.

Many of Afghanistan’s growing number of destitute people are making such desperate decisions as their nation spirals into a vortex of poverty.

Afghanistan’s aid-dependent economy was already teetering when the Taliban seized power in mid-August amid a chaotic withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops. The international community froze Afghanistan’s assets abroad and halted funding, unwilling to work with a Taliban government given its reputation for brutality during its previous rule 20 years ago.

The consequences have been devastating for a country battered by war, drought and the coronavirus pandemic. State employees haven’t been paid in months. Malnutrition stalks the most vulnerable, and aid groups say more than half the population faces acute food shortages.

“Day by day, the situation is deteriorating in this country, and especially children are suffering,” said Asuntha Charles, national director of the World Vision aid organization in Afghanistan, which runs a health clinic for displaced people near the western city of Herat. “Today I have been heartbroken to see that the families are willing to sell their children to feed other family members.”

Arranging marriages for very young girls is common in the region. The groom’s family pays money to seal the deal, and the child usually stays with her parents until she is at least around 15. Yet with many unable to afford even basic food, some say they’d allow prospective grooms to take very young girls or are even trying to sell their sons.

Gul, unusually in this deeply patriarchal, male-dominated society, is resisting. Married off herself at 15, she says she would kill herself if her daughter, Qandi Gul, is taken away.

When her husband told her he had sold Qandi, “my heart stopped beating. I wished I could have died at that time, but maybe God didn’t want me to die,” Gul said, with Qandi by her side peering shyly from beneath her sky-blue headscarf. “Each time I remember that night ... I die and come back to life.”

Her husband told her he sold one to save the others, saying they all would have died otherwise.

“Dying was much better than what you have done,” she said she told him.


Gul rallied her brother and village elders and with their help secured a “divorce” for Qandi, on condition she repays the 100,000 afghanis (about $1,000) her husband received. It’s money she doesn’t have.

Her husband fled, possibly fearing Gul might denounce him to authorities. The Taliban government recently banned forced marriages.

Gul says she isn’t sure how long she can fend off the family of the prospective groom, a man of around 21.

“I am just so desperate. If I can’t provide money to pay these people and can’t keep my daughter by my side, I have said that I will kill myself,” she said. “But then I think about the other children. What will happen to them? Who will feed them?” Her eldest is 12, her youngest - her sixth - just two months.

In another part of the camp, father-of-four Hamid Abdullah was also selling his young daughters into arranged marriages, desperate for money to treat his chronically ill wife, pregnant with their fifth child.



   HERAT MUD CITY THE WHITE BUILDINGS  ARE MEDICAL UNIT TRUCKS

He can’t repay money he borrowed to fund his wife’s treatments, he said. So three years ago, he received a down-payment for his eldest daughter Hoshran, now 7, in an arranged marriage to a now 18-year-old.

The family who bought Hoshran are waiting until she is older before settling the full amount and taking her. But Abdullah needs money now, so he is trying to arrange a marriage for his second daughter, 6-year-old Nazia, for about 20,000-30,000 afghanis ($200-$300).

“We don’t have food to eat,” and he can’t pay his wife’s doctor, he said.

His wife, Bibi Jan, said they had no other option but it was a difficult decision. “When we made the decision, it was like someone had taken a body part from me.”

In neighboring Badghis province, another displaced family is considering selling their son, 8-year-old Salahuddin.

His mother, Guldasta, said that after days with nothing to eat, she told her husband to take Salahuddin to the bazaar and sell him to bring food for the others.

“I don’t want to sell my son, but I have to,” the 35-year-old said. “No mother can do this to her child, but when you have no other choice, you have to make a decision against your will.”

Salahuddin blinked and looked on silently, his lip quivering slightly.

His father, Shakir, blind in one eye and with kidney problems, said the children had been crying for days from hunger. Twice he decided to take Salahuddin to the bazaar, and twice he faltered. “But now I think I have no other choice.”


Buying boys is believed to be less common than girls, and when it does take place, it appears to be cases families without sons buying infants. In her despair, Guldasta thought perhaps such a family might want an 8-year-old.

The desperation of millions is clear as more and more people face hunger, with some 3.2 million children under 5 years old facing acute malnutrition, according to the U.N.

Charles, World Vision’s national director for Afghanistan, said humanitarian aid funds are desperately needed.

“I’m happy to see the pledges are made,” she said. But the pledges “shouldn’t stay as promises, they have to be seen as reality on the ground.”


A nurse shows Chinar's scar, who had a kidney removal surgery, at a settlement near Herat, Afghanistan, Dec. 16, 2021. Chinar said her husband is sick and she had to sell her kidney to feed their four children. Afghanistan’s destitute are increasingly turning to such desperate decisions as the country spirals downwards into a vortex of poverty. 
(AP Photo/Mstyslav Chernov)
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Abdul Qahar Afghan in Shedai Camp, Afghanistan, and Rahim Faiez in Islamabad contributed to this report.

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Follow Becatoros on Twitter on: https://twitter.com/ElenaBec










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Hundreds of Afghans denied humanitarian entry into US

By PHILIP MARCELO and AMY TAXIN

Haseena Niazi, a 24-year-old from Afghanistan, poses outside her home, Friday, Dec. 17, 2021, north of Boston. Niazi received a letter from the federal government denying her fiancé's humanitarian parole application earlier in the month. Her fiance, who she asked not to be named over concerns about his safety, had received threats from Taliban members for working on women's health issues at a hospital north of Kabul. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

BOSTON (AP) — Haseena Niazi had pinned her hopes of getting her fiancé out of Afghanistan on a rarely used immigration provision.

The 24-year-old Massachusetts resident was almost certain his application for humanitarian parole would get approved by the U.S. government, considering the evidence he provided on the threats from the Taliban he received while working on women’s health issues at a hospital near Kabul.

But this month, the request was summarily denied, leaving the couple reeling after months of anxiety.

“He had everything they wanted,” said Niazi, a green card holder originally from Afghanistan. “It doesn’t make any sense why they’d reject it. It’s like a bad dream. I still can’t believe it.”

Federal immigration officials have issued denial letters to hundreds of Afghans seeking temporary entry into the country for humanitarian reasons in recent weeks, to the dismay of Afghans and their supporters. By doing so, immigrant advocates say, the Biden administration has failed to honor its promise to help Afghans who were left behind after the U.S. military withdrew from the country in August and the Taliban took control.

“It was a huge disappointment,” said Caitlin Rowe, a Texas attorney who said she recently received five denials, including one for an Afghan police officer who helped train U.S. troops and was beaten by the Taliban. “These are vulnerable people who genuinely thought there was hope, and I don’t think there was.”

Since the U.S. withdrawal, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has received more than 35,000 applications for humanitarian parole, of which it has denied about 470 and conditionally approved more than 140, Victoria Palmer, an agency spokesperson, said this week.

The little-known program, which doesn’t provide a path to lawful permanent residence in the country, typically receives fewer than 2,000 requests annually from all nationalities, of which USCIS approves an average of about 500, she said.

Palmer also stressed humanitarian parole is generally reserved for extreme emergencies and not intended to replace the refugee admissions process, “which is the typical pathway for individuals outside of the United States who have fled their country of origin and are seeking protection.”


Haseena Niazi, a 24-year-old from Afghanistan, holds a parole denial notice she received from the Department of Homeland Security, while posing outside her home, Friday, Dec. 17, 2021, north of Boston. Niazi received the letter from the federal government denying her fiancé's humanitarian parole application earlier in the month. Her fiance, who she asked not to be named over concerns about his safety, had received threats from Taliban members for working on women's health issues at a hospital north of Kabul. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

The U.S. government, meanwhile, continues to help vulnerable Afghans, evacuating more than 900 American citizens and residents and another 2,200 Afghans since the military withdrawal. The state department said it expects to help resettle as many as 95,000 people from Afghanistan this fiscal year, a process that includes rigorous background checks and vaccinations.

Many of them, however, had been whisked out of Afghanistan before the U.S. left. Now, USCIS is tasked with this new wave of humanitarian parole applications and has ramped up staffing to consider them.

The agency said in a statement that requests are reviewed on an individual basis, with consideration given to immediate relatives of Americans and Afghans airlifted out.

And while USCIS stressed that parole shouldn’t replace refugee processing, immigrant advocates argue that isn’t a viable option for Afghans stuck in their country due to a disability or hiding from the Taliban. Even those able to get out of Afghanistan, they say, may be forced to wait years in refugee camps, which isn’t something many can afford to do.

Mohammad, who asked that his last name not be used out of fear for his family’s safety, said his elder brother, who used to work for international organizations, is among them. He has been in hiding since the Taliban came looking for him following the U.S. withdrawal, Mohammad said.

On a recent visit to the family home, Taliban members took his younger brother instead and held him more than a week for ransom, he said. Now, Mohammad, a former translator for U.S. troops in Afghanistan who lives in California with a special immigration status, is seeking parole for this brother, too. He hopes a conditional approval letter can get them a spot on one of the U.S. evacuation flights still running out of the country.

“I can provide him housing. I can provide him everything,” he said. “Let them come here.”

Immigrant advocates began filing humanitarian parole applications for Afghans in August in a last-ditch effort to get them on U.S. evacuation flights out of the country before the withdrawal.

In some cases, it worked, and word spread among immigration attorneys that parole, while typically used in extreme emergencies, might be a way out, said Kyra Lilien, director of immigration legal services at Jewish Family & Community Services in California’s East Bay.

Soon, attorneys began filing thousands of parole applications for Afghans.

When the U.S. immigration agency created a website specifically to address these applications, Lilien said she thought it was a sign of hope. By November, however, the agency had posted a list of narrow criteria for Afghan applicants and held a webinar telling attorneys that parole is typically granted only if there’s evidence someone faces “imminent severe harm.”

A few weeks later, the denial letters began arriving. Lilien has received more than a dozen but no approvals.

“Once the U.S. packed up and left, anyone who was left behind has only one choice, and that is to pursue this archaic refugee channel,” she said. “It is just so angering that it took USCIS so long to be clear about that.”

Wogai Mohmand, an attorney who helps lead the Afghan-focused Project ANAR, said that the group has filed thousands of applications and that since the U.S. troop withdrawal, has seen only denials.

The despair has led some immigration attorneys to give up on filing parole applications altogether. In Massachusetts, the International Institute of New England is holding off filing new applications until it hears on those that are pending after receiving a flurry of denials.

Chiara St. Pierre, an attorney for the refugee resettlement agency, said she feels clients like Niazi are facing an “unwinnable” battle.

For Niazi’s fiancé, they had provided copies of written threats sent to the hospital where he works as a medical technician and threatening text messages he said came from Taliban members, she said. It wasn’t enough.

A redacted copy of the denial letter provided by St. Pierre lists the USCIS criteria released in November but doesn’t specify why the agency rejected the application, which had been filed in August.

For now, Niazi says her fiancé is living and working far from Kabul as they weigh their options. They could potentially wait until Niazi becomes an American citizen so she can try to bring him here on a fiancé visa, but that would take years.

“He can’t wait that long. It’s a miracle every day that he’s alive,” Niazi said. “I’m feeling like every door is closing in on him.”

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Taxin reported from Orange County, California.
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