Month: August 2021

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World News

The Day After the Fall

The Day After the Fall

When the Taliban entered Afghanistan’s presidential palace on Sunday, the insurgent group completed a two-decade fight to take back control of the country. The president had fled; the interior minister announced there would be a peaceful transfer of power for greater Kabul.

Monday offered the first glimpse of a country coming under Taliban control. We’ll look at how the day unfolded in three places: the airport in Kabul, where people made a desperate attempt to escape; the city itself, where most people spent the day hiding; and Washington, where President Biden stood by his plan to withdraw U.S. troops.

For much of Monday, Kabul’s main international airport was a scene of anguish and panic. Thousands of Afghans rushed boarding gates and flooded the tarmac hoping to find a flight out of the country. At one point, a crowd ran alongside a departing U.S. military plane, with some Afghans clinging to the side of the aircraft.

At least half a dozen Afghans died — some fell from the plane as it flew off, and at least two were shot by U.S. soldiers trying to contain the surging crowds.

U.S. forces took over air traffic control, halting most commercial air traffic to allow more flights carrying in reinforcements and evacuating foreign citizens. Some Afghans said the efforts prioritized Americans and other Westerners over Afghans.

Thousands of people camped in terminals overnight waiting for flights out of the country, many of them employees of international organizations and media companies the Taliban has targeted.

With runways cleared of civilians, military flights resumed evacuating foreign nationals early this morning as more U.S. troops arrived to oversee a frantic escape. By later this week, 6,000 American troops will conduct security at the airport, though Biden said they would only be in Afghanistan briefly.

Even with U.S. military restoring order within Kabul’s international airport, it was unclear whether Afghans could make it there. Despite assurances from the Taliban of safe passage, there were more ominous signs on the ground.

The Taliban spread out across the streets of the capital city, riding motorbikes and driving police vehicles and Humvees taken from the Afghan security forces.

Armed men visited the homes of Afghan government officials, confiscating possessions, while others directed traffic. But compared to the chaos at the airport, the city was eerily quiet, residents said.

Kabul’s streets were empty for much of Monday, Al Jazeera reported. Taliban fighters took selfies with passers-by and told residents not to fear them. “There will be no revenge” on civilians, a Taliban official told the BBC.

The Taliban have sought to assure Afghans that life under their fundamentalist rule will be less oppressive than in the 1990s. But many are still scared. In Kabul, some residents tore down advertisements that showed women without head scarves. In other parts of the country, there were reports that fighters were searching for people who had collaborated with Americans or the fallen government.

A young woman in Kabul told the BBC that the city was “silent,” with many people hiding in their homes. “I’m just seeking for a way to get out of Afghanistan because there is no hope for women and the future,” she said.

In a speech at the White House, Biden said the withdrawal had been “hard and messy and, yes, far from perfect” and acknowledged that the Taliban had taken over faster than his administration had anticipated. “The buck stops with me,” he said.

But Biden also blamed the rapid collapse on the Afghan government and armed forces, and said he stood “squarely behind” withdrawing. “The events we’re seeing now are sadly proof that no amount of military force would ever deliver a stable, united, secure Afghanistan.”

Biden said U.S. soldiers would help evacuate thousands of American citizens, vulnerable Afghans who qualify for special immigrant visas and news agency workers. “Our current military mission is short on time, limited in scope and focused in its objectives: Get our people and our allies as safely and quickly as possible.”

And he vowed a “swift and forceful” response if the Taliban attacked U.S. forces or tried to interfere with evacuations.

The latest:

  • The federal government declared a water shortage at Lake Mead, triggering supply cuts to Arizona farmers.

  • Grace, which made landfall in Haiti on Monday as a tropical depression, restrengthened into a storm early today. There’s a risk that mudslides and flooding could hamper earthquake recovery efforts.

  • Federal regulators are investigating the Autopilot system in Tesla’s electric cars after a series of crashes.

  • California voters began receiving mail ballots for a Sept. 14 recall election that could oust Gov. Gavin Newsom. Recent polls of likely voters show a near tie.

Raising the minimum wage can create jobs, Peter Coy writes. Sign up for his new Opinion newsletter, exclusively for Times subscribers.

Buzz: What if you could become invisible to mosquitoes?

Reflections: Why dancers keep showing up in front of an empty building in Paris.

A Times classic: How to meditate.

Lives Lived: Michael M. Thomas had three careers, as a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, an investment banker at Lehman Brothers and, finally, a writer. He died at 85.

Last week, videos about sorority recruitment at the University of Alabama were all over TikTok. Many featured women in the middle of the process, also called “rushing,” as they documented their outfits. TikTok’s algorithm turned the videos into a phenomenon, inspiring parodies and a fandom. So far, the hashtag #bamarush has more than 260 million views.

As Kalhan Rosenblatt wrote for NBC News, rush videos have done well before on social media platforms like YouTube. But TikTok’s “For You” page, in which the app determines which videos users see next, introduced the genre to an audience that hadn’t engaged with college Greek life before.

What’s so transfixing about the videos is that they immerse people in an experience that’s likely to be unfamiliar. “You can follow an account and basically watch your own reality show,” one TikTok user told NBC News. “Southern sororities are so niche and so particular to a specific area in America, everyone finds it fascinating.”

For more, Slate’s ICYMI podcast has an episode dedicated to the topic. — Sanam Yar, a Morning writer

The pangram(s) from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was logophile. Here is today’s puzzle — or you can play online.

Categories
Politics

White Home requested to guard journalists at Kabul airport

White House asked to protect journalists at Kabul airport

Men attempt to break into Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan on August 16, 2021.

Stringer | Reuters

The editors of three major US newspapers asked President Joe Biden on Monday to help fellow Afghan journalists evacuate Afghanistan.

Inquiries from the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal came after asking the White House to keep more than 200 journalists and newspaper associates “in danger” “in danger” at Kabul airport bring.

Post editor Fred Ryan sent an “urgent request” email to National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan to move them from the civilian side of Hamid Karzai International Airport “to the military side, where they can be safe while they are on Waiting for evacuation flights ”.

“They are currently in danger and need the US government to keep them safe,” wrote Ryan in the email he wrote on behalf of the three newspapers.

Afghan people are waiting to leave Kabul Airport in Kabul on August 16, 2021 after a surprisingly quick end to the 20-year war in Afghanistan as thousands of people besieged the city’s airport to face the dreaded hard-line Islamist rule to flee the group.

Deputy Kohsar | AFP | Getty Images

Ryan wrote that 204 journalists, auxiliaries and family members from the three newspapers are stuck on the civilian side of the airport.

Later on Monday, Ryan, Times Publisher AG Sulzberger, and Journal Publisher Almar Latour Biden sent a joint letter asking him to get Afghan newspaper-related colleagues out of the country.

“For the past twenty years, brave Afghan colleagues have worked tirelessly to help the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal share news and information from the region with the world,” the letter said.

“Now these colleagues and their families are trapped in Kabul, their lives are in danger.”

“As an employer, we are looking for support for our colleagues and, as journalists, we are looking for a clear signal that the government stands behind the free press,” the editors wrote. “In this light, we ask the American government to act urgently and take three specific steps that are necessary to protect its security.”

In the letter, Biden was expressly requested to grant his Afghan colleagues “easier and protected access to the airport controlled by the US”; “Safe passage through a protected access gate to the airport”; and “facilitated air movement out of the country.”

After the Taliban captured the capital Kabul, thousands of Afghans streamed across the airport’s runway on Monday.

Kamal Alam, a non-resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council and senior advisor to the Massoud Foundation, told CNBC, “Nobody can really walk.”

“If you don’t have a visa or a passport, you won’t go,” said Alam, who is stuck in Afghanistan.

CNBC policy

Read more about CNBC’s political coverage:

Categories
Health

This Breast Most cancers Gene Is Much less Effectively Recognized, however Almost as Harmful

This Breast Cancer Gene Is Less Well Known, but Nearly as Dangerous

Heidi Marsh, 46, of Seattle, tested positive for the PALB2 mutation after her mother – a patient with breast and pancreatic cancer – was found to have it. She said her own doctor was unaware of the gene.

“My obstetrician was aware of my mother’s history and never suggested a genetic test,” Ms. Marsh said. “She’s never heard of it. I raised them. The oncologist she sent me to didn’t suggest an operation. “

But the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, a partner at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, where Ms. Marsh’s mother was an oncology nurse, knew about the gene mutation. The group immediately put together a team that consisted of a surgical oncologist, a pancreatic cancer specialist, a geneticist, a nutritionist, and a social worker.

“It changed life,” said Ms. Marsh, who had fallopian tubes removed in April. (She was told that most ovarian cancer occurs in the fallopian tubes first. She plans to have her ovaries removed after menopause.)

She will have breast monitoring with alternating mammograms and breast MRIs every six months. She already had an endoscopic ultrasound to examine her pancreas.

She found a Facebook group, PALB2 Warriors, to be helpful. Having a healthcare background – she was a phlebotomist – she says she looks beyond individual posts, to studies that are placebo-controlled and peer-reviewed to get information. But when it comes to personal testimonials with prophylactic mastectomies and reconstructions, this is invaluable.

“That wasn’t remotely on my radar screen,” she said. “In a way, I feel empowered. But I also have the feeling that I am waiting for the other shoe to fall, that cancer will be inevitable. “

But above all, she is grateful that she knows about PALB2 and the associated risks.

“It’s an alarm clock and a wake-up call,” she said. “You can do something about it if you want.”

Categories
Health

5 U.S. states set new data for Covid circumstances as hospitalizations rise

Five U.S. states set new records for Covid cases as hospitalizations rise

Five states broke records for the average number of daily new Covid cases over the weekend as the delta variant strains hospital systems across the U.S. and forces many states to reinstate public health restrictions.

Florida, Louisiana, Hawaii, Oregon and Mississippi all reached new peaks in their seven-day average of new cases per day as of Sunday, according to a CNBC analysis of data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. On a per capita basis, Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida are suffering from the three worst outbreaks in the country.

Daily new Covid cases per 100,000 residents

Note: Lines show seven-day average of daily new cases.

Source: Johns Hopkins University, CNBC analysis. As of August 15, 2021.

Daily new Covid cases per

100,000 residents

Note: Lines show seven-day average of daily

new cases.

Source: Johns Hopkins University, CNBC

analysis. As of August 15, 2021.

Daily new Covid cases per 100,000 residents

Note: Lines show seven-day average of daily new cases.

Source: Johns Hopkins University, CNBC analysis. As of August 15, 2021.

Louisiana recorded an average of 126 cases per 100,000 residents as of Sunday, more than three times the national average, while Mississippi and Florida averaged 110 and 101 cases per 100,000 residents, respectively, according to the data.

“We’re in the middle of the summer, people are gathering again with people, they’re in large groups, the vaccine has given a false sense of security in some ways to people, and they forget,” Dr. Perry Halkitis, dean of the Rutgers School of Public Health, told CNBC in an interview.

Louisiana

The surging delta variant has hit the Gulf Coast particularly hard, pushing hospitals to their limits. To try to curb the outbreak in Louisiana, officials in July recommended masks indoors for everyone, regardless of whether or not they were vaccinated. They reintroduced a statewide mask mandate on Aug. 2 after it was obvious that wasn’t working and cases kept climbing.

Everyone must now wear masks indoors regardless of their vaccination status, including all students from kindergarten through college.

Louisiana has the fifth-lowest vaccination rate of any state in the country, with 38.3% of its population fully immunized against the coronavirus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Louisiana reported a record-high seven-day average of more than 5,800 new Covid cases as of Sunday, an increase of nearly 27% from a week ago, according to Hopkins data.

Louisiana recorded a seven-day average of 44 Covid-related deaths as of Sunday, over 46% more than a week prior. Almost half of the state’s 882 reported intensive care unit beds were occupied by coronavirus patients as of Monday, compared with a nationwide average of 25%, according the Department of Health and Human Services.

Mississippi

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican, pleaded Friday with residents to get vaccinated as the state scrambles to hire hundreds of temporary doctors, nurses and EMTs.

He’s also requested ventilators from the Strategic National Stockpile as the spread of the delta variant fills hospitals in the state with mostly unvaccinated patients. Almost 55% of Mississippi’s ICU beds were filled with Covid patients as of Monday, and the state’s seven-day average of nearly 3,300 new coronavirus cases as of Sunday jumped 57% from a week ago.

“When you look across the country, to a certain extent, this current wave is the pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Reeves said at a press conference. “We continue to see more and more data, and the data is becoming more and more clear. Those who received the vaccine are significantly less likely to contract the virus.”

Mississippi has the nation’s second-lowest coronavirus vaccination rate, with 35.8% of its population fully immunized as of Sunday. The state’s death toll also hit a seven-day average of 20, up almost 80% from a week ago.

Florida

Florida reported a record 151,764 new Covid cases for the week on Friday, reaching a new seven-day average of 21,681 cases per day — more than any other state. More than half of the ICU beds in the state are occupied by Covid patients, according to HHS data.

Florida’s surge in cases comes as Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis continues to resist calls from the Biden administration and state advocacy groups to enforce mask mandates and other pandemic-related measures to help contain the massive outbreak. He signed an executive order and law in May that lifted all Covid restrictions across the state and permanently blocked local officials from enacting new ones starting July 1.

In late July, DeSantis issued a controversial executive order that blocked mask mandates in the state’s schools, overruling two counties that required face coverings for their students.

Oregon

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, is deploying up to 1,500 National Guard members to assist the state’s health systems as Covid hospitalizations set a new record three days in a row, standing at 733 on Friday. The state recorded 1,765 new cases on Friday, bringing its seven-day average to 1,652, according to the most recent data available.

The state reimplemented an indoor mask mandate on Friday for everyone, including fully vaccinated people, in response to the surge in hospitalizations.

Hawaii

Though Hawaii’s outbreak is relatively small compared with most mainland states, cases there have repeatedly been reaching new records since mid-July, hitting a seven-day average of 671 new cases per day on Sunday, according to Hopkins data.

That’s a more-than-sevenfold jump from 89 cases per day a month ago. The recent surge in cases has caught health officials by surprise and is starting to strain the state’s hospital systems. The total number of hospitalizations on the islands is 3,030, with 552 deaths recorded since the beginning of the pandemic.

“We are on fire. When we have hospitals that are really worried about being able to take care of people, that’s a crisis,” Hawaii’s health director, Dr. Elizabeth Char, said at a press conference last week. “When we see this exponential growth in the amount of people that are getting infected with Covid-19 every day — 2,000 people in the last three days — that’s a crisis. And at the point at which we overwhelm our resources, that’s a disaster.”

Hospitalization rates in Hawaii and Oregon, however, aren’t as high as other states. Nationwide, less than 11% of all hospital beds are being used by Covid patients. In Oregon, it’s 11.4%, Hawaii is at 12.1%, followed by Louisiana at 20.4%, Mississippi at 18.7% and Florida at 28.2%, according to HHS data.

Hospital bed capacity correlates very closely with vaccination rates. The states with higher vaccination rates are seeing fewer Covid patients take up hospital beds. Oregon has fully vaccinated 56.8% of its residents, followed by Hawaii at 54.3%, Florida at 50.3%, Louisiana at 38.3% and Mississippi at 35.8%.

“That is why Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi are hurting with bed capacity and ascending death rates, while Oregon and Hawaii are hurting with explosive case rates, but with high vaccination and masking rates, may not ever be in the same precarious position,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease expert at University of California in San Francisco.

As of Sunday, the national seven-day average of new cases stands at 130,710, an increase of 20% from the previous seven-day average, according to Hopkins data. The seven-day average for Covid deaths nationwide rose to 687, up 36% from the previous average.

“We know what the tools are, and now this comes down to policy and political decisionmakers’ value judgment to determine which tools they want to implement,” Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious disease expert at University of Toronto, told CNBC.

Correction: This article has been updated to reflect the correct percentages of fully vaccinated people in Oregon, Hawaii, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi.

Categories
Politics

U.S. to Advise Boosters for Most Individuals eight Months After Vaccination

U.S. to Advise Boosters for Most Americans 8 Months After Vaccination

WASHINGTON – The Biden government has decided that most Americans should have a coronavirus booster vaccination eight months after receiving their second vaccination and could start offering third vaccinations as early as mid-September, according to administrative officials familiar with the discussions.

Officials want to announce the decision later this week. Their goal is to let Americans who have received the Pfizer BioNTech or Moderna vaccines know now that they need additional protection against the Delta variant, which is causing case numbers to rise across much of the country. The new policy is subject to approval of additional syringes from the Food and Drug Administration.

Officials said they expect recipients of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which has been approved as a one-dose regimen, will also need an additional dose. But they are waiting for the results of the two-dose clinical trial from this company, which is expected later this month.

The first boosters should go to nursing home residents, health workers and rescue workers. They would likely be followed by other elderly people who were on the front lines at the start of vaccinations late last year, then the general population. Officials envision giving people the same vaccine they were originally given.

The decision is made as the Biden government struggles to regain control of a pandemic it allegedly tamed a little over a month ago. President Biden had declared the nation reopened to normal life for the July 4th holiday, but the spread of the Delta Variant wildfires has thwarted this. Covid-19 patients are again overwhelming hospitals in some states, and federal officials are concerned about an increase in the number of children being hospitalized at the beginning of the school year.

For weeks, officials in the Biden administration have been analyzing the rise in Covid-19 cases, trying to find out whether the Delta variant is better able to avoid vaccines or whether the vaccines have lost strength over time. According to some administrative experts, either could be true, a worrying combination that is resurrecting a pandemic the nation fervently hoped has been contained.

Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, told Fox News Sunday that “there is concern that the vaccine may wear off.” That, combined with the ferocity of the Delta variant, could dictate boosters, he said.

Federal health officials were particularly concerned about data from Israel suggesting the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine’s protection against serious illness has fallen significantly in older people who received their second vaccination in January or February.

Israel can in some ways be seen as a role model for the United States, having vaccinated a larger portion of its population faster and using almost exclusively the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine, which made up much of the US population. Unlike the United States, however, Israel has a nationalized health system that allows patients to be systematically tracked.

The latest Israeli data, released Monday on the government’s website, shows what some experts consider to be the ongoing erosion of the Pfizer vaccine’s effectiveness against mild or asymptomatic Covid-19 infections in general and against serious illnesses in the elderly who vaccinated early, have described the year.

Updated

Aug. 16, 2021, 10:32 p.m. ET

One slide suggests that for those over 65 who received their second vaccination in January, the vaccine is only about 55 percent effective against serious illnesses. However, the researchers found that the data had a large margin of error, and some said that other Israeli government data suggested that the decline in effectiveness was less severe.

“It’s showing a pretty big drop in effectiveness against infections, but it’s still a little unclear about protection against serious diseases,” said Dr. Peter J. Hotez, a vaccines expert at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, who contributed the data. checked the New York Times request.

Dr. Jesse L. Goodman, a former chief scientist with the Food and Drug Administration who also reviewed the data, said this indicates “worrying trends” that could signal a decline in vaccine effectiveness. But he said he would like to see more details about Israel and, more importantly, data that shows whether the United States is going in the same direction.

Understand the state of vaccination and masking requirements in the United States

    • Mask rules. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in July recommended that all Americans, regardless of vaccination status, wear masks in public places indoors in areas with outbreaks, reversing the guidelines offered in May. See where the CDC guidelines would apply and where states have implemented their own mask guidelines. The battle over masks is controversial in some states, with some local leaders defying state bans.
    • Vaccination regulations. . . and B.Factories. Private companies are increasingly demanding corona vaccines for employees with different approaches. Such mandates are legally permissible and have been confirmed in legal challenges.
    • College and Universities. More than 400 colleges and universities require a vaccination against Covid-19. Almost all of them are in states that voted for President Biden.
    • schools. On August 11, California announced that teachers and staff at both public and private schools would have to get vaccinated or have regular tests, the first state in the nation to do so. A survey published in August found that many American parents of school-age children are against mandatory vaccines for students but are more likely to support masking requirements for students, teachers and staff who are not vaccinated.
    • Hospitals and medical centers. Many hospitals and large health systems require their employees to have a Covid-19 vaccine, due to rising case numbers due to the Delta variant and persistently low vaccination rates in their communities, even within their workforce.
    • new York. On August 3, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that workers and customers would be required to provide proof of vaccination when dining indoors, gyms, performances, and other indoor situations. City hospital staff must also be vaccinated or have weekly tests. Similar rules apply to employees in New York State.
    • At the federal level. The Pentagon announced that it would make coronavirus vaccinations compulsory for the country’s 1.3 million active soldiers “by mid-September at the latest. President Biden announced that all civil federal employees would need to be vaccinated against the coronavirus or undergo regular tests, social distancing, mask requirements and travel restrictions.

Federal officials said the booster program will most likely follow the same scenario as the initial vaccination program. The first syringes for the general public in the United States were given on December 14, days after the FDA approved the Pfizer emergency shot. A week later, people received the Moderna vaccine.

While frontline health workers and nursing home residents were among the first to be vaccinated nationwide, states had their own plans for who else would be vaccinated during the first weeks and months of the vaccination campaign.

But almost everyone over 65 will have qualified for a vaccination by the end of February, as have many police officers, teachers, grocery store workers, and others exposed to the virus in the workplace.

The regulatory path for additional recordings is not entirely clear. Pfizer-BioNTech filed data with the FDA on Monday demonstrating the safety and effectiveness of a booster vaccination. But the data was preliminary, from a phase 1 clinical trial. Moderna is following a similar path, studying the safety and effectiveness of both half and full doses as a third shot.

The World Health Organization has called for a moratorium on booster vaccinations until the end of September, stating that the doses available should be used to help countries lagging far behind on vaccinations. But Israel is already offering third recordings to those who are at least 50 years old. Germany and France have announced that they will offer additional vaccinations to vulnerable populations next month. Britain has a plan to do so, but is holding back for the time being.

Late last week, the FDA approved third doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for certain people with compromised immune systems, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended them. Authorities decided that these people, who make up less than 3 percent of Americans, deserve extra shots as many do not respond to the standard dose. The agency has not yet approved any of the vaccines for children under the age of 12.

Noah Weiland contributed the reporting.

Categories
Entertainment

A Mirrored Mecca for Okay-Pop Dancers in Paris

A Mirrored Mecca for K-Pop Dancers in Paris

PARIS — On a recent Saturday morning, Carla Kang, Audrey Kouamelan and Emma Letouche assembled in front of a squat glass building called CB3. It stands about 250 yards from the Grande Arche, the architectural marvel that is the signature structure of La Défense, a district of soaring office towers northwest of Paris.

Then the three women, aged 21 to 23, began spinning, jumping and swooping as they danced to “Fire Truck,” a song from NCT 127, a South Korean K-pop group. They stopped and started, often laughing, and paused from time to time to look at NCT’s original music video on their phones as they tried to duplicate the intricate dance steps.

They were rehearsing to make their own video in the coming weeks — a re-enactment of the NCT 127 original — that they will upload to a K-pop channel they run called Young Nation. Their top video, based on “Next Level” by the four-women K-pop group aespa, has more than 250,000 views.

As on every weekend, the three women of Young Nation were hardly alone.

Throughout the day, about 100 other dancers arrived at CB3 to practice their own routines. In the last few years, the pedestrian plaza around CB3 has become a mecca for dancers from all over Ile-de-France, the region that encompasses Paris and its surrounding suburbs, known as banlieues. Even on weekdays, even in the dead of winter, dancers are out at CB3, from early morning to well into the evening.

Most of the dancers are female, range in age from the mid-teens to late 20s and live in the banlieues. They are almost all part of K-pop fan groups that record song covers and dance re-enactments to post on YouTube channels. The videos, which are shot at locations around Paris — including at Trocadéro, the plaza overlooking the Eiffel Tower; in front of the Pantheon; and, of course, at La Défense — are labors of love because the groups cannot collect money from advertising: The songs, and even most of the dance moves, are copyrighted by K-pop artists.

K-pop has an urban appeal that crosses cultural and geographic borders. Scrolling through YouTube, it’s possible to find similar K-pop cover dance groups in Russia, Poland, Italy, Bulgaria, the United States and dozens of other countries.

Recent French tours by the most popular K-pop band, BTS, have sold out in minutes; in 2019, all the tickets for the 200,000-seat Stade de France arena went in two hours. Paris now has a K-pop Dance Academy where people can take classes, a couple of K-pop themed stores (Boutique Musica and Tai You), and a Korean K-pop restaurant called Kick Café.

Kouamelan, 23, said she had to commute about an hour to get to CB3 from her home in Drancy, near Charles de Gaulle Airport on the eastern side of Paris. She said she likes practicing at CB3 because “there is so much space and we can move around freely.”

The glass building has other amenities that make it attractive. It is vacant, and has been for five years, so there is no one for the dancers to disturb while they play their music, and vice versa.

The building’s ground floor is recessed on all four sides so that there is a large protected area under the higher floors when it rains. It is also surrounded by plate glass windows: perfect mirrors, just as in a professional dance studio.

The cost of using the space — nothing — is a huge draw, as many of the dancers are either students or work low-paying jobs. Professional studio time is not necessarily something their personal budgets can afford.

La Défense is also a major transportation hub: The subway, trains, trams and buses all stop or end at the Grande Arche. That last factor is particularly important, as many of the dancers travel long distances to get to CB3.

On this particular Saturday, members of the dance crew Stormy Shot had come to work on their latest project: a tribute video for the fifth anniversary of the founding of Blackpink, a female group which may be the second-most popular K-pop group.

Lucie Zellner, 23 — who organizes Stormy Shot, along with her sister, Elea, 21 — said that the group often practices between 9 and 17 hours per week. Stormy Shot has about 30 members, Zellner said, though not everyone appears in each video, and, not surprisingly, there is attrition. She added that the group had let a member go the previous week. Stormy Shot rehearsed for hours, pausing to eat lunch under the canopy of CB3 as the skies intermittently opened up. Eventually, a hand-held camera came out and one of the group’s members, Lahna Debiche, 17, filmed the others as they rehearsed.

Later that afternoon, about 10 members of the Cloud Dance Crew showed up for a final rehearsal before a later performance of songs and dances by Blackpink. Dressed mostly in black and pink themselves, the group was led by Clyde Williams, 27, who is nearly six foot five and describes himself as a “fairy from outer space” on Instagram. As the group rehearsed, Williams, whose large frame is surprisingly supple, made small corrections and gave instructions to the other dancers.

Nothing is forever, and CB3 may not be available to the dancers for much longer. A spokeswoman for the building’s owner, A.E.W., said in an email that the company could not comment about CB3’s status until later this year. But there is a work order posted on the building and, according to the website of the design and engineering company Gesys Ingénierie, it has been hired to renovate CB3 by adding five stories and some trees out front.

If CB3 does end up being renovated and occupied, the dancers may have to find another spot. Though it could be difficult to find one that checks all the boxes in the same way as CB3.

Categories
World News

Multimillion-dollar app founders’ share ideas for beginning a enterprise

Multimillion-dollar app founders' share tips for starting a business

When husband-and-wife duo Chris Halim and Raena Lim quit their jobs in 2016 to start their own sustainable fashion business, they had little idea of the success it would become.

But they knew one thing for sure: get a basic product to market as soon as possible — that’s the advice they stand by today.

“As start-up founders, especially at the beginning, there is a strong temptation to build the perfect product before you launch anything, or very strong temptation to aim for all the features and over-engineer everything,” said Halim, an ex-consultant.

“From our learnings, that would be a mistake,” the Style Theory CEO told CNBC Make It.

Start simple

Once Halim and his banker wife, Lim, identified an opportunity to bring a clothes rental service to Singapore, they wasted little time in creating a waitlist to gauge interest before rolling out the service to a small number of consumers.

The best way to launch anything is always do it simple with minimal scope, get it to market asap.

Chris Halim

co-founder and CEO, Style Theory

As demand grew, the couple expanded their user base and apparel collection, adapting to customer requests as they went.

It’s advice shared by many business leaders, including in the iconic book “The Lean Startup,” which recommends entrepreneurs build a minimum viable product (MVP) and then test and iterate quickly in response to customer feedback.

The co-founders of Style Theory, Raena Lim and Chris Halim.

Style Theory

“The best way to launch anything is always do it simple with minimal scope, get it to market asap, then get customers’ feedback,” said Lim.

“Based on customers’ feedback, you can then iterate and make it better. I think that’s a much better way to build something that customers will love,” he continued.

Dream big

The couple’s nimble, data-driven approach has served them well. Five years on, the company boasts some 200,000 users across Singapore and Indonesia, and a collection of 50,000 clothes and 2,200 shoes.

With backing to the tune of $30 million from investors including Softbank, Alpha JWC Ventures and the Paradise Group, the company now plans to expand into Hong Kong and introduce menswear and kidswear.

In entrepreneurship, you face failures every day … it’s much more important to focus on what are you going to do next.

Chris Halim

co-founder and CEO, Style Theory

“That future is for you to build and you get to dream it with your team and say, let’s make the call to do something so different,” said co-founder Lim.

But, the pair cautioned, it’s important to take the highs with the lows. Their business was hit hard by the pandemic and despite pivoting to offer new services, the rental service has today recovered just 75% of pre-pandemic users.

“In entrepreneurship, you face failures every day, you make wrong decisions all the time and it’s all on you,” said Halim.

“It’s much more important to focus on what are you going to do next, how are you going to fix it, and how you’re going to grow the business next.”

Don’t miss: This husband-and-wife team shares their tips for going into business together

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Categories
Health

Residing With O.C.D. in a Pandemic

Living With O.C.D. in a Pandemic

If they find that looking at the tissue did not cause disease, therapy can progress to more provocative exposures like touching the tissue, etc., until they overcome their unrealistic fear of contamination. In particularly anxious patients, this therapeutic approach is often combined with a drug that counteracts depression or anxiety.

One silver lining of the pandemic is that it may have allowed more people to seek remote treatment through online health services. “With telemedicine, we are able to treat patients very effectively, regardless of where they live in relation to the therapist,” said Dr. Paint. “I can visit patients in 20 states without ever leaving central Oklahoma. Patients do not need to be within 30 miles of the therapist. Telemedicine is a real game changer for people who do not want to or cannot leave their home. “

For severely impaired obsessive-compulsive patients who have had nothing else to do, the newest option is transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, a non-invasive technique that stimulates nerve cells in the brain and helps redirect neural circuits involved in obsessions and compulsions.

“It’s like the brain is stuck in a dead-end street, and TMS is helping the brain’s circuits take a different path,” said Dr. Paint. As with exposure and reaction prevention, he said, TMS uses provocative exposures but combines them with magnetic stimulation to help the brain respond to the urge to respond more effectively.

In a study published in May of 167 severely affected OCD patients at 22 clinical sites, 58 percent continued to offer significantly improved coverage after an average of 20 sessions with TMS.

Bradley Riemann, a psychologist with the Rogers Behavioral Health System in Oconomowoc, Wisc., Said his organization, with 20 locations in nine states, relies on treatment teams that include psychologists, psychiatrists, nurses, and social workers to provide both outpatient and inpatient treatments for OCD. Patients as early as 6 years of age. Too often, said Dr. Riemann, parents inadvertently exacerbate the problem by clearing a path for their child to avoid their obsessive fear and the resulting compulsive reaction. For example, they could routinely open doors to a child who is afraid of contagion.

The Boston-based nonprofit International OCD Foundation can help patients and families find therapists and support groups for those struggling with the disease. A message can be left at 617-973-5801.

Categories
Politics

How Afghanistan fell to the Taliban so rapidly

How Afghanistan fell to the Taliban so quickly

Taliban members are seen near Hamid Karzai International Airport as thousands of Afghans rush to flee the Afghan capital of Kabul, Afghanistan, on August 16, 2021.

Haroon Sabawoon | Getty Images

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The world was shocked this week by horrifying scenes of desperate Afghans swarming the tarmac at Kabul’s international airport, grasping at their last chance to escape a country now completely overrun by the Taliban.

After nearly two decades of war, more than 6,000 American lives lost, over 100,000 Afghans killed and more than $2 trillion spent by the U.S., the outlook for the country’s future was still grim, with regional experts assuming the Taliban would ultimately come to control most of Afghanistan once again.

But few expected a takeover this swift, with so little resistance from the Afghan government and Afghan National Army, the latter of which was funded and trained with $89 billion from the U.S. taxpayer.

“While the end result and bloodletting once we left was never in doubt, the speed of collapse is unreal,” one former intelligence official and U.S. Marine who served in Afghanistan told CNBC, requesting anonymity due to professional restrictions.

“Why were the Taliban able to so quickly take over? This is a masterpiece, frankly, operationally,” Michael Zacchea, a retired U.S. Marine who led an American-trained Iraqi Army battalion during the Iraq War, told CNBC. “Why were they able to take the country faster than we did in 2001?”

The question has been asked by Americans, Afghans, military veterans and international observers alike — and the answer, much like the Afghanistan conflict itself, is complex, multilayered and tragic.

But among the main causes, analysts say, are intelligence failures, a more powerful Taliban, corruption, money, cultural differences, and simple willpower.

Intelligence failure

The Taliban’s rapid takeover of Afghanistan, including its capital and the presidential palace, suggests that U.S. military intelligence failed in its assessment of the situation, according to Bill Roggio, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

“This is an intelligence failure of the highest order,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Monday, adding that it’s the “biggest intelligence failure” since the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War, a campaign of devastating surprise attacks on the U.S. and its allies in 1968.

Roggio said the Taliban pre-positioned equipment and materials, organized, planned and executed a “massive offensive” since early May before beginning its “final assault,” while U.S. officials said the local government and military forces should be able to hold out for six months to a year.

Last week, Reuters reported that a U.S. defense official saw Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, falling in 90 days. Instead, that happened on Sunday, less than 10 days after the first provincial capital of Zaranj was taken by the Taliban.

‘A collapse in the will to fight’

What’s key to note is that the Taliban did not have to fight their way into Afghanistan’s provincial capitals but rather brokered a series of surrenders, says Jack Watling, a research fellow for land warfare and military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute in London. Over the last few years of fighting, the group managed to gain control of some 50% of the country by seizing rural areas.

We did not understand the tribal dynamics, we never did. We think everybody wants what we have. It’s cultural obtuseness, obliviousness to their reality.

Michael Zacchea

U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Col. (ret)

And when they began making headway in cities, many Afghan forces gave in to them, convinced that the government in Kabul would not back them up.

“The Taliban would infiltrate urban areas, assassinating key people like pilots, threatening the families of commanders, saying if you capitulate, you’ll save your family,” Watling said.

“A lot of people, because they lacked confidence that Kabul would be able to save them, capitulated.” More and more people chose this route, “so there was very little fighting, which is why it suddenly happened so fast,” he added. 

“The speed is not a reflection of military capability, it is a reflection of a collapse in will to fight.”

An Afghan National Army soldier stands guard at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan April 21, 2021.

Mohammad Ismail | Reuters

The news from the Biden administration of the full U.S. withdrawal sped this up, said Stephen Biddle, professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University.

“When the U.S. announced a total withdrawal, that sent a signal to Afghan soldiers and police that the end was near, and converted chronically poor motivation into acute collapse as nobody wanted to be the last man standing after the others gave up,” he explained.

“Once the signal was sent, contagion dynamics thus took over and the collapse snowballed with increasing speed and virtually no actual fighting,” Biddle added.

Women with their children try to get inside Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan August 16, 2021.

Stringer | Reuters

In April, Biden ordered the Pentagon to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, a decision he said was made in lockstep with NATO coalition forces. On Monday, the president defended his decision to leave the country and placed the blame squarely on the Afghan national government.

“American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves,” Biden said. “We gave them every chance to determine their own future. We could not provide them with the will to fight for that future,” he added.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani himself fled the country on Sunday evening as the Taliban entered the presidential palace and declared the war “over.” Ghani said he fled to prevent “a flood of bloodshed.”

“The Taliban have won with the judgment of their swords and guns, and are now responsible for the honor, property and self-preservation of their countrymen,” Ghani said.

Despite being vastly outnumbered by the Afghan military, which has long been assisted by U.S. and NATO coalition forces, the Taliban carried out a succession of shocking battlefield gains in recent weeks.

On Sunday, the Taliban arrived at their last destination and seized the presidential palace in Kabul.

“The swift Taliban takeover shows how utterly dependent the Afghan state was on the U.S.-led coalition, materially and psychologically. Even before the U.S. withdrawal, the Afghan government and security forces were fraying at the seams,” said John Ciorciari, director of the International Policy and Weiser Diplomacy Center at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Policy.

“Soon after the U.S. pullout began, Afghan troops and officials began jumping ship, either to appease the Taliban or to retreat into old ethnic militias. The Taliban takeover will not bring peace. As the dust settles, many U.S.-trained fighters will likely regroup along ethnic lines to fight again,” he added.

Taliban ‘much more adept’ militarily

Not everyone believes the U.S. troop withdrawal is to blame for the chaos in Afghanistan today.

Kirsten Fontenrose, director of the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council, said the Taliban has become more effective since the 1990s.

“They’ve become much more adept … militarily and non-militarily in terms of pursuing the same objective they have — which is establishing an Islamic emirate in Afghanistan,” she told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Monday.

“The U.S. withdrawal is not the reason the Afghan government was outmaneuvered,” she added.

Fontenrose said the Taliban surrounded the capital of Kabul, cut off supply lines that government forces needed, and have also have grown in numbers while developing new strategies.

“They use social media as lethally as they do sniper rifles. They’ve used coercion to pressure local tribal leaders, they’ve used pretty simple but effective text message campaigns to threaten local Afghans working with the U.S. and with other foreign efforts,” she described.

The Taliban also lets ground commanders make decisions, and brings people into captured territories to provide small-scale social services to the residents.

That has allowed the group to “outmaneuver” Afghan and foreign forces in terms of effectively appealing, co-opting or coercing the local population into supporting — or not opposing — them, she added.

Afghan government corruption and military weakness

Had the Taliban engaged in a full military onslaught and faced resistance, the blitz of the country would have taken longer — but it still would have happened, Watling believes.

“I think the Taliban would have still won,” he said. “And this is because the Afghan National Army is comprised of lots of units that are systemically corrupt, have no effective command and control, they don’t know how many people are in their own units, most of their equipment has been taken apart, stolen and sold off, and so they were a completely dysfunctional force.”

Soldiers in many cases have not been fed very well, very rarely been paid and been on duty for a long time away from home… and were not well-led.

Jack Watling

Research Fellow for Land Warfare, RUSI

It’s also because the Afghan military is woefully underpaid, underfed and undercompensated by the leadership in Kabul.

The “soldiers in many cases have not been fed very well, very rarely been paid and been on duty for a long time away from home … and were not well led,” Watling added, a tactical failure that resulted in heavy casualties to the tune of about 40 soldiers a day for the past several years.

Many army units would sell their equipment to the Taliban for cash, and there were frequent desertions that went unaccounted for, leaving inflated troop numbers on the books.

How little Americans ‘understand Afghanistan’

Central to understanding America’s failure in Afghanistan also comes down to understanding the country’s history and its culture — and how drastically it differs from any Western nation.

“There’s never been a central government in Afghanistan. To think we could establish one was a fool’s errand,” said the former U.S. intelligence officer and Afghan War veteran. “The ‘surprise’ at the Taliban regaining power shows just how little Americans, from top to bottom, understand Afghanistan.”

Afghanistan is a country of numerous tribes, languages, ethnicities and religious sects, and Washington and its NATO allies were attempting to turn it into a unified democracy premised on largely Western values.

“There was a fundamental failure to understand what the Afghans wanted,” Zacchea, who trained an Iraqi battalion in 2004, said. “We assumed they wanted what we had — liberal democracy, Judeo-Christian values … And think they’d just automatically convert. And that is not the case.”

Tribal alliances in Afghanistan very often supersede national ones, or loyalties follow money and power. And part of the Taliban’s strength lay in the fact that as Pashtuns, they belonged to the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan.

“Meanwhile,” the former U.S. intelligence official said, “we basically supported a hodgepodge of ethnic minorities, who never had the capability of unifying the country.”

A U.S. soldier keeps watch at an Afghan National Army (ANA) base in Logar province, Afghanistan August 5, 2018

Omar Sobhani | Reuters

“We did not understand the tribal dynamics, we never did,” Zacchea said. “We think everybody wants what we have. It’s cultural obtuseness, obliviousness to their reality and their lived experience.” 

The nature of the U.S.-brokered cease-fire with the Taliban in early 2020 also further weakened the Afghan government’s image: Negotiations led by the Trump administration left out the elected leadership in Kabul, which “destroyed the Afghan government’s legitimacy” at a time when it already had little respect from local communities, said Watling.

Afghans across the country of 39 million have expressed acute fear for their country’s future — especially women, who following the U.S. invasion in 2001 were able to go to school for the first time since the Taliban first took control of Afghanistan in 1996. For many Afghan War veterans, bringing some of these basic freedoms to Afghans made their sacrifices worth it.

Now, those achievements are set to vanish, lamented one American veteran who served as an infantryman in the country in 2011.

“I have no regrets about what I did in Afghanistan,” the former Marine told CNBC, requesting his name be withheld due to job restrictions on speaking to the press.

“I just feel devastated for the people I saw over my time there when they were kids. Now they’re teens, and I can only imagine what they are going through.”

— Amanda Macias contributed to this report from Washington, Natasha Turak contributed from Dubai, and Abigail Ng contributed from Singapore.

Categories
Health

Attorneys request jurors be quizzed on her superstar

Lawyers request jurors be quizzed on her celebrity

Former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes is leaving a status hearing on her upcoming fraud trial.

SAN JOSE, CALIF. – Elizabeth Holmes ‘attorneys on Monday demanded that they question jurors about bias and exposure to Holmes’ “profession and notoriety” when the jury selection begins in their criminal fraud trial later this month.

“If there are instances where a jury is affected by things like fame, either a witness, or the defendant’s occupation or position in a community, warn against it.” Amy Saharia, a Holmes lawyer, told the judge. “It is no surprise, Your Honor, that our customer is the subject of very intensive media monitoring.”

The defense attorneys asked that, in the context of questions to potential jurors, jury members should also be warned of bias in relation to the high-profile list of witnesses.

“There will be a number of Witnesses who have achieved significant success in their profession, in their community, or are internationally known,” said Saharia.

A number of recognizable business and political figures are expected to testify, including former Theranos board members and investors such as Henry Kissinger, Rupert Murdoch and James Mattis.

Holmes has faced dozens of wire fraud and wire fraud conspiracies related to Theranos, the startup she founded in 2003. Federal prosecutors say Holmes and her COO Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani cheated investors and patients out of Theranos’ technology. Neither of them pleaded guilty.

“I think it’s unnecessary to add your honor,” said Robert Leach, a US assistant attorney, about the defense, occupation and celebrity status request. “It’s repetitive and argumentative.”

It was the first time in a year and six months that the media had been allowed to enter the San Jose courtroom for a hearing related to Holmes’ case.

Holmes, who gave birth to her first child last month, sat on the right side of the courtroom across from the judge, who appeared from behind plexiglass. Defenders also expressed concern about what they call “high media coverage” that Holmes is facing.

They suggest adding instructions to the questionnaire asking potential judges about their use of social media, especially Reddit, with a warning that doing so could result in a possible failure.

“The jury must take proactive steps in this case to avoid exposure to the media,” said Saharia. “We think very strong media warnings are critical.”

The government said adding Reddit to the jury questionnaire was “unnecessary but not objectionable”.

The potential jurors, who Davila said have been summoned from across California, including San Benito County, may be asked about their vaccination status.

Davila announced that he plans to take a break every two hours and complete the hearings at 2 p.m. each day.

“Because of the length and duration of this trial, the jury is becoming tired,” Davila said. “I want the jury to feel like they’re not in closed captivity all the time.”

Davila added that there will be additional air filters in his courtroom and three to five seats will be reserved for Holmes.

“We anticipate that some family members and friends of Mrs. Holmes will want to attend,” said Holmes’ attorney Kevin Downey.

According to the court, the gallery offers space for around 60 spectators, and an overflow room is to be set up for another 40.

The court told CNBC that around 15 to 20 seats in the courtroom will be reserved for the press.

After two hours, Holmes left the courthouse, flanked by her lawyers. She ignored questions from CNBC too whether she feels prepared for her trial.

The selection of the jury begins on August 31st. Davila said he assumed it would be two days.