Evening Briefing: Biden stands firm on withdrawal date

August 24, 2021

By Remy Tumin

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

The gates of the Kabul airport remained closed to most people.Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

1. President Biden said the U.S. was on track to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan by the Aug. 31 deadline.

Speaking at the White House, Biden also said he had spoken to military leaders so they would be prepared to "adjust that timetable, should that become necessary."

During a virtual meeting earlier in the day, Biden told leaders from the Group of 7 nations of his plan for the 6,000 American troops still in the country to leave Afghanistan by the end of the month. The longer the troops wait, Biden said, the greater the risk of a terrorist attack, which he described as "very high."

The C.I.A. director, William Burns, traveled to Kabul this week for secret talks with the Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar as the U.S. sought more time for the evacuation operation. The Taliban have rejected any plans to extend the deadline for U.S. troops.

The pace of evacuations has accelerated greatly despite the chaos and desperation outside the Kabul airport, and the U.S. military has already begun winding down its presence at the airport. But the Taliban announced that they would block Afghans from traveling to the airport.

Kabul residents say they are struggling to make ends meet in an economy that, propped up for the past generation by American aid, is now suddenly in free fall.

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Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times

2. The House passed a $3.5 trillion budget blueprint, paving the way to enact much of President Biden's economic agenda.

The vote, 220-212, along party lines, comes after more than 24 hours of quiet haggling and bitter recriminations among Democrats. In an effort to win over a group of moderates who had threatened to block the budget proposal, Democratic leaders promised a Sept. 27 vote on a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure measure.

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The House is also expected to vote to restore federal oversight of state election laws. But stiff Republican opposition threatens to sink the bill in the Senate.

Many southern states with surging outbreaks have large pockets of unvaccinated elderly residents.The New York Times

3. Many older Americans are still not vaccinated, making the Delta wave deadlier.

Older people still account for most Covid-19 deaths. Low elderly vaccination rates in Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana and Nevada have coincided with surging rates of hospitalization and death. By contrast, unvaccinated seniors in Britain, Spain and Canada are relatively rare.

The pace of vaccinations in the U.S. has sped up after months of stagnation, and full approval of the Pfizer vaccine could extend that momentum. The F.D.A.'s approval has finally given companies some of the cover they need to move forward with vaccine mandates, including Goldman Sachs, which will require employees and visitors to be vaccinated.

Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York takes the oath of office in Albany.Cindy Schultz for The New York Times

4. "I want people to believe in their government again."

Kathy Hochul, a former congresswoman from Buffalo, became the 57th governor of New York, and the first woman to reach the state's highest office, weeks after a state inquiry found that Andrew Cuomo had sexually harassed multiple women. She is still recruiting her top staff and will announce her selection for lieutenant governor later this week.

On her first day in the job, Hochul said she would order a school mask mandate and push for teachers to face vaccine rules.

In California, Larry Elder, a conservative fixture of AM radio, has emerged as an unlikely front-runner in the campaign to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom. His rise to the top of a pack of some four dozen challengers has stunned and unnerved many in both parties.

Supporters of the former corruption prosecutor Juan Francisco Sandoval in Guatemala City in July.Sandra Sebastian/Reuters

5. President Biden promised to attack corruption in Central America head on. That goal has taken a back seat to cooperating on stopping migrants from the region.

This is the stark reality facing the Biden administration as it grapples with the migration crisis on the southern border of the U.S.: It is depending on the very governments it has promised to police.

As border crossings surged in July, reaching their highest levels in more than two decades, so, too, did the number of migrant deaths. One Texas sheriff has the grizzly task of recovering those bodies.

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Charlie Watts during the Rolling Stones' "No Filter" tour in 2019 in Houston, Texas.Suzanne Cordeiro/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

6. Charlie Watts, whose strong but unflashy drumming powered the Rolling Stones for 50 years, died at 80.

Watts had no taste for the life of a pop idol and was content to be one of the finest rock drummers of his generation, playing with a jazz-inflected swing that made the band's titanic success possible. Keith Richards, the Stones guitarist, once wrote that "Charlie Watts has always been the bed that I lie on musically."

Watts had always seemed the oddest Rolling Stone, our music critic writes, keeping a quiet, even glum, public persona. And yet Watts "was a vital part of the band's sound, with a rhythmic approach that was as much a part of the Stones' musical fingerprint as Richards's rhythm guitar or Jagger's sneering vocals."

The Refugee Paralympic Team at the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Paralympic Games.Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

7. Weeks after the Olympic cauldron was extinguished, three Paralympians lit it anew. The Tokyo Paralympic Games are officially underway.

The parade of nations, the centerpiece of the opening ceremony, was led by members of the refugee team. A total of 162 nations and the refugee delegation are taking part in this year's games, including five additions: Bhutan, Grenada, the Maldives, Paraguay and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

"This is the only global event that puts people with disabilities at center stage and gives voice to persons with disabilities," one official said.

Wheelchair basketball, wheelchair rugby, cycling and swimming get underway tonight. Here's a full schedule.

Bob Brewer works the family scallop farm off the coast of Stonington, Maine.Tristan Spinski for The New York Times

8. There are large-scale aquafarms that can cause ecological havoc, and then there are small-scale, sustainable exceptions.

Such is the case with sea scallop farms in the U.S. Bivalve farming is one of the most environmentally beneficial types of aquaculture, considered a zero-input food source because it doesn't require any arable land, fresh water or fertilizers to grow protein. The shellfish in fact improves its habitat by filtering the water and increasing biodiversity.

There are only a handful of these farms in the U.S., run by fishing families in Maine. But their number is growing. Take a tour of one in Penobscot Bay.

On the topic of sustainability, you may want to think twice about buying another cotton tote bag. Their popularity may have created a new environmental problem.

A bird dung crab spider's coloring and smell are used to hide from predators and lure prey.Oliver Thompson-Holmes/Alamy

9. Many creatures use mimicry to hide from predators. This one also uses it to be a predator.

For the aptly named bird dung crab spider, its coloring and smell are essential to its survival in Southeast Asia's tropical rain forests. But the spider's stinky fecal facade also draws insects that are attracted to bird droppings as sources of nutrients and as inviting homes for laying their eggs. Researchers said it was the first masquerading species to use what they call aggressive mimicry to actively lure in their lunch.

In the Seychelles, researchers were horrified when they captured footage of a giant tortoise stalking and killing a baby bird. The hulking reptiles were believed to be herbivores.

The Herto Man, a 160,000- to 154,000-year-old human specimen, discovered in Ethiopia in 1997. imageBROKER/Alamy

10. And finally, the human journey.

Until recently, scientists believed modern humans left Africa in one enormous exit around 60,000 years ago. But the latest research using a new climate model suggests that modern humans had several windows of opportunity to leave the continent far earlier, and bolsters the theory that Homo sapiens had multiple migrations out of Africa.

Researchers reconstructed the climate of northeastern Africa over the past 300,000 years and identified when there would have been enough rainfall to allow hunter-gatherers to survive the journey to the Arabian Peninsula. Among the findings: The Sinai Peninsula was crossable as early as 246,000 years ago, and the southern Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, which separates the Horn of Africa from Yemen, had even more favorable windows, including a period 65,000 years ago.

Have a boundless evening.

Shelby Knowles compiled photos for this briefing.

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