Evening Briefing: Biden defends Afghanistan pullout

August 16, 2021

Good evening. Here's the latest at the end of Monday.

Afghans atop a plane at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul today. They were attempting to flee Afghanistan after the Taliban's capture of the city.Wakil Kohsar/Afp

1. President Biden strongly defended the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan.

The president, who briefly returned to the White House from his vacation at Camp David to make his remarks, conceded that the result of his decision had become "hard and messy."

But he stood by his decision to end the longest war in U.S. history and rejected criticism from allies and adversaries about the events of the weekend that left hundreds of Afghans desperately running after military planes ferrying Americans to safety out of the country's capital.

And he blamed the fall of the Afghan regime to the Taliban on the failure of the country's military and political leaders to fight for themselves.

Biden vowed again to rescue thousands of Afghans who had helped Americans during the two-decade conflict, but the fate of many who remained in Kabul and other parts of Afghanistan was uncertain today.

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Tropical Depression Grace looming over Port-au-Prince, Haiti, today.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times

2. Tropical Depression Grace made landfall in Haiti.

The storm could dump five to 10 inches of rain, with isolated totals up to 15 inches, leading to flooding and mudslides that could hamper recovery efforts from a 7.2-magnitude earthquake that struck the country two days earlier.

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Prime Minister Ariel Henry of Haiti promised a "tenfold" increase in rescue and aid efforts to the southern peninsula of his country, even as he privately expressed frustration to the American ambassador at the slow rollout of help.

The death toll was raised to 1,419, with nearly 7,000 injuries in an area that is bereft of medical resources. The homes of as many as 1.5 million Haitians across the southern peninsula are structurally damaged.

Taking a Covid-19 saliva test at the River's Edge Convention Center in St. Cloud, Minn., on Thursday.Jenn Ackerman for The New York Times

3. The latest phase of the pandemic: the realization that Covid-19 is not disappearing anytime soon.

Even as the highly contagious Delta variant has caused upticks in all 50 states, state, local and public health officials have treaded lightly when considering whether to reimpose restrictions. But as one mayor conceded, "Everything's on the table."

In other coronavirus news:

South Africa is still waiting to receive most of the 31 million vaccine doses it ordered from Johnson & Johnson, while the company has been exporting millions of doses, bottled and packaged there, for distribution in Europe.
Babies and toddlers spread the virus in homes more easily than teens, a study found. Although young children bring the coronavirus home less often than teens do, their close contact with caregivers may make them likelier to transmit it.

A Tesla Model S crashed into a fire engine on Interstate 405 in Culver City, Calif., in 2018. A government report said the driver was using the car's Autopilot system.KCBS-TV, via Associated Press

4. Tesla's automatic driving system is under official scrutiny after a series of crashes.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration cited growing concerns that the Autopilot feature can fail to see parked emergency vehicles.

The agency said it was aware of 11 crashes since 2018 in which Tesla vehicles operating under Autopilot had hit fire trucks, police cars, and other emergency vehicles. Seven of those crashes resulted in a total of 17 injuries and one death.

The Dixie Fire burned a hillside near Taylorsville in Plumas County, Calif., on Friday.Noah Berger/Associated Press

5. Western wildfires continue to spread.

Another town in Northern California was ordered evacuated, becoming the latest across the west where raging wildfires have forced several thousand residents to flee their homes in recent days.

Officials said gusty winds were continuing to push the McFarland fire toward rural Platina Township, north of the Mendocino National Forest. The fire is one of at least six large blazes burning in Northern California and one of about 100 for which the U.S. Forest Service has deployed forces.

The growth of fires continued even as the Bootleg fire, which had ravaged more 400,000 acres of southern Oregon since early July, was fully contained over the weekend.

Our Wirecutter writers offer simple, effective ways of getting rid of the wildfire smoke in your home.

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Gov. Andrew Cuomo last week in Manhattan after announcing his resignation.Caitlin Ochs/Reuters

6. In a reversal, the New York State Assembly said it would continue its investigation of Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Last week's announcement that the legislature would no longer move to impeach him prompted an outcry from both Republican and Democratic legislators. They said the Assembly had a duty to, at the very least, make public the findings of the taxpayer-funded investigation that began in March.

The latest decision does not mean that lawmakers will move to impeach Cuomo. There is no precedent in New York for impeaching a former governor.

Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, announced last week that he would resign Aug. 24 in the wake of a New York State attorney general report that found he had sexually harassed 11 women.

The Olympics' bronze medal match in women's soccer was played in a mostly empty stadium.Doug Mills/The New York Times

7. Like the Olympics before it, the Paralympics will allow virtually no spectators.

The Paralympics, the major international sports competition for athletes with disabilities, will take place in Tokyo from Aug. 24 to Sept. 5. Even for events on public roads, like some running or cycling races, the government asked citizens not to attend.

Tokyo has been under a state of emergency because of rising coronavirus infection rates. Japan, which was averaging about 1,000 new cases through much of the early summer, topped the 10,000 mark in early August, during the Olympics.

Separately, the soccer player Carli Lloyd, a former world player of the year who was one of the U.S. career leaders in goals, games and honors, announced her retirement from the game at age 39.

A male Owens pupfish. In the summer, the species can swim in waters warmer than 90 degrees Fahrenheit; in winter, it swims under ice.John Brill

8. A trial run for the fate of "worthless" species on a warming planet.

The Owens pupfish, a small blue fish native to the springs in the California desert, was spared from extinction in 1969 by Phil Pister, a state wildlife biologist, who used two buckets to transport 800 or so fish from a dying marsh to a spring where they could live.

They did, but barely. Of the approximately 100 attempts to relocate the pupfish to new pools, almost all have failed. They were moved in April to an ecological reserve — and, scientists say, they are now spawning there.

Now 93, Mr. Pister never gave up. "People used to say, 'What good are they?'" he said. To which he would reply: "'Well, what good are you?'"

NASA's Cassini Orbiter captured this natural color view of Saturn almost a month after the planet's August 2009 equinox.NASA/JPL-Caltech, via Space Science Institute

9. The soundtrack of Saturn's rings.

When Saturn's interior shifts, the gravity field pulls at particles in its expansive C ring and makes them move. Scientists have been reading these spiral waves on the ring like sheet music to identify what's happening to the planet's innards.

Now, two scientists have decoded enough of those notes to hear the sounds of one of Saturn's most puzzling features: its core.

Their findings show the core is colossal. It makes up 60 percent of the planet's radius and is 55 times the mass of Earth. And, unlike other worlds, Saturn's core is an amalgam of rocks and ices mingling with a fluid metallic form of hydrogen.

The results are bringing researchers closer to understanding how Saturn — and other gassy behemoths like it, including Jupiter — were born.

Unusually cold weather and drought are increasing the cost of coffee globally.Grant Hindsley for The New York Times

10. And finally, your morning joe may get more expensive.

Drought and unusually cold weather in Brazil — the world's largest coffee exporter — have affected crops. And a shortage of shipping containers has restricted exports and led to higher shipping costs. As a result, the price of coffee beans has risen by 42 percent so far this year.

Buying coffee more than a year in advance has helped big buyers like Starbucks, but smaller roasters can't hold off that long. And they are worried that passing along the higher prices would alienate customers.

Have a wide-awake evening.

Bryan Denton compiled photos for this briefing.

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