Elite Afghan troops were left to die in battle with Taliban, officials say

BY J.P. LAWRENCE AND AND ZUBAIR BABAKARKHAIL•

 STARS AND STRIPES • JUNE 21, 2021

 Mourners remember the life of Maj. Sohrab Azimi, an American-educated Afghan commando, in a funeral in Kabul, Afghanistan, June 19, 2021. (Afghan Ministry of Defense)

KABUL, Afghanistan — At least 21 members of Afghanistan’s special forces died fighting the Taliban last week after Afghan reinforcements failed to show up when the commandos were surrounded by the enemy and pounded by mortar fire, military and government officials said.

Most of the 170 troops who were supposed to back up the elite fighters during a battle in the northern town of Dawlat Abad stayed put out of fear that the operation had been leaked to the Taliban, an Afghan military official with knowledge of the operation said.

“The army did not come, police did not come, NDS did not come,” said the official, who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak to the media. NDS is the acronym for the country’s intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security.

“The other forces betrayed the commandos,” he said.

The caskets of Afghan elite soldiers killed in a battle with the Taliban are carried during a funeral in Kabul, June 19, 2021. One of the three soldiers remembered at the funeral was Maj. Sohrab Azimi, who was trained and educated by the United States. (Afghan Ministry of Defense)

The failure to provide air and ground support to their own soldiers underscored fears that the Afghan military will struggle to hold off Taliban attacks when the U.S. completes its withdrawal from the country.

One of the soldiers who died was Maj. Sohrab Azimi, a decorated, U.S.-trained Afghan special forces officer who directed airstrikes on operations around the country. Azimi was posthumously promoted to brigadier general, a statement by the Afghan Defense Ministry said.

Azimi and the other troops were fighting to retake Dawlat Abad, a district center in Faryab province.

The battle plan, which was included in documents reviewed by Stars and Stripes, was to have 50 commandos recapture the town, after which troops from the army, police and intelligence agency would arrive to secure it and fend off counterattacks.

The special forces defeated a small Taliban force and captured the district center around 6 a.m. Wednesday, the military official said.

But a much larger Taliban unit surrounded Dawlat Abad soon afterward and shelled the commandos, destroying their Humvees with mortar fire, he said.

The trapped soldiers called for ground and air support, but neither materialized, the official said.

While 50 of the soldiers and police who were supposed to provide backup tried to reach the commandos, the large number of Taliban in the town forced them to retreat, he added.

U.S. Forces – Afghanistan declined to say whether they had received requests for air support or if they attempted to help the commandos.

Without backup, the soldiers were as good as dead, said two provincial council members for Faryab.

“How can you send only a unit of 50 commandos to an area which is under 100% control of the Taliban?” asked one of them, Abdul Ahad Elbek.


The military official and Elbek said they believe someone had informed the Taliban about the operation before it happened.

Afghan forces recaptured Dawlat Abad after the battle but pulled out soon afterward. As of Saturday, Dawlat Abad was back under Taliban control, Elbek said.

A funeral was held Saturday in Kabul for Azimi and two other soldiers who died in the fighting in Faryab.

Maj. Sohrab Azimi, a decorated Afghan special forces officer trained and educated by the U.S., looks over a valley in the northeastern province of Kapisa, Afghanistan on March 6, 2021. Azimi died fighting the Taliban in Faryab province on June 16, 2021. (J.P. Lawrence/Stars and Stripes)

His father, retired general Zahir Azimi, told Stars and Stripes a day earlier that unlike most of the children of Kabul’s generals and government ministers, his son had chosen to risk his life in combat to defend his country.

Images he saw of his dead son showed that he had died “fighting face-to-face with the enemy, not running,” he said.

Sorhab Azimi told Stars and Stripes in March that he believed he was deterring global terrorism by fighting in Afghanistan.

The Sunday before the attack, he sent a text message to friends, saying he was back in Kabul for some rest after battling the Taliban in Faryab for 50 days without a break.

BUY PHOTOMaj. Sohrab Azimi, a decorated Afghan special forces officer, looks over a valley in the northeastern province of Kapisa, Afghanistan, in March 6, 2021. Azimi was killed fighting the Taliban in Faryab province on June 16, 2021. (J.P. Lawrence/Stars and Stripes)

But three days later, he was ordered to return to the front.

“Back to Faryab,” he said in a text message before leaving for what would be his final fight.

The special forces deaths came amid reports of districts falling to the Taliban and hundreds of Afghan troops surrendering during weeks of fighting around Afghanistan. The country’s president, Ashraf Ghani, announced Saturday that he will replace his defense and interior chiefs.

Air support for Afghan troops could become a rarity once U.S.-funded contractors are gone, as foreign forces pull out of the country by a Sept. 11 deadline. It could be a matter of months before Afghanistan’s fleet is grounded due to a lack of maintenance, a report in The New York Times said Saturday.

U.S. officials are in talks to keep the Afghan air force flying, the report said. The U.S. is also considering delaying its withdrawal from Bagram Airfield, one of two remaining U.S.-controlled bases in the country, The Washington Post reported.

The U.S. is conducting air combat patrols and providing support to Afghanistan from ships in the North Arabian Sea and sending surveillance aircraft to Afghanistan from nations in the Gulf region, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told Congress earlier this month.

But he declined to address whether the U.S. will provide combat air support to Afghan forces after the U.S. withdrawal is complete.

lawrence.jp@stripes.com
Twitter: @jplawrence3

BEFORE THE TALIBAN EVEN TAKE OVER
Ban on Afghan girls singing at schools overturned by social media stir

Asyia Hamzaie
Mon, June 21, 2021,

(Asiya Hamzaie, Hasht e Subh Daily)

The protracted war in Afghanistan has fragilized the country’s entire education system. Both the quest for political power and religious extremism in the Islamic country have led to the politicisation of education, with some circles seeking to introduce ideology into the school system. Officially, the Afghan government favours girls’ access to education, but culturally, some girls still face restrictions to attend school in certain areas of the country.

While on paper the Afghan constitution guarantees gender equality, there are serious shortcomings in practice. Najiba Arian, a spokesperson for the Afghan Ministry of Education, said there are currently 9.7 million students in the country, 42 per cent of whom are girls. But roughly 3.7 million children do not attend school — 60 per cent of them are girls. Hardships to access the school system are worst in southern and eastern provinces, said Ms Arian, not only due to security reasons but also because of tribal and traditional customs. Most of these areas, which belong to particular ethnic groups, are controlled by the Taliban, who ruled the country in the 1990s and still oppose girls’ and women’s education, despite recent claims of change. Schools that have been built over the last 20 years are in fact getting destroyed by the armed group.

Yet facing these and other challenges have led Afghan women to fight for their rights, sometimes with successful outcomes. In 2015, the country’s Ministry of Education presented a controversial plan involving female students’ uniforms that would cover girls’ bodies with long, dark-coloured clothing, similar to that of extremist Islamist groups. Civil society activists contested the move, arguing that the dress not only promoted extremism but was also too hot to wear during summertime — which is when schools are open in the country. The Ministry of Education had to abandon the plan. In some parts of the country, where conservatism and tribal customs still prevail, girls do wear body-covering long dark dresses —which also cover their faces— despite often reaching high temperatures, making it hard for them to attend school or actually paying attention in class.

Nazo Ana High School in Nangarhar’s capital, Jalalabad, 2017 (Asiya Hamzaie, Hasht e Subh Daily)


But now the battle for gender equality in Afghanistan’s educational environment has taken a new shape, thanks to an online women’s rights movement that hopes to raise the voice of those who have been silenced for too long — the "Ma’arif [which means Education] Choir Campaign."

The campaign was born out of the outrage caused by an announcement from one of the Ministry of Education’s departments in March 2020, which forbade female students over-12 from singing in school choirs in public and in front of men. Spontaneous and leaderless protests began taking place online, due to the coronavirus pandemic, in a rather original way. More than 100 women posted videos of them singing their childhood songs on the Internet, asking why female students should be prevented from singing two decades after the fall of the Taliban rule, prompting widespread and long-lasting public support for the campaign.

Once again, the protests led the government to retreat, and the Ministry of Education finally issued a statement saying that the plan did “not reflect the official position and policy of the ministry." Wahid Omar, an adviser to the Afghan president Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai said, “No individual or institution is allowed to set limits for its citizens, [which is] contrary to the spirit of the country’s constitution.”


Fariha Esaar, Civil Activist and member of the Ma'arif Choir Campaign (Naseer Kawoshgar, Hasht e Subh Daily)



Earlier this year, the government tried another move, this time to merge schools with mosques during the first three years of the elementary school programme —presumably to gain influence against radical Islamists groups such as the Taliban— but it was also quickly shut down after online protests. The Minister of Education, Assadullah Hanif Balkhi, said the plan was for students to have access to education in areas without schools and that it had been misinterpreted. During the choir campaign, Fariha Esaar, one of the women activists who sang in front of a camera, said, “Both the plan to merge schools with mosques for the first three years of education and the plan to ban female students over-12 from singing in schools are efforts made to radicalize and Talibanize Afghanistan’s education system.” Now, with the withdrawal of foreign forces and the possibility of escalating civil war in the country, she added, there are serious concerns about the group’s influence in specific circles. “We can not remain silent in this regard. We will stand up and prevent the influence of extremism in the education sector. We have succeeded in this campaign, but we must have more structural plans to ensure gender equality so that political decisions don’t exclude women.”

Ghulam Dastgir Munir, an education expert, said he got suspended from his teaching position in a public school because of his heavy criticism of extremist initiatives such as educating children in mosques and banning girls from singing. According to him, the main challenge that remains ahead is that the seats and positions in the education sector are assigned not on the basis of expertise but depending on political affiliation, and that, in order to ensure gender equality and de-politicize schools, appointments must be free of political affiliation.

The Ma’aref Choir Campaign is one successful example of a civil society movement fighting for gender equality in Afghanistan. However, a long term action plan is needed to guarantee gender equality in the educational sector — one that raises female teachers rates and increases awareness among families, particularly in remote areas of the country, so that more girls can attend school.

This article is being published as part of “Towards Equality”, an international and collaborative initiative gathering 15 international news outlets to highlight the challenges and solutions to reach gender equality.

(Towards Equality)

Myanmar army clashes with anti-junta militia in major city

Tue, June 22, 2021,

A military handout photograph shows soldiers and police arresting people during a raid in Mandalay

The army in Myanmar's second city, Mandalay, has clashed with a local militia opposed to February's military coup.

The clashes are the first time the People's Defense Forces (PDF) have come up against the army in a major city.

The defence force is a collective name for militia groups that have sprung up in Myanmar since the coup.

Myanmar's military junta has violently put down anti-coup protests in the country, killing hundreds of civilians.

Until now, actions by the PDF have been limited to fighting in rural areas or small towns. Tuesday's clashes brought the violence to a major city, marking a new phase in the fallout from the coup.

According to local reports, troops raided a boarding school being used as a base by the militia, leading to an exchange of gunfire.


Myanmar coup: What is happening and why?


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The junta said four protesters were killed in the raid and eight arrested, and several soldiers injured. The Mandalay PDF confirmed the raid, on 54th Street in the Chan Mya Thar Si Township, in a post on social media.

The PDF said weapons were seized from inside the building and several members of the group arrested, but did not confirm whether there were any casualties.

Local people told the BBC that security checks were being tightened in the city in the wake of the violent exchange.

The military has previously responded to PDF attacks on soldiers with artillery and air strikes, displacing thousands of people from their homes.

Security forces have killed at least 873 protesters since the February coup, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners - an activist group which is monitoring the numbers. The military disputes the figure.

The United Nations General Assembly on Friday called for a halt in the international flow of arms to Myanmar, and urged the military to respect the results of a November election and release political detainees, including the country's democratically-elected leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.

Myanmar's foreign ministry rejected the UN statement, saying it was "based on one-sided sweeping allegations and false assumptions".
Myanmar in profile


Myanmar, also known as Burma, became independent from Britain in 1948. For much of its modern history it has been under military rule


Restrictions began loosening from 2010 onwards, leading to free elections in 2015 and the installation of a government led by veteran opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi the following year


In 2017, Myanmar's army responded to attacks on police by Rohingya militants with a deadly crackdown, driving more than half a million Rohingya Muslims across the border into Bangladesh in what the UN later called a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing"

Map of Myanmar showing Mandalay, Nay Pyi Taw and Yangon

Myanmar militias vow to take on army after city firefight


People walk out from a house believed to have been raided by security forces, in Mandalay

Mon, June 21, 2021,

(Reuters) -Myanmar security forces backed by Armoured vehicles clashed on Tuesday with a newly formed guerrilla group in the second biggest city Mandalay, army-run media, the militias and a witness said, resulting in at least two casualties.

Since the army seized power on Feb. 1 and removed Aung San Suu Kyi's elected government, troops have put down pro-democracy demonstrations and strikes and killed or arrested hundreds of protesters.

In response, people's defence forces have sprung up across the Southeast Asian country to take on security forces.

Until now, fighting involving lightly armed militias has been mainly in small towns and rural areas, but a group claiming to be Mandalay's new People's Defence Force said its members responded after the army raided one of its bases.

"The fight has started. There will be more fights," a militiaman identified as Captain Tun Tauk Naing said by telephone.

The sound of repeated gunfire could be heard in video footage taken by a resident in Mandalay, a hotspot for anti-coup protests.

Army-owned Myawaddy Television said on its Telegram message channel that security forces raided a house and "armed terrorists" fought back with small weapons and bombs.

It said four were killed and eight arrested and some members of the security forces were seriously hurt.

The junta typically describes its opponents as "terrorists".

Local news site Myanmar Now said about 20 soldiers conducted the raid, sparking a gunfight, and three armoured vehicles were deployed.

Another official from the militia group told the Mizzima news portal that six of its members had been arrested and two soldiers were killed.

An activist in Mandalay told Reuters he heard gunfire and saw about 10 armoured vehicles. "We are all afraid, but at least we know we have the support of the nation," he said. "Everyone in Myanmar knows the situation in Mandalay now."

A small group of demonstrators was seen rallying behind the Mandalay militias, carrying banners and making three-finger gestures symbolising resistance to military rule.

A spokesman for the junta did not answer calls seeking comment. State-run MRTV did not report the Mandalay unrest during its nightly newscast.

The U.S. Embassy in Myanmar said on Twitter that it was tracking reports of fighting in Mandalay and urgently called for a cessation of violence.

The military has used artillery and air strikes in response to guerrilla attacks on soldiers elsewhere in Myanmar, which have led to casualties on both sides and an exodus of tens of thousands of people.

The United Nations General Assembly called on Friday for a stop to the arms flow to Myanmar and urged the military to respect the outcome of a November election and release political detainees, including Suu Kyi.

Suu Kyi, 76, faces multiple charges including incitement, corruption and official secrets breaches. She appeared in court for her trial on Tuesday and was in normal health, her lawyer said. Her lawyers have said the charges are baseless.

(Reporting by Reuters StaffWriting by Ed DaviesEditing by Martin Petty and Mark Heinrich)

Are carbon-sucking vacuums really the best way to curb climate change?

Mario Picazo 

Embedded content: https://players.brightcove.net/1942203455001/B1CSR9sVf_default/index.html?videoId=6257802781001

There is a growing interest in carbon sequestration projects and California’s state government is considering the installation of giant vacuums that will literally suck carbon out of the air.

This new technology has been developed by Carbon Engineering, a direct air capture company based in British Columbia. To test the grounds, they are currently working on a carbon sequestration project tailored for Occidental Petroleum in Texas.

Before spending $14 billion USD a year, and building a complex network of pipelines to transport the captured emissions underground, California Government officials want to see solid results coming from the Texas testing site.

© Provided by The Weather NetworkSmog over Los Angeles, California, USA. (Robert Landau. Corbis Documentary. Getty Images)

If vacuums end-up being installed, the goal is to lower carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere, thus reducing global warming which causes climate change. California is considering installing such vacuums to reach the goal of becoming a carbon neutral state by 2045.

While greenhouse gases have been on a downward trend in the Golden State, experts are split on how best to meet the ambitious targets. Some think that at this point, meeting ambitious carbon neutrality goals will have to include technologies that remove carbon from the air.

Mark Jacobson, a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Stanford, has some valuable thoughts on the implementation of this revolutionary plan.

Watch the video above to see this expert’s take on carbon-sucking vacuums.

WW3.0
Russia fires warning shots to deter U.K. warship in Black Sea

MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian warship fired warning shots and a Russian warplane dropped bombs Wednesday to force a British destroyer away from an area in the Black Sea near Crimea that Russia claims as its territorial waters.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The incident marked the first time since the Cold War that Moscow has used live ammunition to deter a NATO warship, reflecting growing risks of military incidents amid soaring Russia-West tensions.

The Russian Defense Ministry said the Russian warship fired warning shots after the British missile destroyer Defender had ignored a notice against intrusion in Russia’s territorial waters. It said that a Russian Su-24 bomber also dropped four bombs ahead of the British ship to persuade it to change course. Minutes later, the British warship left the Russian waters, the ministry said.

The Russian Defense Ministry said it has summoned the U.K. military attache in Moscow to protest the British destroyer’s maneuver.

The U.K. Ministry of Defense said it was aware of the reports but had no immediate comment.

HMS Defender, a Type 45 destroyer, is part of the U.K. Carrier Strike Group currently heading to the Indo-Pacific region. However, it was announced earlier this month that it would be temporarily breaking away from the group to carry out its “own set of missions” in the Black Sea.

Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, a move that was not recognized by most countries in the world, gaining access to the peninsula's long Black Sea coastline. Russia has frequently chafed at NATO warships visits near Crimea, casting them as destabilizing.

NATO members Turkey, Romania and Bulgaria all are on the Black Sea, but warships from the U.S., U.K. and other NATO allies also have made increasingly frequent visits there in a show of support for Ukraine.

Speaking Wednesday just before the incident, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the General Staff of the Russian armed forces, sharply criticized the deployments of NATO warships near Russian waters.

“The moves by warships of the U.S. and its allies have been clearly provocative,” Gerasimov said at an international security conference in Moscow organized by the Russian Defense Ministry. “It creates preconditions for incidents and doesn't help ease tensions in the military sphere.”

He charged that the British destroyer Dragon intruded into the Russian waters near Crimea in October, and the U.S. destroyer John McCain violated the Russian border in the Sea of Japan in November.

In April, Russia imposed restrictions on foreign navy ships' movements near Crimea until November in a move that drew strong complaints from Ukraine and the West. Russia has rejected that criticism and noted that the restrictions wouldn’t interfere with commercial shipping.

Earlier this year, Russia also beefed up its troops near the border with Ukraine and warned Ukrainian authorities against using force to reclaim control of the country's east, where a conflict with Russia-backed separatists has killed more than 14,000 people in seven years. Moscow withdrew some of its forces after sweeping maneuvers, but Ukrainian officials say that the bulk of them have remained.

___

Associated Press writer Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.

Vladimir Isachenkov, The Associated Press

Catholic bishops are making American Catholicism a single-issue religion

Peter Weber, Senior editor

THE WEEK
Mon, June 21, 2021, 

A cross. Illustrated | iStock, Amazon

Catholic leaders like to explain that Roman Catholicism doesn't fit comfortably in any political party, and doctrinally, that is true.

The Catholic Church has had a strong history of supporting labor movements since Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical Rerum novarum (Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor), has taught that artificial contraception is sinful since Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical Humanae vitae, condemns both abortion and capital punishment, strongly supports immigration and finding safe harbor for refugees, opposes same-sex marriage and civil unions, and encourages strong global measures to mitigate climate change. There's plenty for Democrats and Republicans to love and hate.

But the American bishops on Friday took a big step toward making the U.S. Catholic Church a one-issue denomination. That one issue, of course, is abortion. And the apparent preferred mechanism to enforce doctrinal purity on abortion, according to a majority of U.S. bishops who voted by secret ballot last week, is threatening to deny errant politicians the Eucharist. The clear genesis of this push was the election of America's second Catholic president, Joe Biden.





The bishops, gathered virtually for the spring meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), voted 168 to 55, with 6 abstentions, to push forward with a document on the Eucharist that, in its draft form, would encourage bishops to deny the Eucharist to Catholic political figures who support legal access to abortion.

The Vatican had publicly urged the USCCB not to take this step without finding consensus. Pope Francis, who abhors abortion, has made his views fairly clear that the Eucharist, which Catholics believe is substantively the body and blood of Jesus, is "not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak," as he wrote in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel).

The pope reiterated that point on June 6. Jesus gave us the Eucharist on the night Judas, who "eats with Him, who dips the morsel in the same plate, is betraying Him," he told a crowd in St. Peter's Square. And Jesus does the same for us, the pope continued. "He knows that we need it, because the Eucharist is not the reward of saints, but the bread of sinners. This is why he exhorts us: 'Do not be afraid! Take and eat.'"

The U.S. bishops who support denying Democratic politicians Communion say they are doing so because having prominent Catholics, especially those involved in policy, participate in the Mass while publicly upholding the legal right to abortion gives the sense that the church sanctions or at least tolerates abortion. "There is a special obligation of those who are in leadership because of their public visibility," Fort Wayne-South Bend Bishop Kevin Rhaodes, chairman of the USCCB doctrinal committee that will now write the document on the Eucharist, said after the vote.



But deploying what amounts to the Catholic nuclear option only on abortion signals that abortion is the only issue the Catholic Church really cares about.

Steven Millies, a professor of public theology at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, notes that nobody is accusing Biden of performing or procuring an abortion, just abiding by his oath to uphold the Constitution — which, under current Supreme Court precedent, recognizes a legal right to abortion.

Millies points to the counterexample of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), another prominent Catholic, who has declined to halt 18 executions on his watch since Pope Francis increased the church's official opposition to capital punishment. Abbott's actions are much more proximate to capital punishment than Biden's are to abortion, he said, and no bishops are calling for him to be denied Communion.

Another prominent Catholic Republican, former Attorney General Bill Barr, revived the federal death penalty after a 17-year break, then pushed through 13 executions in rapid succession. The day between the sixth and seventh executions last September, Barr was awarded the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast's Christifideles Laici (Faithful Christian Laity) Award. The Supreme Court has a 6-3 Catholic majority, but the justices allowed all those executions to proceed.

At the USCCB's 2018 spring meeting, a bishop recommended applying "canonical penalties" on Catholics who participated in the Trump administration's family separation immigration policy, Jack Jenkins recounts at Religion News Service. "The proposal did not gain traction, however, and did not trigger calls for a Eucharistic document."

With abortion, the bishops seem willing to alienate about half the U.S. church to make a political point. Because even if the bishops follow through in the November meeting and issue a document encouraging each other to bar Biden from receiving Holy Communion, Washington Cardinal Wilton Gregory has made clear he will not. And unless the bishops unanimously adopt the document on the Eucharist, which seems unlikely, it would need sign-off from the Vatican to take effect. That seems even less likely.

Sixty Catholic House Democrats issued a response to the USCCB's vote, laying out their vision of what supporting human life and dignity looks like and "solemnly" urging the bishops to "not move forward and deny this most holy of all sacraments, the source and the summit of the whole work of the gospel over one issue." A Pew Research survey in March found that 67 percent of U.S. Catholics believe Biden should be allowed to receive Communion regardless of his abortion politics.

"Any effort by this conference to move in support of the categorical exclusion of Catholic political leaders based on their public policy will thrust the bishops of our nation into the very heart of the toxic partisan strife, which has distorted our own political culture and crippled meaningful dialogue," Cardinal Joseph Tobin of New Jersey said during the USCCB debate.

There's also the elephant in the room: the bishops' own moral credibility.

After decades of sexual abuse facilitated by bishops came to light in 2002 and 2003, the bishops should have emerged "humbled," with "a long period of atonement and a commitment to holding themselves accountable," tweeted Fr. Jeremy Zipple, a Catholic priest and Jesuit. "Instead, they quickly pivoted to a culture war fight over gay marriage then ObamaCare," and now this, wrecking the "U.S. church's credibility."

The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest U.S. Protestant denomination, also met last week, and its delegates stepped back from ramping up its cultural warfare. "Whenever the church gets in bed with politics, the church gets pregnant," outgoing SBC leader J.D. Greear said in his final presidential address. "And our offspring does not look like our Father in Heaven."

Baptists and other evangelicals, historically, have long valued the separation of church and state more than the Catholic Church, which is headquartered in its own sovereign city state and used to control European empires. But alienating one of two American political parties is bad politics, especially in a moment where the president, Supreme Court majority, and House speaker are all Catholic.

More to the point, it seems like bad flock-tending and bad religion.

In the same letter Pope Francis said the Eucharist isn't "a prize for the perfect" but "nourishment for the weak," he added of his fellow pastors: "Frequently, we act as arbiters of grace rather than its facilitators. But the Church is not a tollhouse; it is the house of the Father, where there is a place for everyone, with all their problems." In America, we'll see.

 

An electric car fire is like 'a trick birthday candle' — and a nightmare for firefighters

Cyrus Farivar

Sun, June 20, 2021, 4:06 AM·11 min read

It’s the kind of blaze that veteran Chief Palmer Buck of The Woodlands Township Fire Department in suburban Houston compared to “a trick birthday candle.”

On April 17, when firefighters responded to a 911 call at around 9:30 p.m., they came upon a Tesla Model S that had crashed, killing two people, and was now on fire.

They extinguished it, but then a small flare shot out of the bottom of the charred hulk. Firefighters quickly put out those flames. Not long after, the car reignited for a third time.

“What the heck? How do we make this stop?’” Buck asked his team. They quickly consulted Tesla’s first responder guide and realized that it would take far more personnel and water than they could have imagined. Eight firefighters ultimately spent seven hours putting out the fire. They also used up 28,000 gallons of water — an amount the department normally uses in a month. That same volume of water serves an average American home for nearly two years.

By comparison, a typical fire involving an internal combustion car can often be quickly put out with approximately 300 gallons of water, well within the capacity of a single fire engine.

As the popularity of electric vehicles grows, firefighters nationwide are realizing that they are not fully equipped to deal with them. So they have been banding together, largely informally, to share information to help one another out. In fact, Buck recently spoke on Zoom about the incident before a group of Colorado firefighters.

That’s because the way that electric vehicles are powered triggers longer-burning fires when they crash and get into serious accidents. Electric cars rely on a bank of lithium-ion batteries, similar to batteries found in a cellphone or computer. But unlike a small phone battery, the large batteries found in the Tesla Model X, for instance, contain enough energy to power an average American home for more than two days.

The remains of a Tesla vehicle are seen after it crashed in The Woodlands, Texas (Scott J. Enlge / via Reuters)

So when an electric vehicle gets in a high-speed accident and catches on fire, damaged energy cells cause temperatures to rise out of control, and the resulting blaze can require a significant amount of water to put out. Such vehicles, given their large electrical energy storage capacity, can be a considerable hazard, known as “stranded energy,” to first responders.

But training to put out these fires can’t come fast enough as more electric vehicles arrive on U.S. roads every day. According to IHS Insight, an industry analysis firm, the number of registered electric vehicles reached a record market share in the United States of 1.8 percent and is forecast to double to 3.5 percent by the end of this year. But IHS notes that 1 in 10 cars are expected to be electric by 2025.

Still, most firefighters across America have not been adequately trained in the key differences between putting fires out in gas and electric cars. Some counterparts in Europe have developed a different approach, sometimes even putting a burning electric vehicle into a converted shipping container or dumpster -- essentially giving it a bath -- so that it cannot do further harm. Tesla says in its publicly available first responders guide that this method is not advisable and that departments should just use lots of water to put fires out.

Tesla S Car Crash in The Netherlands (Caspar Huurdeman / Hollandse Hoogt via Redux)

The problem has become widespread enough that late last year the National Transportation Safety Board published a report noting the “inadequacy” of all car manufacturers’ first responder guides. The agency further noted that while there are electric disconnection mechanisms, known as “cut loops,” they are often damaged in serious crashes. Finally, the NTSB also said that first responders generally lack an understanding of how to put out fires that can result from such crashes.

“The instructions in most manufacturers’ emergency response guides for fighting high-voltage lithium-ion battery fires lack necessary, vehicle-specific details on suppressing the fires,” the NTSB said

But there’s little that the board can do to fix the problem.

“We do not have any regulatory power, we do not have any enforcement power,” said NTSB spokesperson Eric Weiss, pointing out that such authority sits with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA.

In an email, Lucia Sanchez, a spokesperson for the safety administration, said that this topic remains important for the agency, one that it is “actively engaged in with our stakeholders including members of the first responder community.” In recent correspondence with the NTSB, the regulatory agency said that it continues to conduct research on “developing practical strategies for responders.”

Tesla, the largest electric-vehicle seller in the United States, did not respond to requests for comment about the NTSB report. But Capt. Cory Wilson, a 14-year veteran of the fire department in Fremont, California, where all U.S.-made Teslas are manufactured, said that Tesla has worked directly with his department for the past eight years. Still the best advice that Wilson gave was to advise firefighters to print out and keep Tesla safety guides in their trucks.

“Tesla has done a good job trying to get first responders educated,” he said.

Benedikt Griffig, a Volkswagen spokesperson, said in an email that German firefighting authorities have largely reached the same conclusion as their American counterparts, noting that they, too, may need considerable volumes of water to put out such a fire. Nissan spokesperson Ashli Bobo declined to respond to questions, but pointed to the company’s publicly available first responder guide. David McAlpine, a General Motors spokesman, said the company has actively worked on providing guidance for first responders working with electric vehicles and that "General Motors is committed to developing products that are safe and enjoyable for all our customers." Ford did not respond to requests for comment.

Recent discovery

While the first Tesla vehicles hit American streets in 2008, the National Transportation Safety Board did not investigate its first electric-vehicle battery fires until after an Aug. 25, 2017, crash of a Tesla Model X. That car was driving an estimated 70 mph or more down a residential street in Lake Forest, California, about an hour’s drive southeast of downtown Los Angeles.

According to the NTSB, the driver lost control of the car, crossed a sidewalk, traveled down a drainage ditch, hit a culvert and a property wall, and finally zoomed into an open garage and collided with a parked BMW, narrowly missing a man inside.

The Tesla caught fire, which spread to the BMW, then the garage and the house itself.

While Orange County Fire Authority’s firefighters put out most of the fire within 20 minutes, they found that a fire continued to burn in the attic above the fire, fueled by the burning Tesla. It took another 30 minutes for them to get the Tesla out of the garage, after which it reignited.

Firefighters battle a blaze sparked by a Tesla in Lake Forest, Calif., on Aug. 25, 2017. (Orange County Fire Authority)

But 45 minutes after the flames on the Tesla were extinguished, it reignited again. Firefighters began hosing it down with copious amounts of water, up to 200 gallons per minute, but “that did not extinguish the flames,” according to the NTSB. At approximately 9:13 p.m., nearly three hours after the first alarm was received, firefighters had to pour out more than 600 gallons of water per minute. In the end, two firefighters sustained minor smoke inhalation-related injuries, and the agency used 20,000 gallons of water.

Capt. Sean Doran, the spokesperson for the Orange County Fire Authority, said that electric vehicle-related fires are a “game changer,” given that they require such huge amounts of water, and incidents can last hours longer than what most departments may be used to.

“One of the concepts in firefighting is don’t start what you can’t finish,” he said. “We don’t want to start applying water before we have a water source.”

It’s also often difficult for firefighters to get that volume of water outside of a mid-size city with adequate hydrants or other natural sources. That’s also what The Woodlands Township Fire Department, which responded to the Tesla crash in April, concluded.

“On a highway, to figure out how you’re going to get 20,000 gallons is a planning and logistics nightmare,” Buck, the fire chief, said.

Seeking help

Fire department officials say one of the biggest problems they face is that Tesla and other major car manufacturers often don’t include enough detail in their model guides for first responders as some fire agencies would like.On May 8, 2018, a 2014 Tesla Model S took a curve at 116 mph in a 30-mph zone in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The car hit a wall in a residential area before it erupted in flames, then continued down the road and hit a light pole, finally stopping in a driveway. The driver and front passenger were both killed, while the rear passenger was seriously injured.

Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue arrived four minutes after a 911 call was placed and began hosing down the car.

According to Asst. Fire Marshal Stephen Gollan, his agency had “minimal training” before this incident, but he knew enough to consult the Tesla online emergency response guide, which describes the “cut loops” that shut down the high voltage system. But firefighters couldn’t reach the loops.

The instructions for this model also includes the warning: “use large amounts of water to cool the battery. DO NOT extinguish fire with a small amount of water,” according to Tesla.

But Gollan said that not only does Tesla's manual lack a definition of “large amounts” of water, it also provides little detail about what firefighters should do with the remaining damaged batteries that may still contain dangerous stranded energy. In the end, Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue used a combination of water and firefighting foam, even though Tesla does not recommend using foam.

“The Tesla manuals only say to use copious amounts of water,” he said. “They don't provide any direction as to how to remove that energy.”

In the end, the Tesla was loaded onto a tow truck for removal from the crash site. But the battery reignited twice during that process.

Like Buck in The Woodlands case, Gollan found himself quickly fielding calls from numerous agencies trying to learn more about how to put out electrical vehicle fires from someone who had done it firsthand.

“Following the incident we did substantial debriefings with NTSB and other municipal fire departments,” he said. “And since that time I've had multiple calls with other agencies from across the U.S.”

Support groups

While some firefighters are now turning to one another for help, like Buck speaking to his counterparts in Colorado, other groups like the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), a lobbying and research arm for the fire insurance and firefighting community, are also trying to address the growing demand for their firefighter courses.

While the NFPA has trained approximately 250,000 firefighters and emergency responders in the last 12 years on this issue, that leaves nearly 80 percent of the more than 1.1 million firefighters nationwide left to train, according to the organization. Of those, approximately two-thirds are volunteers and may be harder to reach.

The scene where an Oregon man crashed a Tesla while going about 100 mph, destroying the vehicle, a power pole and starting a fire when some of the hundreds of batteries from the vehicle broke windows and landed in residences in Corvallis, Ore., in November 2020. (Corvallis Police Dept. via AP)

“With EVs (electric vehicles), especially for the fire service, it’s a new paradigm,” said Andrew Klock, the group’s emerging issues lead manager.

Robert Swaim, who retired nearly two years ago, spent more than 30 years at the NTSB. He began digging into the issue with lithium-ion batteries after a Boeing 787 caught fire in Boston in 2013.

Swaim has been offering his own training, comparable to ones offered by NFPA, except his classes are live -- and he brings his own Chevy Volt to class. He points out that his in-person and hands-on training is considerably more helpful than the myriad of PDFs that various manufacturers put out. He said that after recently posting some of his presentation slides, traffic to his website has jumped by more than a factor of 10.

“You’re going to tell me that a volunteer firefighter is going to go to the Ford website and learn about Ford’s emergency response guide?” he said. “That’s not going to happen.”

Continuing problems

In the meantime, fire departments are facing far more time-intensive fires. In the past, most car fires were put out in well under an hour. Then the scene was turned over to local law enforcement, and a tow company moved the car.

“Then we are going to have to sit on scene usually for 45 minutes to an hour with our [thermal imaging camera] to make sure the battery is not continuing to heat up,” said Wilson, the Fremont Fire captain.

Later this summer, Buck is set to give another presentation to his former agency, the Austin Fire Department, where he worked for 27 years. The Texas capital is set to become Tesla’s new manufacturing hub, known as Gigafactory Texas, where the company’s new all-electric Cybertruck is expected to be produced.

Buck fears that as electric cars become larger, they’re going to need bigger batteries, which could mean even longer-burning fires. He notes that this is too big a burden on small fire departments.

“The time on scene is more concerning than even the amount of water — the fact that I might have a unit tied up for multiple hours while it cools down,” he said. “I'm just babysitting, and that’s problematic.”

Hunger, drought, disease: 

UN climate report reveals dire health threats



Patrick GALEY
Tue, June 22, 2021

Hunger, drought and disease will afflict tens of millions more people within decades, according to a draft UN assessment that lays bare the dire human health consequences of a warming planet.

After a pandemic year that saw the world turned on its head, a forthcoming report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), seen exclusively by AFP, offers a distressing vision of the decades to come: malnutrition, water insecurity, pestilence.

Policy choices made now, like promoting plant-based diets, can limit these health consequences -- but many are simply unavoidable in the short term, the report says.



It warns of the cascading impacts that simultaneous crop failures, falling nutritional value of basic foods, and soaring inflation are likely to have on the world's most vulnerable people.

Depending on how well humans get a handle on carbon emissions and rising temperatures, a child born today could be confronted with multiple climate-related health threats before turning 30, the report shows.

The IPCC's 4,000-page draft report, scheduled for release next year, offers the most comprehensive rundown to date of the impacts of climate change on our planet and our species.

It predicts that up to 80 million more people than unger by 2050. today will be at risk of hunger by 2050.

It projects disruptions to the water cycle that will see rain-fed staple crops decline across sub-Saharan Africa. Up to 40 percent of rice-producing regions in India could become less suitable for farming the grain.

Global maize production has already declined four percent since 1981 due to climate change, and human-induced warming in West Africa has reduced millet and sorghum yields by up to 20 and 15 percent respectively, it shows.

The frequency of sudden food production losses has already increased steadily over the past 50 years.

"The basis for our health is sustained by three pillars: the food we eat, access to water, and shelter," Maria Neira, director of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health at the World Health Organization, told AFP.

"These pillars are totally vulnerable and about to collapse."

- Emerging hotspots -

Even as rising temperatures affect the availability of key crops, nutritional value is declining, according to the report.

The protein content of rice, wheat, barley and potatoes, for example, is expected to fall by between six and 14 percent, putting close to 150 million more people at risk of protein deficiency.

Essential micronutrients -- already lacking in many diets in poorer nations -- are also set to decline as temperatures rise.

Extreme weather events made more frequent by rising temperatures will see "multi-breadbasket failures" hit food production ever more regularly, the report predicts.

As climate change reduces yields, and demand for biofuel crops and CO2-absorbing forests grows, food prices are projected to rise as much as a third at 2050, bringing an additional 183 million people in low-income households to the edge of chronic hunger.

Across Asia and Africa, 10 million more children than now will suffer from malnutrition and stunting by mid-century, saddling a new generation with life-long health problems -- despite greater socioeconomic development.

As with most climate impacts, the effects on human health will not be felt equally: the draft suggests that 80 percent of the population at risk of hunger live in Africa and Southeast Asia.

"There are hotspots emerging," Elizabeth Robinson, professor of environmental economics at the University of Reading, told AFP.

"If you overlay where people are already hungry with where crops are going to be most harmed by climate you see that it's the same places that are already suffering from high malnutrition."



- Water crisis looming -

It doesn't end there.

The report outlines in the starkest terms so far the fate potentially awaiting millions whose access to safe water will be thrown into turmoil by climate change.

Just over half the world's population is already water insecure, and climate impacts will undoubtedly make that worse.

Research looking at water supply, agriculture and rising sea levels shows that between 30 million and 140 million people will likely be internally displaced in Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America by 2050, the report says.

Up to three quarters of heavily tapped groundwater supply -- the main source of potable water for 2.5 billion people -- could also be disrupted by mid-century.

The rapid melting of mountain glaciers has already "strongly affected the water cycle", an essential source for two billion people that could "create or exacerbate tensions over water resources", according to the report.

And while the economic cost of climate's effect on water supply varies geographically, it is expected to shave half a percent off global GDP by 2050.

"Water is one of the issues that our generation is going to confront very soon," said Neira.

"There will be massive displacement, massive migration, and we need to treat all of that as a global issue."

- 'Fault lines' -

As the warming planet expands habitable zones for mosquitoes and other disease-carrying species, the draft warns that half the world's population could be exposed to vector-borne pathogens such as dengue, yellow fever and Zika virus by mid-century.

Risks posed by malaria and Lyme disease are set to rise, and child deaths from diarrhoea are on track to increase until at least mid-century, despite greater socioeconomic development in high-incidence countries.

The report also shows how climate change will increase the burden of non-communicable illnesses.

Diseases associated with poor air quality and exposure to ozone, such as lung and heart conditions, will "rise substantially", it says.

"There will also be increased risks of food and water-related contamination" by marine toxins, it adds.

As with most climate-related impacts, these diseases will ravage the world's most vulnerable.

The Covid-19 pandemic has already exposed that reality.

The report shows how the pandemic, while boosting international cooperation, has revealed many nations' vulnerability to future shocks, including those made inevitable by climate change.

"Covid has made the fault lines in our health systems extremely visible," said Stefanie Tye, research associate at the World Resources Institute's Climate Resilience Practice, who was not involved in the IPCC report.

"The effects and shocks of climate change will strain health systems even more, for a much longer period, and in ways that we are still trying to fully grasp."

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Bernie Sanders wants to know if cannabis reporter is 'stoned' right now

BRIGID KENNEDY

JUNE 11, 2021

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has a few burning questions.

When Politico's Natalie Fertig introduced herself to Sanders as the publication's cannabis reporter, Sanders asked, incredulously, if she was "stoned" right now. The senator then wondered out loud if being stoned was a job "requirement," to which Fertig replied, "It's actually not." 

He's probably just asking for a friend.

Listen to a clip of the brief exchange below:

Spotify – Bernie: "Are you stoned now?" (Bonus mini episode) - POLITICO Dispatch | Podcast on Spotify