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The U.S. Set Up the Afghan Army to Fail

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 15:49:44 GMT

When the Afghan military and government collapsed in the summer of 2021, it was the worst failure of the U.S. defense establishment since the fall of Saigon. The U.S. today has moved on — providing the Ukrainian military with weapons and tactical support in its fight against Russia — but the question of why the world’s most powerful nation failed to build a capable Afghan military has not yet been fully answered.A new report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, issued this week sheds critical light on what went so terribly wrong in America’s longest war — and how tens of thousands of ordinary Afghans were set up by their leaders and foreign partners to fight and die for a doomed cause.“The real damning thing about what is in the report is that people had been telling the U.S. military this for years.”The SIGAR report, “Why the Afghan Security Forces Collapsed,” paints a picture of the U.S. government’s effort to construct an Afghan military from...

Fruity Pebbles and Lucky Charms Threaten to Block “Healthy” Food Labeling Guidelines in Court

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 15:49:44 GMT

The makers of Fruity Pebbles, Froot Loops, Lucky Charms, and other popular cereal brands are bitterly lobbying against a new Food and Drug Administration proposal that would prevent them from labeling their products as “healthy.”The proposed FDA rule mandates that foods labeled as healthy must contain a major food group — such as dairy, fruits, or whole grains — and must fit certain limits on saturated fat, sodium, and added sugars.The rule limits cereals, for example, to no more than 2.5 grams of sugar per serving in order to be labeled as healthy — a restriction food manufacturers claim would exclude over 95 percent of ready-to-eat cereals on the market.In response, processed food companies that produce a variety of snacks, baked goods, pastas, and frozen pizzas are challenging the rules before they are finalized by the agency. Among the most vocal food companies are producers of high-sugar cereals, which are largely marketed to children and have been criticized as a driver of the...

Pentagon Developed Contingency Plan for War With Iran

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 15:49:44 GMT

The U.S. military allocated spending for secret contingency operations pertaining to an Iran war plan, according to a classified Pentagon budget manual listing emergency and special programs reviewed by The Intercept.The contingency plan, code-named “Support Sentry,” was funded in 2018 and 2019, according to the manual, which was produced for the 2019 fiscal year. It classifies Support Sentry as an Iran “CONPLAN,” or concept plan, a broad contingency plan for war which the Pentagon develops in anticipation of a potential crisis.The existence of Support Sentry has not been previously reported. It is not clear from the document how much the Pentagon spent on the plan in those years. When asked about the program and whether it is still in place, Maj. John Moore, a spokesperson for U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM, said, “As a matter of policy, we do not comment on numbered plans. Iran remains the leading source of instability in the region and is a threat to the United States and...

The Shadow Medical Community Behind the Attempt to Ban Medication Abortion

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 15:49:44 GMT

The Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, a new anti-abortion umbrella group that is spearheading a sweeping federal challenge to medication abortion, incorporated in Texas just months before filing suit. The incorporation documents, obtained from the Texas secretary of state, provide further evidence that the plaintiffs cherry-picked a court they believed would be amenable to their arguments, an act of forum shopping that was orchestrated to land the case before Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump-appointed darling of the far right.The Alliance incorporated in Amarillo in August 2022, bringing together five out-of-state anti-abortion groups: the Catholic Medical Association, the Coptic Medical Association of North America, the American College of Pediatricians, the Christian Medical & Dental Associations, and the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Three months later, the lawsuit was filed in the same Texas Panhandle city where Kacsmaryk hears all federa...

How to Save Yellowstone's Wolves

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 15:49:44 GMT

If you ever plan to dart a wild wolf sprinting over a snow-covered mountain from a low-flying helicopter, there are a few things you need to know. The wolf should be running away, and you should be aiming for the back or butt. Never take a shot at a wolf that’s facing you. The risk of injuring the animal with a dart to the face is too high. Also, a dart shoots hard but it’s not a bullet; you need to loft your shot. Try to keep the chase under a quarter mile. Push a distressed wolf much farther and you’re being cruel. Finally, while you’re leaning out over the helicopter’s landing skids focusing on the wolf, don’t forget the treetops rushing by under your feet. If you get snagged, you’re done.These were the lessons Doug Smith took home after a trip to the Alaskan outback in 1999. Smith had recently become director of the Yellowstone Wolf Project, the research program that followed the reintroduction of wolves into the national park four years earlier. At the heart of the nascent prog...

Scott Adams Echoes White America’s Resentful History of “Helping” Others

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 15:49:44 GMT

Scott Adams, creator of the comic strip “Dilbert,” in Dublin, Calif., on Oct. 26, 2006.Photo: Marcio Jose Sanchez/APWednesday’s peculiar YouTube remarks by “Dilbert” cartoonist Scott Adams about Black Americans being a “hate group” have certainly received a lot of attention. Hundreds of newspapers across the U.S. have now dropped Adams’s strip.What’s gotten almost no notice, however, is how Adams went on at length about his efforts to be “helpful to Black America.” But my ears perked up when I heard this, since the most berserk racial ultraviolence in U.S. history has always been accompanied by this kind of rhetoric from white Americans — i.e., we’ve done our best to help others, only for them to turn around and loathe us rather than respond with the gratitude we deserve for our openhearted kindness.Here’s some of what Adams said on this subject:As you know, I’ve been identifying as Black for a while. Years now, because I like to be on the winning team.And I like to help. And ...

Tucker Carlson Deserves a Raise for His Shameless Lies

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 15:49:44 GMT

Tucker Carlson speaks during the 2022 Fox Nation Patriot Awards at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Fla., on Nov. 17, 2022.Photo: Jason Koerner/Getty ImagesBy now you probably know about the filing by Dominion Voting Systems in its $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News. It includes a vast trove of communications to and from various Fox hosts — including Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham — as well as Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott and Rupert Murdoch, chair of the parent corporation of Fox News.The most wonderful part of the filing is Carlson’s inspiring, principled stand against telling the truth. On November 12, 2020, nine days after the election, Carlson flagged a tweet for Hannity and Ingraham by Fox reporter Jacqui Heinrich. In it Heinrich had accurately pointed out that there was “no evidence” for then-President Donald Trump’s preposterous claims about the election being stolen by Dominion’s voting machines.Heinrich’s reference to rea...

Tesla on automated system when it hit firetruck, killing 1

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 15:49:44 GMT

DETROIT (AP) — A Tesla was operating on an automated driving system when it crashed into a firetruck in California last month, killing the driver and critically injuring a passenger. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Wednesday it has dispatched a special crash investigation team to look into the Feb. 18 crash in Northern California where emergency responders had to cut open the Tesla to remove the passenger. Four Contra Costa County firefighters had minor injuries.The probe is part of a larger investigation by the agency into multiple instances of Teslas on Autopilot crashing into parked emergency vehicles that are tending to other crashes.The $1.4 million ladder truck was damaged in the crash on Interstate 680. The truck was parked to shield a crew clearing another accident, fire officials said.The driver of the the 2014 Tesla Model S was declared dead at the scene.NHTSA is investigating how Tesla’s Autopilot system detects and responds to emergency vehicles p...

Daughter unravels decades-old mystery of disabled mom’s rape

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 15:49:44 GMT

Magdalena Cruz grew up knowing she owed her very life to a horrid crime.She was born in 1986 to a mom who couldn’t care for her, or for herself. For a decade, Cruz’s mother had been a resident of a state facility for severely disabled people in Rochester, New York. She was nonverbal. She was 30 but had the mental acuity of a 2-year-old, wore diapers and needed constant care. She couldn’t consent to sex, so when she was discovered to be pregnant, it was obvious she must have been raped.Facility administrators told the woman’s family another resident was likely responsible and said they would file a police report and undertake an internal investigation.Nearly four decades later, Cruz says she has solved the mystery of her father’s identity herself, partly by using a mail-order DNA test and a popular genealogy database.He was an employee of the facility, not a resident, according to a lawsuit she filed this week.Moreover, Cruz also learned through her own sleuthing that no ...

On tap: Booze still allowed on Amtrak in New Hampshire

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 15:49:44 GMT

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Riders on an Amtrak train that runs from Maine to Boston can continue to buy alcoholic beverages during the 35-mile stretch of the trip that goes through New Hampshire as officials work out a “creative solution” to avoid violating a state liquor law, officials said.The Amtrak Downeaster takes passengers 145 miles from Brunswick, Maine, to Boston. The train includes a cafe car that serves alcohol.The Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority, a quasi-government agency that has a service agreement with Amtrak, said it was told by the New Hampshire Liquor Commission that the train can’t serve alcohol during the New Hampshire portion of the journey. There’s a law that forbids serving alcohol that hasn’t been purchased in the state. The liquor commission didn’t immediately comment Wednesday. It said in a statement Tuesday that the Massachusetts-based company that provides the train’s food and beverage service “inadvertently acknowledged th...