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US, China agree on Taiwan agreement, Russia's shoot in space, WION Headlines

U.S. President Joe Biden has said that he has spoken to Chinese President Xi Jinping about Taiwan and they agreed to abide by the Taiwan agreement, as tensions have ratcheted up between Taipei and Beijing.

U.S. President Joe Biden, Chinese President Xi Jinping abide by the Taiwan agreement

In two weeks, America could default on its debt for the first time in history. President Joe Biden has called it a 'meteor headed for the US economy'. Are Republicans using the recession as leverage? Is Biden's bipartisanship claim a sham? Palki Sharma tells you.

Gravitas: Biden blames Republicans for looming credit default

Secretary of State Antony J&nbsp;Blinken recently announced sanctions against seven public officials in El Salvador and Guatemala, including five Salvadoran Supreme Court justices, putting them on the State Department’s official list of “Undemocratic and Corrupt Actors.” This round added to the more than 300 individuals the United States had already placed sanctions on in Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala and to U.S. diplomatic and financial sanctions on the governments of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

While the US&nbsp;government has applied sanctions on nations and leaders around the world accused of human rights abuses and graft, in Latin America, sanctions have become one of the central pillars of US&nbsp;policy to defend democracy and combat corruption. All of these governments and individuals are probably worthy targets of sanctions, but to what end?

Sanctions can be an important diplomatic tool when applied in a calibrated fashion. But they are rarely accompanied by clear measures of their failure or success and criteria for their possible lifting.

The Treasury Department announced months ago that it was reviewing US&nbsp;sanctions’ effects on the well-being of people in the targeted countries. But the review, requested by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, has taken longer than expected and appears to focus on economywide sanctions and not the increasingly common tool of individual sanctions.

One opportunity to reassess and adjust sanctions is occurring in Mexico, as the Venezuelan government negotiates with its democratic opposition. While the Nicolás Maduro regime has said it would not agree to internationally supervised elections until sanctions on the state-owned oil company are lifted, the White House, along with Canada and the European Union, has signaled willingness to loosen some sanctions in exchange for reforms. What those reforms need to be, and which sanctions would be lifted, are not clear.

US&nbsp;sanctions have a long history in Latin America. Cuba is the most obvious example of how sanctions can be piled on, even if they clearly have failed to achieve anything. Originally established in 1962, the U.S. economic embargo on Cuba was codified into law by Congress in 1992 and again in 1996, all with the stated intent of improving human rights and overturning the Communist government. Almost 60 years later, not only does Cuba remain one of the most repressive societies in the world, but in 2018 President Raúl Castro passed the torch to a next generation, with the appointment of the Communist Party apparatchik Miguel Díaz-Canel.

On the campaign trail in 2020, Joe Biden promised to revisit U.S. policy toward Cuba. But rather than seeking a way to scale back President Donald Trump’s restrictions on travel and remittances to the island, after the Cuban government’s crackdown on mostly peaceful demonstrators in July, the Biden White House imposed its own sanctions on four members of the Cuban government and on the national police. It was another ineffective move, since the existing sanctions had failed to prevent the original crackdown.

Central America has also shown how impotent US&nbsp;economic punishments can be. In response to a crackdown against democratic activists by President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, the Trump and Biden administrations have imposed sanctions on more than 100 public officials, including Mr. Ortega and his wife and the vice president, Rosario Murillo. Despite these punishments and the suspension of US&nbsp;development support, seven of Nicaragua’s potential opposition candidates for the Nov. 7 presidential elections are in jail or under house arrest and over 100 political prisoners remain behind bars.

Before Mr. Blinken’s most recent additions, this year the White House had already placed sanctions against more than 55 Central Americans determined to have engaged in corruption. Beyond the risk of just adding more and more people to the list of reprobates ad infinitum under individual sanctions, the economic repercussions of financials sanctions, according to Tufts professor Daniel Drezner, “are likely to trigger repression, corruption and backsliding on human development indicators.”

Over the past decade Venezuela has become the target of the some of the most stringent US&nbsp;coercive measures, starting with a raft of sanctions against individuals under President Barack Obama’s administration. The Trump administration expanded the sanctions prohibiting transactions with Venezuela’s state-owned oil and gas companies after the widely questioned 2018 re-election of Mr. Maduro. By 2017 the US&nbsp;government had put sanctions on over 160 Venezuelans for reasons ranging from narcotics trafficking, corruption, ties to terrorists and human rights abuses. The apparent goal in this cascade of sanctions was to topple Mr. Maduro and put his main opponent, Juan Guaidó, in office.

With Mr. Maduro’s government engaged in its fifth attempt at negotiations with the opposition, the Biden administration has the opportunity to demonstrate a new commitment to use sanctions as a carrot rather than a stick — not just for Venezuela, but for the region.

Before the two sides conclude the current negotiations in Mexico, the White House needs to be clear what specific reforms will lead to the lifting of which specific sanctions. The compromise must include Venezuela’s release of 340 or so political prisoners, the delivery of international humanitarian assistance of food and medicines through independent organizations without government interference, and free and fair voting in the Nov. 21 regional and municipal elections. In return, the US&nbsp;government should agree to lift export restrictions on goods and equipment Venezuela needs to process oil, generate electricity and provide diesel for public transport. To minimize the risk that the oil revenue would boost Mr. Maduro’s corrupt state and his cronies, the United States would need to insist that the bulk of the revenue pay for food imports and critical public services to alleviate the suffering of poor Venezuelans.

But beyond any immediate refinement of Venezuelan sanctions, the White House, Congress and experts in the field need to conduct a public bipartisan review of America’s ever-growing sanctions regime to assess the humanitarian impact and evaluate how well the nation’s goals are furthered by such punitive policies, even as Treasury pursues its assessment.

Such an evaluation should establish other diplomatic tools to lay out concrete, realistic steps toward calibrated relief of sanctions (regime change does not count), diplomatic channels to negotiate through third parties, financial incentives through development aid or assurances to private investors to induce change, and coordinating with other sanction-applying entities in these diplomatic efforts.

Slapping sanctions on corrupt, human rights-abusing regimes and individuals may make diplomats and elected officials feel good. But as this becomes an increasingly central part of US&nbsp;policy in Latin America, we need to understand when they aren’t doing their job and be willing to adjust.

Secretary of State Antony J Blinken recently announced sanctions against seven public officials in El Salvador and Guatemala, including five Salvadoran Supreme Court justices, putting them on the State Department’s official list of “Undemocratic and Corrupt Actors.

Secretary of State Antony J Blinken recently announced sanctions against seven public officials in El Salvador and Guatemala, including five Salvadoran Supreme Court justices, putting them on the State Department’s official list of “Undemocratic and Corrupt Actors.” This round added to the more than 300 individuals the United States had already placed sanctions on in Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala and to U.S. diplomatic and financial sanctions on the governments of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. While the US government has applied sanctions on nations and leaders around the world accused of human rights abuses and graft, in Latin America, sanctions have become one of the central pillars of US policy to defend democracy and combat corruption. All of these governments and individuals are probably worthy targets of sanctions, but to what end? Sanctions can be an important diplomatic tool when applied in a calibrated fashion. But they are rarely accompanied by clear measures of their failure or success and criteria for their possible lifting. The Treasury Department announced months ago that it was reviewing US sanctions’ effects on the well-being of people in the targeted countries. But the review, requested by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, has taken longer than expected and appears to focus on economywide sanctions and not the increasingly common tool of individual sanctions. One opportunity to reassess and adjust sanctions is occurring in Mexico, as the Venezuelan government negotiates with its democratic opposition. While the Nicolás Maduro regime has said it would not agree to internationally supervised elections until sanctions on the state-owned oil company are lifted, the White House, along with Canada and the European Union, has signaled willingness to loosen some sanctions in exchange for reforms. What those reforms need to be, and which sanctions would be lifted, are not clear. US sanctions have a long history in Latin America. Cuba is the most obvious example of how sanctions can be piled on, even if they clearly have failed to achieve anything. Originally established in 1962, the U.S. economic embargo on Cuba was codified into law by Congress in 1992 and again in 1996, all with the stated intent of improving human rights and overturning the Communist government. Almost 60 years later, not only does Cuba remain one of the most repressive societies in the world, but in 2018 President Raúl Castro passed the torch to a next generation, with the appointment of the Communist Party apparatchik Miguel Díaz-Canel. On the campaign trail in 2020, Joe Biden promised to revisit U.S. policy toward Cuba. But rather than seeking a way to scale back President Donald Trump’s restrictions on travel and remittances to the island, after the Cuban government’s crackdown on mostly peaceful demonstrators in July, the Biden White House imposed its own sanctions on four members of the Cuban government and on the national police. It was another ineffective move, since the existing sanctions had failed to prevent the original crackdown. Central America has also shown how impotent US economic punishments can be. In response to a crackdown against democratic activists by President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, the Trump and Biden administrations have imposed sanctions on more than 100 public officials, including Mr. Ortega and his wife and the vice president, Rosario Murillo. Despite these punishments and the suspension of US development support, seven of Nicaragua’s potential opposition candidates for the Nov. 7 presidential elections are in jail or under house arrest and over 100 political prisoners remain behind bars. Before Mr. Blinken’s most recent additions, this year the White House had already placed sanctions against more than 55 Central Americans determined to have engaged in corruption. Beyond the risk of just adding more and more people to the list of reprobates ad infinitum under individual sanctions, the economic repercussions of financials sanctions, according to Tufts professor Daniel Drezner, “are likely to trigger repression, corruption and backsliding on human development indicators.” Over the past decade Venezuela has become the target of the some of the most stringent US coercive measures, starting with a raft of sanctions against individuals under President Barack Obama’s administration. The Trump administration expanded the sanctions prohibiting transactions with Venezuela’s state-owned oil and gas companies after the widely questioned 2018 re-election of Mr. Maduro. By 2017 the US government had put sanctions on over 160 Venezuelans for reasons ranging from narcotics trafficking, corruption, ties to terrorists and human rights abuses. The apparent goal in this cascade of sanctions was to topple Mr. Maduro and put his main opponent, Juan Guaidó, in office. With Mr. Maduro’s government engaged in its fifth attempt at negotiations with the opposition, the Biden administration has the opportunity to demonstrate a new commitment to use sanctions as a carrot rather than a stick — not just for Venezuela, but for the region. Before the two sides conclude the current negotiations in Mexico, the White House needs to be clear what specific reforms will lead to the lifting of which specific sanctions. The compromise must include Venezuela’s release of 340 or so political prisoners, the delivery of international humanitarian assistance of food and medicines through independent organizations without government interference, and free and fair voting in the Nov. 21 regional and municipal elections. In return, the US government should agree to lift export restrictions on goods and equipment Venezuela needs to process oil, generate electricity and provide diesel for public transport. To minimize the risk that the oil revenue would boost Mr. Maduro’s corrupt state and his cronies, the United States would need to insist that the bulk of the revenue pay for food imports and critical public services to alleviate the suffering of poor Venezuelans. But beyond any immediate refinement of Venezuelan sanctions, the White House, Congress and experts in the field need to conduct a public bipartisan review of America’s ever-growing sanctions regime to assess the humanitarian impact and evaluate how well the nation’s goals are furthered by such punitive policies, even as Treasury pursues its assessment. Such an evaluation should establish other diplomatic tools to lay out concrete, realistic steps toward calibrated relief of sanctions (regime change does not count), diplomatic channels to negotiate through third parties, financial incentives through development aid or assurances to private investors to induce change, and coordinating with other sanction-applying entities in these diplomatic efforts. Slapping sanctions on corrupt, human rights-abusing regimes and individuals may make diplomats and elected officials feel good. But as this becomes an increasingly central part of US policy in Latin America, we need to understand when they aren’t doing their job and be willing to adjust.

The US needs a sanctions policy that works

US President Joe Biden said he spoke to Chinese President Xi Jinping to discuss China's military activity near Taiwan and both sides agreed to abide by the Taiwan agreement.

US President Biden says Xi Jinping agreed to abide by the Taiwan agreement

EU leaders held tough discussions on Tuesday as they sought unity on how to deal with China and the US. This was their first meeting since June.

EU leaders hold tough discussions on how to deal with China, US

The US has published the number of nuclear warheads that the country has in its stockpile.

US publishes number of nuclear warheads

Google on Wednesday said it is tweaking widely used tools for getting around, shopping and more to let users factor climate change into daily routines.

Google is among the Big Tech firms that have made pledges and investments to reduce the environmental impact of their operations with moves such as making power-hungry data centers carbon neutral.

New features unveiled on Wednesday provide users with ways to help in the effort, whether it be driving routes that result in less exhaust being spewed from cars or shopping online for energy efficient appliances.

Also Read |<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/google-ends-work-on-its-plex-project-even-after-financial-markets-heat-up-417518">&nbsp;Google ends work on its Plex project even after financial markets heat up</a>

"In all these efforts, our goal is to make the sustainable choice an easier choice," Google chief executive Sundar Pichai said while briefing journalists on the latest features.

Artificial intelligence was put to work in Google's free Maps service in the United States to show people the most fuel efficient routes to destinations even if they are not the quickest.

"It defaults to the route that uses less fuel when the estimated time of arrival is similar," Pichai said.

"We believe the feature will have the same impact in the next year as taking over 200,000 cars off the road."

The feature is to be rolled out in Europe in 2022.

Google has also started work on a project to use AI to optimize the efficiency of traffic in cities to reduce time vehicles spend idling at intersections.

Carbon dioxide emission information is being added to a Flights service for booking travel by air.

"We're putting these numbers in context by labeling flights that have significantly higher emissions, and adding a green badge to flights with significantly lower emissions," Google said in a post.

The metrics will also show how much more CO2 is attributed to business or first-class seats, which give passengers more room.

In coming months, Google will start adding details about how eco-friendly hotels are so people can opt for lodging that is kinder to the planet.

Google moves include weaving environmental impact information into its services for financial investing or shopping for appliances, and providing more insights into cost-benefits of electric vehicles.

"Individually, these choices might feel small but when you multiply them together across our products, they equal big transformations for the planet," Pichai said.

"It's going to take all of that to avert the worst consequences of climate change and there's no time to waste."

Google on Wednesday said it is tweaking widely used tools for getting around, shopping and more to let users factor climate change into daily routines. Google is among the Big Tech firms that have made pledges and investments to reduce the environmental impact of their operations with moves such as making power-hungry data centers carbon neutral.

Google on Wednesday said it is tweaking widely used tools for getting around, shopping and more to let users factor climate change into daily routines. Google is among the Big Tech firms that have made pledges and investments to reduce the environmental impact of their operations with moves such as making power-hungry data centers carbon neutral. New features unveiled on Wednesday provide users with ways to help in the effort, whether it be driving routes that result in less exhaust being spewed from cars or shopping online for energy efficient appliances. Also Read | Google ends work on its Plex project even after financial markets heat up "In all these efforts, our goal is to make the sustainable choice an easier choice," Google chief executive Sundar Pichai said while briefing journalists on the latest features. Artificial intelligence was put to work in Google's free Maps service in the United States to show people the most fuel efficient routes to destinations even if they are not the quickest. "It defaults to the route that uses less fuel when the estimated time of arrival is similar," Pichai said. "We believe the feature will have the same impact in the next year as taking over 200,000 cars off the road." The feature is to be rolled out in Europe in 2022. Google has also started work on a project to use AI to optimize the efficiency of traffic in cities to reduce time vehicles spend idling at intersections. Carbon dioxide emission information is being added to a Flights service for booking travel by air. "We're putting these numbers in context by labeling flights that have significantly higher emissions, and adding a green badge to flights with significantly lower emissions," Google said in a post. The metrics will also show how much more CO2 is attributed to business or first-class seats, which give passengers more room. In coming months, Google will start adding details about how eco-friendly hotels are so people can opt for lodging that is kinder to the planet. Google moves include weaving environmental impact information into its services for financial investing or shopping for appliances, and providing more insights into cost-benefits of electric vehicles. "Individually, these choices might feel small but when you multiply them together across our products, they equal big transformations for the planet," Pichai said. "It's going to take all of that to avert the worst consequences of climate change and there's no time to waste."

Google lets users factor climate change into life

U.S. oil prices rose for a fifth day amid global concerns about energy supply on signs of tightness in crude, natural gas and coal markets.

U.S. oil prices rise for a fifth day

Top American counterintelligence officials warned every CIA station and base around the world last week about troubling numbers of informants recruited from other countries to spy for the United States being captured or killed, people familiar with the matter said.

The message, in an unusual top-secret cable, said that the CIA’s counterintelligence mission centre had looked at dozens of cases in the last several years involving foreign informants who had been killed, arrested or most likely compromised. Although brief, the cable laid out the specific number of agents executed by rival intelligence agencies — a closely held detail that counterintelligence officials typically do not share in such cables.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/havana-syndrome-cases-may-be-linked-to-crickets-claims-report-418143">Havana syndrome cases may be linked to crickets, claims report</a>

The cable highlighted the struggle the spy agency is having as it works to recruit spies around the world in difficult operating environments. In recent years, adversarial intelligence services in countries such as Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan have been hunting down the CIA’s sources and in some cases turning them into double agents.

Acknowledging that recruiting spies is a high-risk business, the cable raised issues that have plagued the agency in recent years, including poor tradecraft, being too trusting of sources, underestimating foreign intelligence agencies and moving too quickly to recruit informants while not paying enough attention to potential counterintelligence risks — a problem the cable called placing “mission over security.”

The large number of compromised informants in recent years also demonstrated the growing prowess of other countries in employing innovations like biometric scans, facial recognition, artificial intelligence and hacking tools to track the movements of CIA officers in order to discover their sources.

While the CIA has many ways to collect intelligence for its analysts to craft into briefings for policymakers, networks of trusted human informants around the world remain the centerpiece of its efforts, the kind of intelligence that the agency is supposed to be the best in the world at collecting and analyzing.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/new-report-claims-cia-planned-gun-battle-abduction-to-snatch-assange-416285">New report claims CIA planned gun battle &amp; abduction to snatch Assange</a>

Recruiting new informants, former officials said, is how the CIA’s case officers — its front-line spies — earn promotions. Case officers are not typically promoted for running good counterintelligence operations, such as figuring out if an informant is really working for another country.

The agency has devoted much of its attention for the last two decades to terrorist threats and the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, but improving intelligence collection on adversarial powers both great and small is once again a centerpiece of the CIA’s agenda, particularly as policymakers demand more insight into China and Russia.

The loss of informants, former officials said, is not a new problem. But the cable demonstrated the issue is more urgent than is publicly understood.

The warning, according to those who have read it, was primarily aimed at front-line agency officers, the people involved most directly in the recruiting and vetting of sources. The cable reminded CIA case officers to focus not just on recruiting sources but also on security issues including vetting informants and evading adversarial intelligence services.

Among the reasons for the cable, according to people familiar with the document, was to prod CIA case officers to think about steps they can take on their own do a better job managing informants.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/photos/us-spy-plane-crash-in-afghanistan-277115">Now, Iran media claims CIA chief behind Soleimani’s assassination killed in Afghanistan plane crash</a>

Former officials said that there has to be more focus on security and counterintelligence, among both senior leaders and front-line personnel, especially when it comes to recruiting informants, which CIA officers call agents.

“No one at the end of the day is being held responsible when things go south with an agent,” said Douglas London, a former agency operative. “Sometimes there are things beyond our control, but there are also occasions of sloppiness and neglect, and people in senior positions are never held responsible.”

London said he was unaware of the cable. But his new book, “The Recruiter: Spying and the Lost Art of American Intelligence,” argues that the CIA’s shift toward covert action and paramilitary operations undermined traditional espionage that relies on securely recruiting and handling agents.

Sheetal T. Patel, who last year became the CIA’s assistant director for counterintelligence and leads that mission centre, has not been reluctant to send out broad warnings to the CIA community of current and former officers.

In January, Patel sent a letter to retired CIA officers warning against working for foreign governments who are trying to build up spying capabilities by hiring retired intelligence officials. (The letter, promptly leaked, also included warnings about talking to journalists.)

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/cia-vienna-station-chief-removed-amid-havana-syndrome-criticism-report-415559">CIA Vienna station chief removed amid 'Havana syndrome' criticism: Report</a>

Former officials say the broadsides are a way of pushing CIA officers to become more serious about counterintelligence.

The memo sent last week suggested that the agency underestimated its adversaries — the belief that its officers and tradecraft were better than other intelligence services. But the results of the study showed that countries being targeted by the US&nbsp;are also skilled at hunting down informants.

Some former officials believe that the agency’s skills at thwarting adversarial intelligence services have grown rusty after decades of focusing on terrorism threats and relying on risky covert communications. Developing, training and directing informants spying on foreign governments differs in some ways from developing sources inside terrorist networks.

While the memo identified specific numbers of informants that were arrested or killed, it said the number turned against the United States was not fully known. Sometimes, informants who are discovered by adversarial intelligence services are not arrested but instead are turned into double agents who feed disinformation to the CIA, which can have devastating effects on intelligence collection and analysis. Pakistanis have been particularly effective in this sphere, former officials said.

The collapse of the US-backed government in Afghanistan means that learning more about Pakistan’s ties to the Taliban government and extremist organizations in the region is going to become ever more important. As a result, the pressure is once again on the CIA to build and maintain networks of informants in Pakistan, a country with a record of discovering and breaking those networks.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/south-asia/cia-says-al-qaeda-is-regrouping-post-taliban-takeover-in-afghanistan-report-413469">CIA says Al Qaeda is regrouping post Taliban takeover in Afghanistan: Report</a>

Similarly, the focus by successive administrations on great power competition and the challenges of China and Russia has meant that building up spy networks and protecting those sources are more important than ever.

In those countries, technology has also become a problem, former officials said. Artificial intelligence, biometric scans, facial recognition and other technology has made it far easier for governments to track American intelligence officers operating in their country. That has made meeting and communicating with sources far more difficult.

A breach of the classified communications system, or “covcom,” used by the CIA helped to expose the agency’s networks in China and in Iran, according to former officials. In both cases, informants were executed. Others had to be extracted and resettled by the agency.

In Iran and China, some intelligence officials believe that Americans provided information to the adversarial agencies that could have helped expose informants. Monica Elfriede Witt, a former Air Force sergeant who defected to Iran, was indicted on a charge of providing information to Iran in 2019. The Iranians leveraged her knowledge only after determining she could be trusted. Later that year, Jerry Chun Shing Lee, a former CIA officer, was sentenced to 19 years in prison for providing secrets to the Chinese government.

Watch |&nbsp;Early signs of Al-Qaeda regrouping in Afghanistan, notes CIA

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/early-signs-of-al-qaeda-regrouping-in-afghanistan-notes-cia-413465/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

Former officials say there is no shortage of examples of where the agency has been so focused on the mission that security measures were not given proper consideration. And in some cases, a turned agent can have deadly consequences.

The 2009 bombing at a CIA base in Khost, Afghanistan, that killed seven agency employees was a good example of mission over security, London said. In that suicide attack, a Jordanian doctor the CIA thought it had persuaded to penetrate al-Qaida had in fact been turned against the United States.

“We were in such a rush to make such a big score,” London said. “Those were tradecraft mistakes.”

He added it is important to remind the CIA’s workforce of the damage that can happen when tradecraft lapses.

“Do your job and don’t be lazy,” he said. “It’s a willingness to say we are not as perfect as we think we are. That’s a positive thing.”

Top American counterintelligence officials warned every CIA station and base around the world last week about troubling numbers of informants recruited from other countries to spy for the United States being captured or killed, people familiar with the matter said.

Top American counterintelligence officials warned every CIA station and base around the world last week about troubling numbers of informants recruited from other countries to spy for the United States being captured or killed, people familiar with the matter said. The message, in an unusual top-secret cable, said that the CIA’s counterintelligence mission centre had looked at dozens of cases in the last several years involving foreign informants who had been killed, arrested or most likely compromised. Although brief, the cable laid out the specific number of agents executed by rival intelligence agencies — a closely held detail that counterintelligence officials typically do not share in such cables. Also read | Havana syndrome cases may be linked to crickets, claims report The cable highlighted the struggle the spy agency is having as it works to recruit spies around the world in difficult operating environments. In recent years, adversarial intelligence services in countries such as Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan have been hunting down the CIA’s sources and in some cases turning them into double agents. Acknowledging that recruiting spies is a high-risk business, the cable raised issues that have plagued the agency in recent years, including poor tradecraft, being too trusting of sources, underestimating foreign intelligence agencies and moving too quickly to recruit informants while not paying enough attention to potential counterintelligence risks — a problem the cable called placing “mission over security.” The large number of compromised informants in recent years also demonstrated the growing prowess of other countries in employing innovations like biometric scans, facial recognition, artificial intelligence and hacking tools to track the movements of CIA officers in order to discover their sources. While the CIA has many ways to collect intelligence for its analysts to craft into briefings for policymakers, networks of trusted human informants around the world remain the centerpiece of its efforts, the kind of intelligence that the agency is supposed to be the best in the world at collecting and analyzing. Also read | New report claims CIA planned gun battle & abduction to snatch Assange Recruiting new informants, former officials said, is how the CIA’s case officers — its front-line spies — earn promotions. Case officers are not typically promoted for running good counterintelligence operations, such as figuring out if an informant is really working for another country. The agency has devoted much of its attention for the last two decades to terrorist threats and the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, but improving intelligence collection on adversarial powers both great and small is once again a centerpiece of the CIA’s agenda, particularly as policymakers demand more insight into China and Russia. The loss of informants, former officials said, is not a new problem. But the cable demonstrated the issue is more urgent than is publicly understood. The warning, according to those who have read it, was primarily aimed at front-line agency officers, the people involved most directly in the recruiting and vetting of sources. The cable reminded CIA case officers to focus not just on recruiting sources but also on security issues including vetting informants and evading adversarial intelligence services. Among the reasons for the cable, according to people familiar with the document, was to prod CIA case officers to think about steps they can take on their own do a better job managing informants. Also read | Now, Iran media claims CIA chief behind Soleimani’s assassination killed in Afghanistan plane crash Former officials said that there has to be more focus on security and counterintelligence, among both senior leaders and front-line personnel, especially when it comes to recruiting informants, which CIA officers call agents. “No one at the end of the day is being held responsible when things go south with an agent,” said Douglas London, a former agency operative. “Sometimes there are things beyond our control, but there are also occasions of sloppiness and neglect, and people in senior positions are never held responsible.” London said he was unaware of the cable. But his new book, “The Recruiter: Spying and the Lost Art of American Intelligence,” argues that the CIA’s shift toward covert action and paramilitary operations undermined traditional espionage that relies on securely recruiting and handling agents. Sheetal T. Patel, who last year became the CIA’s assistant director for counterintelligence and leads that mission centre, has not been reluctant to send out broad warnings to the CIA community of current and former officers. In January, Patel sent a letter to retired CIA officers warning against working for foreign governments who are trying to build up spying capabilities by hiring retired intelligence officials. (The letter, promptly leaked, also included warnings about talking to journalists.) Also read | CIA Vienna station chief removed amid 'Havana syndrome' criticism: Report Former officials say the broadsides are a way of pushing CIA officers to become more serious about counterintelligence. The memo sent last week suggested that the agency underestimated its adversaries — the belief that its officers and tradecraft were better than other intelligence services. But the results of the study showed that countries being targeted by the US are also skilled at hunting down informants. Some former officials believe that the agency’s skills at thwarting adversarial intelligence services have grown rusty after decades of focusing on terrorism threats and relying on risky covert communications. Developing, training and directing informants spying on foreign governments differs in some ways from developing sources inside terrorist networks. While the memo identified specific numbers of informants that were arrested or killed, it said the number turned against the United States was not fully known. Sometimes, informants who are discovered by adversarial intelligence services are not arrested but instead are turned into double agents who feed disinformation to the CIA, which can have devastating effects on intelligence collection and analysis. Pakistanis have been particularly effective in this sphere, former officials said. The collapse of the US-backed government in Afghanistan means that learning more about Pakistan’s ties to the Taliban government and extremist organizations in the region is going to become ever more important. As a result, the pressure is once again on the CIA to build and maintain networks of informants in Pakistan, a country with a record of discovering and breaking those networks. Also read | CIA says Al Qaeda is regrouping post Taliban takeover in Afghanistan: Report Similarly, the focus by successive administrations on great power competition and the challenges of China and Russia has meant that building up spy networks and protecting those sources are more important than ever. In those countries, technology has also become a problem, former officials said. Artificial intelligence, biometric scans, facial recognition and other technology has made it far easier for governments to track American intelligence officers operating in their country. That has made meeting and communicating with sources far more difficult. A breach of the classified communications system, or “covcom,” used by the CIA helped to expose the agency’s networks in China and in Iran, according to former officials. In both cases, informants were executed. Others had to be extracted and resettled by the agency. In Iran and China, some intelligence officials believe that Americans provided information to the adversarial agencies that could have helped expose informants. Monica Elfriede Witt, a former Air Force sergeant who defected to Iran, was indicted on a charge of providing information to Iran in 2019. The Iranians leveraged her knowledge only after determining she could be trusted. Later that year, Jerry Chun Shing Lee, a former CIA officer, was sentenced to 19 years in prison for providing secrets to the Chinese government. Watch | Early signs of Al-Qaeda regrouping in Afghanistan, notes CIA Former officials say there is no shortage of examples of where the agency has been so focused on the mission that security measures were not given proper consideration. And in some cases, a turned agent can have deadly consequences. The 2009 bombing at a CIA base in Khost, Afghanistan, that killed seven agency employees was a good example of mission over security, London said. In that suicide attack, a Jordanian doctor the CIA thought it had persuaded to penetrate al-Qaida had in fact been turned against the United States. “We were in such a rush to make such a big score,” London said. “Those were tradecraft mistakes.” He added it is important to remind the CIA’s workforce of the damage that can happen when tradecraft lapses. “Do your job and don’t be lazy,” he said. “It’s a willingness to say we are not as perfect as we think we are. That’s a positive thing.”

Captured, killed or compromised: CIA admits to losing dozens of informants

Federal investigators Tuesday morning raided the Manhattan office of one of New York City’s main police unions in connection with an ongoing investigation, according to two people with the knowledge of the matter.

The union, the Sergeants Benevolent Association, represents about 13,000 active and retired police sergeants in New York. Its headquarters were searched as part of an investigation by the FBI and the public corruption unit in the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, the people said.

Investigators also executed a search warrant at the Long Island home of the union’s president, Edward D. Mullins, a person with knowledge of the operation said.

While the precise focus and scope of the investigation could not immediately be determined, the search of Mullins’ home suggests that the inquiry is at least in some measure focused on him.

An FBI spokesman said only that agents “were conducting a law enforcement operation pursuant to an ongoing investigation” at the union’s offices in Lower Manhattan.

At least four federal agents were inside the union’s headquarters around noon Tuesday. The investigators lowered dark wooden blinds and placed pieces of cardboard inside four windows to prevent the public from gazing inside.

Mullins, who has run the union since 2002, could not immediately be reached for comment. The sergeants’ union, which says it is the fifth-largest police union in the country, did not immediately respond to questions about the raid, which was reported earlier by The New York Daily News.

Mullins, long an outspoken figure, has become known in recent years for making brash and incendiary remarks on social media, particularly against Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Mullins recently faced internal discipline charges over his behavior on Twitter, including for sharing a police report documenting the arrest of de Blasio’s daughter, Chiara, during protests in New York.

The Police Department does not typically release internal reports, and the one that Mullins shared contained personal information about Chiara de Blasio.

Bill de Blasio declined to comment on the raid at a news conference Tuesday, saying he did not know any details, but he said that Mullins had long been a “divisive voice” whose behavior had been “destructive.”

Mullins also faces internal discipline over tweets in which he used profane language against Dr. Oxiris Barbot, the former city health commissioner, and Rep. Ritchie Torres, a Democratic congressman who represents the Bronx.

Torres, who has called for Mullins’ resignation over what he has described as racist, misogynistic and homophobic remarks, tweeted Tuesday that Mullins had received a “first-class raid” from the FBI.

Mullins has also drawn scrutiny for his outspoken right-wing politics in a city where Democrats significantly outnumber Republicans. Both the sergeants’ union and its larger sister union, the Police Benevolent Association, have been run mostly by conservatives whose views are not representative of the metropolis they police.

Mullins has praised former President Donald Trump, a Republican who was deeply unpopular among city residents. He also came under fire from liberal lawmakers after giving an interview to Fox News surrounded by paraphernalia linked to QAnon, a fringe conspiracy theory backed largely by Trump supporters.

Federal investigators Tuesday morning raided the Manhattan office of one of New York City’s main police unions in connection with an ongoing investigation, according to two people with the knowledge of the matter.

Federal investigators Tuesday morning raided the Manhattan office of one of New York City’s main police unions in connection with an ongoing investigation, according to two people with the knowledge of the matter. The union, the Sergeants Benevolent Association, represents about 13,000 active and retired police sergeants in New York. Its headquarters were searched as part of an investigation by the FBI and the public corruption unit in the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, the people said. Investigators also executed a search warrant at the Long Island home of the union’s president, Edward D. Mullins, a person with knowledge of the operation said. While the precise focus and scope of the investigation could not immediately be determined, the search of Mullins’ home suggests that the inquiry is at least in some measure focused on him. An FBI spokesman said only that agents “were conducting a law enforcement operation pursuant to an ongoing investigation” at the union’s offices in Lower Manhattan. At least four federal agents were inside the union’s headquarters around noon Tuesday. The investigators lowered dark wooden blinds and placed pieces of cardboard inside four windows to prevent the public from gazing inside. Mullins, who has run the union since 2002, could not immediately be reached for comment. The sergeants’ union, which says it is the fifth-largest police union in the country, did not immediately respond to questions about the raid, which was reported earlier by The New York Daily News. Mullins, long an outspoken figure, has become known in recent years for making brash and incendiary remarks on social media, particularly against Mayor Bill de Blasio. Mullins recently faced internal discipline charges over his behavior on Twitter, including for sharing a police report documenting the arrest of de Blasio’s daughter, Chiara, during protests in New York. The Police Department does not typically release internal reports, and the one that Mullins shared contained personal information about Chiara de Blasio. Bill de Blasio declined to comment on the raid at a news conference Tuesday, saying he did not know any details, but he said that Mullins had long been a “divisive voice” whose behavior had been “destructive.” Mullins also faces internal discipline over tweets in which he used profane language against Dr. Oxiris Barbot, the former city health commissioner, and Rep. Ritchie Torres, a Democratic congressman who represents the Bronx. Torres, who has called for Mullins’ resignation over what he has described as racist, misogynistic and homophobic remarks, tweeted Tuesday that Mullins had received a “first-class raid” from the FBI. Mullins has also drawn scrutiny for his outspoken right-wing politics in a city where Democrats significantly outnumber Republicans. Both the sergeants’ union and its larger sister union, the Police Benevolent Association, have been run mostly by conservatives whose views are not representative of the metropolis they police. Mullins has praised former President Donald Trump, a Republican who was deeply unpopular among city residents. He also came under fire from liberal lawmakers after giving an interview to Fox News surrounded by paraphernalia linked to QAnon, a fringe conspiracy theory backed largely by Trump supporters.

FBI raids headquarters of New York Sergeants’ Union 

Even despite disagreements over January 6 developments, former US vice president Mike Pence insists he is still close to ex-president Donald Trump. &nbsp;

On Monday, the former vice president told Fox News, “You can't spend almost five years in a political foxhole with somebody without developing a strong relationship."

Also Read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/biden-congratulates-japans-new-pm-kishida-on-phone-call-both-confirm-strong-alliance-418308" hreflang="en">Biden congratulates Japan's new PM on phone call, both confirm strong alliance</a> &nbsp;

“January 6 was a tragic day in the history of our Capitol building, but thanks to the efforts of Capitol Hill police [and] federal officials, the Capitol was secured,” Pence added. &nbsp;&nbsp;

“We finished our work, and the president and I sat down a few days later and talked through all of it. I can tell you that we parted amicably at the end of the administration, and we've talked a number of times since we both left office,” the leader said. &nbsp;&nbsp;

After he certified the Electoral College votes that gave Joe Biden the presidency, the Trump supporters turned on Pence. &nbsp;&nbsp;

Also Read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/biden-officials-end-ban-on-abortion-referrals-at-federally-funded-clinics-418364" hreflang="en">Biden officials end ban on abortion referrals at federally funded clinics</a>

The leader had reportedly disapproved of Trump’s actions on the day, which led to the infamous Capitol riots. The former president has since publicly criticised Pence for certifying the vote. &nbsp;&nbsp;

In the interview, Pence slammed withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan as an “example of what weak leadership means on the world stage." &nbsp;

(With inputs from agencies)&nbsp;

Even despite disagreements over January 6 developments, former US vice president Mike Pence insists he is still close to ex-president Donald Trump. On Monday, the former vice president told Fox News, “You can't spend almost five years in a political foxhole with somebody without developing a strong relationship.

Even despite disagreements over January 6 developments, former US vice president Mike Pence insists he is still close to ex-president Donald Trump. On Monday, the former vice president told Fox News, “You can't spend almost five years in a political foxhole with somebody without developing a strong relationship." Also Read: Biden congratulates Japan's new PM on phone call, both confirm strong alliance “January 6 was a tragic day in the history of our Capitol building, but thanks to the efforts of Capitol Hill police [and] federal officials, the Capitol was secured,” Pence added. “We finished our work, and the president and I sat down a few days later and talked through all of it. I can tell you that we parted amicably at the end of the administration, and we've talked a number of times since we both left office,” the leader said. After he certified the Electoral College votes that gave Joe Biden the presidency, the Trump supporters turned on Pence. Also Read: Biden officials end ban on abortion referrals at federally funded clinics The leader had reportedly disapproved of Trump’s actions on the day, which led to the infamous Capitol riots. The former president has since publicly criticised Pence for certifying the vote. In the interview, Pence slammed withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan as an “example of what weak leadership means on the world stage." (With inputs from agencies)

Despite disagreements over January 6, Pence still 'close to' Trump

Cold war is a very well-known phenomena. For years, the world witnessed its horrors in the tussle between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). It finally ended with the disintegration of the latter.&nbsp;

So, what is it actually? &nbsp;

Cold war in simple terms seems to be the tussle to be on the top. The struggle to be better than others builds mistrust then it finally leads to the cold war. &nbsp;

Has is it really ended? &nbsp;

The answer to this question is no. Just the players in the game have changed. The world nowadays seems to be witnessing numerous cold wars. &nbsp;

These wars are being fought between the US and China, the US and Russia,&nbsp;the US and Iran,&nbsp;North and South Korea, China and Taiwan, Iran and some Gulf states, etc. &nbsp;

Also Read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-to-have-frank-conversations-with-china-on-trade-418119" hreflang="en">US to have 'frank conversations' with China on trade</a>

The mistrust has started to build between the UK and the EU, which is the first step towards a cold war. &nbsp;

Not just this, several countries have been at war for numerous years like Israel-Palestine, India-Pakistan, India-China, Ukraine-Russia, etc. &nbsp; &nbsp;

Apart from these countries, several others are caught in the middle of the action. The countries and areas facing the brunt are Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Iraq, South China Sea, and slowly the large parts of Africa. &nbsp;&nbsp;

Many countries have also seen regime changes, coming up of dictators, etc in recent times. It somehow seems to be a way to gain more control in the world. This battle is going on unabatedly for years. &nbsp;

Several nations, such as India, Vietnam, Taiwan, Japan, the Phillipines, Ukraine, etc, are having a hard time due to the over aggressiveness of their adversaries. &nbsp;&nbsp;

Also Read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/china-sends-56-warplanes-into-taiwans-defence-zone-in-largest-ever-air-incursion-418264" hreflang="en">China sends 56 warplanes into Taiwan's defence zone in largest-ever air incursion</a>

Almost every other day, there is either an incursion or a line of control, airspace or border violation. Several missile tests, airshows, military exercises, unveiling of new weapons or defence systems, buying of advanced weapons, etc are being done with the sole purpose of either preparing for any future war or dissuading the adversary. &nbsp;

Many countries are spending large parts of their budgets in the defence, neglecting other crucial sectors important for the development and prosperity of any nation. &nbsp;&nbsp;

But overall, it has been just helpful in increasing mistrust, encouraging arms race, hiking debt ceiling, and most of all, erosion of peace in the world. &nbsp;&nbsp;

So, let’s hope the adversaries make peace and not bring an end to the world by actually engaging in a nuclear war in the future. The world can only keep a patient and close watch.&nbsp;

Cold war is a very well-known phenomena. For years, the world witnessed its horrors in the tussle between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

Cold war is a very well-known phenomena. For years, the world witnessed its horrors in the tussle between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). It finally ended with the disintegration of the latter. So, what is it actually? Cold war in simple terms seems to be the tussle to be on the top. The struggle to be better than others builds mistrust then it finally leads to the cold war. Has is it really ended? The answer to this question is no. Just the players in the game have changed. The world nowadays seems to be witnessing numerous cold wars. These wars are being fought between the US and China, the US and Russia, the US and Iran, North and South Korea, China and Taiwan, Iran and some Gulf states, etc. Also Read: US to have 'frank conversations' with China on trade The mistrust has started to build between the UK and the EU, which is the first step towards a cold war. Not just this, several countries have been at war for numerous years like Israel-Palestine, India-Pakistan, India-China, Ukraine-Russia, etc. Apart from these countries, several others are caught in the middle of the action. The countries and areas facing the brunt are Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Iraq, South China Sea, and slowly the large parts of Africa. Many countries have also seen regime changes, coming up of dictators, etc in recent times. It somehow seems to be a way to gain more control in the world. This battle is going on unabatedly for years. Several nations, such as India, Vietnam, Taiwan, Japan, the Phillipines, Ukraine, etc, are having a hard time due to the over aggressiveness of their adversaries. Also Read: China sends 56 warplanes into Taiwan's defence zone in largest-ever air incursion Almost every other day, there is either an incursion or a line of control, airspace or border violation. Several missile tests, airshows, military exercises, unveiling of new weapons or defence systems, buying of advanced weapons, etc are being done with the sole purpose of either preparing for any future war or dissuading the adversary. Many countries are spending large parts of their budgets in the defence, neglecting other crucial sectors important for the development and prosperity of any nation. But overall, it has been just helpful in increasing mistrust, encouraging arms race, hiking debt ceiling, and most of all, erosion of peace in the world. So, let’s hope the adversaries make peace and not bring an end to the world by actually engaging in a nuclear war in the future. The world can only keep a patient and close watch.

Is the world witnessing multiple cold wars?

An American journalist imprisoned by Myanmar's junta since May has been hit with a second criminal charge, his lawyer told AFP on Tuesday.

Danny Fenster, managing editor of Frontier Myanmar, was detained at Yangon International Airport as he attempted to leave the country.

He is currently on trial for allegedly encouraging dissent against the military, which carries a maximum three-year jail sentence.

During the latest hearing at Insein prison in Yangon on Monday, he was hit with another charge of unlawful association, his lawyer Than Zaw Aung said.

Conviction under the colonial-era law also carries a maximum sentence of three years in jail.

It has previously been used to target journalists contacting Myanmar's myriad ethnic armed groups fighting the state for increased autonomy and control over natural resources.

Fenster's second trial is expected to start on October 15, Than Zaw Aung said.

His client was "in good health, but he lost weight a little bit", he added.

Fenster, 37, had been working for Frontier for around a year and was heading home to see his family when he was detained on May 24.

He is believed to have contracted Covid-19 during his detention, family members said during a conference call with American journalists in August.

Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military seized power in a February 1 coup and ousted Aung San Suu Kyi's elected government.

The press has been squeezed as the junta tries to tighten control over the flow of information, throttling internet access and revoking the licences of local media outlets.

More than 100 journalists have been arrested since the putsch, according to Reporting ASEAN, a monitoring group. &nbsp;

It says 48 are still in detention.

An American journalist imprisoned by Myanmar's junta since May has been hit with a second criminal charge, his lawyer told AFP on Tuesday. Danny Fenster, managing editor of Frontier Myanmar, was detained at Yangon International Airport as he attempted to leave the country.

An American journalist imprisoned by Myanmar's junta since May has been hit with a second criminal charge, his lawyer told AFP on Tuesday. Danny Fenster, managing editor of Frontier Myanmar, was detained at Yangon International Airport as he attempted to leave the country. He is currently on trial for allegedly encouraging dissent against the military, which carries a maximum three-year jail sentence. During the latest hearing at Insein prison in Yangon on Monday, he was hit with another charge of unlawful association, his lawyer Than Zaw Aung said. Conviction under the colonial-era law also carries a maximum sentence of three years in jail. It has previously been used to target journalists contacting Myanmar's myriad ethnic armed groups fighting the state for increased autonomy and control over natural resources. Fenster's second trial is expected to start on October 15, Than Zaw Aung said. His client was "in good health, but he lost weight a little bit", he added. Fenster, 37, had been working for Frontier for around a year and was heading home to see his family when he was detained on May 24. He is believed to have contracted Covid-19 during his detention, family members said during a conference call with American journalists in August. Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military seized power in a February 1 coup and ousted Aung San Suu Kyi's elected government. The press has been squeezed as the junta tries to tighten control over the flow of information, throttling internet access and revoking the licences of local media outlets. More than 100 journalists have been arrested since the putsch, according to Reporting ASEAN, a monitoring group. It says 48 are still in detention.

US journalist held in Myanmar hit with second charge: lawyer

The United States hopes to restart nuclear talks with Iran soon, a senior US official said Monday, while noting "alarming" progress by Tehran on developing nuclear capacity.

"We're hopeful we can be back in Vienna (for talks)&nbsp;in a fairly short period of time," the senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told reporters.

Iran's foreign ministry spokesman said Monday that the new round of discussions could begin by early November.

Iran's nuclear activity will be at the center of talks between US and Israeli national security teams in Washington on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Israeli National Security Advisor Eyal Hulata and his White House counterpart, Jake Sullivan, will join a meeting of the US-Israel Strategic Consultative Group, which groups representatives from both countries' diplomatic, military and intelligence agencies.

President Joe Biden -- who reversed his predecessor Donald Trump's decision to pull the United States from international negotiations on curbing Iran's nuclear ambitions - is keen to resolve the standoff diplomatically.

"The path in Vienna for negotiations does remain open," the US official said. "The Iranians are sending indications to a number of parties that they are preparing to come back to Vienna and of course we will have to see whether they reengage in that process constructively or not."

Despite Israeli skepticism, the Biden administration believes "very strongly that the diplomatic path remains the best," the official said.

However, the official said the White House and Israel's new government agree that Iran has made rapid advances since Trump quit the international effort to monitor Tehran's nuclear activities in return for sanctions relief.

Tehran insists that it does not seek nuclear weapons, only an energy industry.

"We have a common assessment of the extent to which Iran's nuclear program has dramatically broken out of the box since the previous administration left the Iran nuclear deal," the official said.

"The breakout time, meaning stockpiles of enriched uranium and other ways to look at this, it's gone from about 12 months down to a period of a few months. So obviously that's quite alarming."

The official said the United States believes diplomacy will be "the best way to put a ceiling on the program and roll back the gains that Iran has made in recent years."

However, there is no movement to lifting sanctions and if diplomacy doesn't work "there are other avenues."

"We think the onus right now is on the Iranian side," the official said.

The United States hopes to restart nuclear talks with Iran soon, a senior US official said Monday, while noting "alarming" progress by Tehran on developing nuclear capacity.

The United States hopes to restart nuclear talks with Iran soon, a senior US official said Monday, while noting "alarming" progress by Tehran on developing nuclear capacity. "We're hopeful we can be back in Vienna (for talks) in a fairly short period of time," the senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told reporters. Iran's foreign ministry spokesman said Monday that the new round of discussions could begin by early November. Iran's nuclear activity will be at the center of talks between US and Israeli national security teams in Washington on Tuesday and Wednesday. Israeli National Security Advisor Eyal Hulata and his White House counterpart, Jake Sullivan, will join a meeting of the US-Israel Strategic Consultative Group, which groups representatives from both countries' diplomatic, military and intelligence agencies. President Joe Biden -- who reversed his predecessor Donald Trump's decision to pull the United States from international negotiations on curbing Iran's nuclear ambitions - is keen to resolve the standoff diplomatically. "The path in Vienna for negotiations does remain open," the US official said. "The Iranians are sending indications to a number of parties that they are preparing to come back to Vienna and of course we will have to see whether they reengage in that process constructively or not." Despite Israeli skepticism, the Biden administration believes "very strongly that the diplomatic path remains the best," the official said. However, the official said the White House and Israel's new government agree that Iran has made rapid advances since Trump quit the international effort to monitor Tehran's nuclear activities in return for sanctions relief. Tehran insists that it does not seek nuclear weapons, only an energy industry. "We have a common assessment of the extent to which Iran's nuclear program has dramatically broken out of the box since the previous administration left the Iran nuclear deal," the official said. "The breakout time, meaning stockpiles of enriched uranium and other ways to look at this, it's gone from about 12 months down to a period of a few months. So obviously that's quite alarming." The official said the United States believes diplomacy will be "the best way to put a ceiling on the program and roll back the gains that Iran has made in recent years." However, there is no movement to lifting sanctions and if diplomacy doesn't work "there are other avenues." "We think the onus right now is on the Iranian side," the official said.

US hopes to restart Iran talks but cites 'alarming' nuclear progress

President Joe Biden urged congressional leaders to raise the debt ceiling Monday, excoriating Republicans for what he said was “reckless” and “disgraceful” obstruction ahead of a default deadline later this month that he warned would amount to “a self-inflicted wound that takes our economy over a cliff.”

Biden, trying to convey the risks to everyday Americans, warned that they could see the effects as early as this week if Senate Democrats were not able to vote to raise the debt ceiling. The debt ceiling controls the amount of money the government can borrow to fulfill its financial obligations, including Social Security checks, salaries for military personnel and other bills.

“It starts with a simple truth: The United States is a nation that pays its bills and always has,” Biden said. “If we’re going to make good on what has already been approved by previous Congresses, and previous presidents and parties, we have to pay for it.”

The remarks presaged increased public engagement by Biden on an issue that risks economic crisis.

Biden pointed out that Republicans had voted several times to increase the debt limit under President Donald Trump but are using a filibuster to block any attempt by Democrats to raise it this time around. He said that he would not be expecting Republicans to “do their part,” but he warned them “not to use procedural tricks to block us from doing the job.”

Technically, the United States hit its debt limit at the end of July, following a two-year extension that Congress agreed to in 2019. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has been using “extraordinary measures” since then to delay a default. Those are essentially fiscal accounting tools that curb certain government investments so that the bills can continue to be paid.

Yellen warned Congress last week of “catastrophic” consequences should lawmakers fail to suspend or raise the statutory debt limit before Oct. 18, which the Treasury believes is the date the United States will run out of enough money to pay all its bills.

Congress raises the debt limit to cover spending it has already approved, and the Treasury has warned that failure to do so would tank financial markets and have wide-ranging effects on Americans: Defaulting could pause Social Security checks, delay the pay of military troops and interfere with child tax credit payments.

But Republicans — who had voted to raise the debt cap by trillions when their party controlled Washington — have moved to block a spending bill needed to avoid default. Instead, Republicans including Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, have sought to place political responsibility on Democrats, who are at the same time seeking to advance a sprawling social policy bill that could cost as much as $3.5 trillion.

“Bipartisanship is not a light switch that Speaker Pelosi and Leader Schumer may flip on to borrow money and flip off to spend it,” McConnell wrote in a letter to Biden on Monday, referring to Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader. “For two and a half months, we have simply warned that since your party wishes to govern alone, it must handle the debt limit alone as well.”

The president said he planned on talking to McConnell about the letter: “He and I have been down this road once before,” Biden said.

Democrats have so far refused to try to raise the debt ceiling through a fast-track process known as reconciliation. On Monday, Schumer told Democrats that a spending bill needed to reach Biden’s desk within days, not weeks.

“Let me be clear about the task ahead of us: We must get a bill to the President’s desk dealing with the debt limit by the end of the week. Period. We do not have the luxury of waiting until Oct. 18,” he wrote in a “dear colleague” letter dated Monday.

Asked if he supported reconciliation to raise the debt ceiling, Biden said the process would be “fraught with all kinds of potential danger or miscalculation” and said the way to proceed would be a vote on a bill to raise the limit.

Administration officials say Biden will continue to pressure Republicans to step aside — by breaking their filibuster — and allow Democrats to vote on their own this week to raise the limit.

“Let us vote,” Biden said, “and end the mess.”

As he urges congressional leaders to find a way forward on raising the debt limit, Biden still must drum up support for a bipartisan infrastructure deal and an expansive social spending plan.

“I’ve been able to close the deal on 99% of my party,” Biden said, before adding that “two people” remain opposed to the second piece, a reference to Sens. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.

“It’s not a smart thing to negotiate with yourself in public,” Biden said, when asked if he would support a lower figure on the reconciliation package.

President Joe Biden urged congressional leaders to raise the debt ceiling Monday, excoriating Republicans for what he said was “reckless” and “disgraceful” obstruction ahead of a default deadline later this month that he warned would amount to “a self-inflicted wound that takes our economy over a cliff.

President Joe Biden urged congressional leaders to raise the debt ceiling Monday, excoriating Republicans for what he said was “reckless” and “disgraceful” obstruction ahead of a default deadline later this month that he warned would amount to “a self-inflicted wound that takes our economy over a cliff.” Biden, trying to convey the risks to everyday Americans, warned that they could see the effects as early as this week if Senate Democrats were not able to vote to raise the debt ceiling. The debt ceiling controls the amount of money the government can borrow to fulfill its financial obligations, including Social Security checks, salaries for military personnel and other bills. “It starts with a simple truth: The United States is a nation that pays its bills and always has,” Biden said. “If we’re going to make good on what has already been approved by previous Congresses, and previous presidents and parties, we have to pay for it.” The remarks presaged increased public engagement by Biden on an issue that risks economic crisis. Biden pointed out that Republicans had voted several times to increase the debt limit under President Donald Trump but are using a filibuster to block any attempt by Democrats to raise it this time around. He said that he would not be expecting Republicans to “do their part,” but he warned them “not to use procedural tricks to block us from doing the job.” Technically, the United States hit its debt limit at the end of July, following a two-year extension that Congress agreed to in 2019. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has been using “extraordinary measures” since then to delay a default. Those are essentially fiscal accounting tools that curb certain government investments so that the bills can continue to be paid. Yellen warned Congress last week of “catastrophic” consequences should lawmakers fail to suspend or raise the statutory debt limit before Oct. 18, which the Treasury believes is the date the United States will run out of enough money to pay all its bills. Congress raises the debt limit to cover spending it has already approved, and the Treasury has warned that failure to do so would tank financial markets and have wide-ranging effects on Americans: Defaulting could pause Social Security checks, delay the pay of military troops and interfere with child tax credit payments. But Republicans — who had voted to raise the debt cap by trillions when their party controlled Washington — have moved to block a spending bill needed to avoid default. Instead, Republicans including Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, have sought to place political responsibility on Democrats, who are at the same time seeking to advance a sprawling social policy bill that could cost as much as $3.5 trillion. “Bipartisanship is not a light switch that Speaker Pelosi and Leader Schumer may flip on to borrow money and flip off to spend it,” McConnell wrote in a letter to Biden on Monday, referring to Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader. “For two and a half months, we have simply warned that since your party wishes to govern alone, it must handle the debt limit alone as well.” The president said he planned on talking to McConnell about the letter: “He and I have been down this road once before,” Biden said. Democrats have so far refused to try to raise the debt ceiling through a fast-track process known as reconciliation. On Monday, Schumer told Democrats that a spending bill needed to reach Biden’s desk within days, not weeks. “Let me be clear about the task ahead of us: We must get a bill to the President’s desk dealing with the debt limit by the end of the week. Period. We do not have the luxury of waiting until Oct. 18,” he wrote in a “dear colleague” letter dated Monday. Asked if he supported reconciliation to raise the debt ceiling, Biden said the process would be “fraught with all kinds of potential danger or miscalculation” and said the way to proceed would be a vote on a bill to raise the limit. Administration officials say Biden will continue to pressure Republicans to step aside — by breaking their filibuster — and allow Democrats to vote on their own this week to raise the limit. “Let us vote,” Biden said, “and end the mess.” As he urges congressional leaders to find a way forward on raising the debt limit, Biden still must drum up support for a bipartisan infrastructure deal and an expansive social spending plan. “I’ve been able to close the deal on 99% of my party,” Biden said, before adding that “two people” remain opposed to the second piece, a reference to Sens. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. “It’s not a smart thing to negotiate with yourself in public,” Biden said, when asked if he would support a lower figure on the reconciliation package.

Biden says Republicans being ‘reckless’ over debt limit increase

The United States will in the coming days have "frank conversations" with China on trade as the Biden administration believes the Asian giant has not honored its commitments under an agreement signed in January 2020.

"China made commitments intended to benefit certain American industries, including agriculture, that we must enforce," US Trade Representative Katherine Tai will say in a speech on Monday to US think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

According to excerpts from her speech, which she is due to deliver at 10:00 am (1400 GMT), Tai will also announce the launch of "a targeted tariff exclusion process" for exemptions from customs tariffs imposed on $370 billion worth of Chinese goods a year by the previous Trump administration.

The punitive tariffs, imposed in retaliation for Chinese trade practices deemed "unfair", are criticised by many companies.

In early August, some of the most influential US business groups urged the Biden administration to reduce these surcharges, pointing out that US industries faced "increased costs" as the tariffs are paid by importers.

A senior US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the tariffs "will remain in place" for the duration of the exemption procedure.

President Joe Biden had asked Tai to conduct a comprehensive review of US trade strategy towards China and the tariffs initiated by his Republican predecessor Donald Trump.

Also Read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/blinken-faces-an-awkward-visit-to-paris-his-second-home-418147" hreflang="en">Blinken faces an awkward visit to Paris, his ‘second home’</a>

"We continue to have serious concerns with China's state-centered and non-market trade practices" that were not addressed in the "Phase One" agreement reached in 2019 to calm a trade war between the two economic superpowers, Tai will say.

"As we work to enforce the terms of Phase One, we will raise these broader policy concerns with Beijing."

The deal signed by Trump and Tai's opposite number, Vice Premier Liu He, committed Beijing to adding an extra $200 billion in purchases of US exports, including energy, agricultural and manufactured products through 2021.

That is far from happening, trade analysts say.

The Biden administration official did not specify the extent of the shortfall, while indicating that Washington is unsatisfied.

"There are some commitments that have not been met and we think the results overall of the agreement have been mixed," the official said, while stressing the US objective "is not to escalate trade tension."

- 'Work with our allies' -

Tai's speech will highlight the Biden administration's strategy of teaming up with allied democracies in its competition with China.

Trump, who rejected traditional US alliances, sparked market anxiety around the world with his trade war.

However, he ended up producing limited concrete results, let alone progress on the deep-seated problems that the United States and its allies say plague their China trade relationship.

These include massive state subsidies for national companies, intellectual property theft and other factors creating a heavily uneven playing field.

Also Read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/for-second-straight-day-chinese-jets-fly-towards-taiwan-in-another-incursion-417965" hreflang="en">For second straight day, Chinese jets fly towards Taiwan in another incursion</a>

Washington "will use the full range of tools we have and develop new tools as needed to defend American economic interests from harmful policies and practices," Tai will say.

"The core of our strategy is a commitment to ensuring we work with our allies to create fair and open markets."

Tai will also stress that the trade and economic relationship between the United States and China "is one of profound consequence."

"As the two largest economies in the world, how we relate to each other does not just affect our two countries. It impacts the entire world and billions of workers."

Overall, Washington sees a bleak outlook, with the administration official saying "we know that China is unlikely to make meaningful reforms right now" and that there is no push for starting long-awaited "Phase Two" negotiations.

"Beijing is increasingly explicit that it is doubling down on its authoritarian, state-centric approach, and is resistant to addressing our structural concerns," the official said.

"We recognize that China simply may not change and that we have to have a strategy that deals with China as it is, rather than as we might wish it be," the official said.

"Our primary focus will be on building resilience and competitiveness, including with our allies and partners."

The United States will in the coming days have "frank conversations" with China on trade as the Biden administration believes the Asian giant has not honored its commitments under an agreement signed in January 2020.

The United States will in the coming days have "frank conversations" with China on trade as the Biden administration believes the Asian giant has not honored its commitments under an agreement signed in January 2020. "China made commitments intended to benefit certain American industries, including agriculture, that we must enforce," US Trade Representative Katherine Tai will say in a speech on Monday to US think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies. According to excerpts from her speech, which she is due to deliver at 10:00 am (1400 GMT), Tai will also announce the launch of "a targeted tariff exclusion process" for exemptions from customs tariffs imposed on $370 billion worth of Chinese goods a year by the previous Trump administration. The punitive tariffs, imposed in retaliation for Chinese trade practices deemed "unfair", are criticised by many companies. In early August, some of the most influential US business groups urged the Biden administration to reduce these surcharges, pointing out that US industries faced "increased costs" as the tariffs are paid by importers. A senior US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the tariffs "will remain in place" for the duration of the exemption procedure. President Joe Biden had asked Tai to conduct a comprehensive review of US trade strategy towards China and the tariffs initiated by his Republican predecessor Donald Trump. Also Read: Blinken faces an awkward visit to Paris, his ‘second home’ "We continue to have serious concerns with China's state-centered and non-market trade practices" that were not addressed in the "Phase One" agreement reached in 2019 to calm a trade war between the two economic superpowers, Tai will say. "As we work to enforce the terms of Phase One, we will raise these broader policy concerns with Beijing." The deal signed by Trump and Tai's opposite number, Vice Premier Liu He, committed Beijing to adding an extra $200 billion in purchases of US exports, including energy, agricultural and manufactured products through 2021. That is far from happening, trade analysts say. The Biden administration official did not specify the extent of the shortfall, while indicating that Washington is unsatisfied. "There are some commitments that have not been met and we think the results overall of the agreement have been mixed," the official said, while stressing the US objective "is not to escalate trade tension." - 'Work with our allies' - Tai's speech will highlight the Biden administration's strategy of teaming up with allied democracies in its competition with China. Trump, who rejected traditional US alliances, sparked market anxiety around the world with his trade war. However, he ended up producing limited concrete results, let alone progress on the deep-seated problems that the United States and its allies say plague their China trade relationship. These include massive state subsidies for national companies, intellectual property theft and other factors creating a heavily uneven playing field. Also Read: For second straight day, Chinese jets fly towards Taiwan in another incursion Washington "will use the full range of tools we have and develop new tools as needed to defend American economic interests from harmful policies and practices," Tai will say. "The core of our strategy is a commitment to ensuring we work with our allies to create fair and open markets." Tai will also stress that the trade and economic relationship between the United States and China "is one of profound consequence." "As the two largest economies in the world, how we relate to each other does not just affect our two countries. It impacts the entire world and billions of workers." Overall, Washington sees a bleak outlook, with the administration official saying "we know that China is unlikely to make meaningful reforms right now" and that there is no push for starting long-awaited "Phase Two" negotiations. "Beijing is increasingly explicit that it is doubling down on its authoritarian, state-centric approach, and is resistant to addressing our structural concerns," the official said. "We recognize that China simply may not change and that we have to have a strategy that deals with China as it is, rather than as we might wish it be," the official said. "Our primary focus will be on building resilience and competitiveness, including with our allies and partners."

US to have 'frank conversations' with China on trade

COVID-19 is once again in retreat.

The reasons remain somewhat unclear, and there is no guarantee that the decline in caseloads will continue. But the turnaround is now large enough,&nbsp;and been going on long enough to deserve attention.

The number of new daily cases in the United States has fallen 35% since Sept. 1. Worldwide, cases have also dropped more than 30% since late August. “This is as good as the world has looked in many months,” Dr&nbsp;Eric Topol of Scripps Research wrote last week.

The most encouraging news is that the most serious forms of COVID are also declining. The number of Americans hospitalised with COVID has fallen about 25% since Sept. 1. Daily deaths&nbsp;which typically change direction a few weeks after cases and hospitalisations&nbsp;have fallen 10% since Sept. 20. It is the first sustained decline in deaths since early summer.

These declines are consistent with a pattern that readers will recognise: COVID’s mysterious two-month cycle. Since the COVID virus began spreading in late 2019, cases have often surged for about two months, sometimes because of a variant, such as delta, and then declined for about two months.

Public health researchers do not understand why. Many popular explanations&nbsp;such as seasonality or the ebbs and flows of mask wearing and social distancing are clearly insufficient, if not wrong. The two-month cycle has occurred during different seasons of the year and occurred even when human behavior was not changing in obvious ways.

The most-plausible explanations involve some combination of virus biology and social networks. Perhaps each virus variant is especially likely to infect some people but not others&nbsp;and once many of the most vulnerable have been exposed, the virus recedes. And perhaps a variant needs about two months to circulate through an average-sized community.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/too-soon-to-tell-fauci-talks-about-christmas-gatherings-as-he-warns-americans-to-not-be-complacent-418125">Also read |&nbsp;'Too soon to tell': Fauci talks about Christmas gatherings as he warns Americans to not be complacent</a>

Human behaviour does play a role, with people often becoming more careful once caseloads begin to rise. But social distancing is not as important as public discussion of the virus often imagines. “We’ve ascribed far too much human authority over the virus,” as Michael Osterholm, an infectious-disease expert at the University of Minnesota, has told me.

The recent declines, for example, have occurred even as millions of American children have again crowded into school buildings.

Whatever the reasons, the two-month cycle keeps happening. It is visible in the global numbers: Cases worldwide rose from late February to late April, then fell until late June, rose again until late August and have been falling since.

The pattern has also been evident within countries, including India, Indonesia, Thailand, Britain, France and Spain. In each of them, the delta variant led to a surge in cases lasting somewhere from 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 months.

In the US, the delta surge started in several Southern states in June and began receding in those states in August. In much of the rest of the US,&nbsp;it began in July, and cases have begun falling the past few weeks. Even pediatric cases are falling, despite the lack of vaccine authorisation for children younger than 12, as Jennifer Nuzzo of Johns Hopkins University told The Washington Post.

I want to emphasise that these declines may not persist. COVID’s two-month cycle is not some kind of iron law of science. There have been plenty of exceptions.

In Britain, for example, caseloads have seesawed over the past two months, rather than consistently fallen. In the US, the onset of cold weather and the increase in indoor activities or some other unknown factor could potentially spark a rise in cases this fall. The course of the pandemic remains highly uncertain.

But this uncertainty also means that the near future could also prove to be&nbsp;more&nbsp;encouraging than we expect. And there are some legitimate reasons for COVID optimism.

The share of Americans ages 12 and older who have received at least one vaccine shot has reached 76%, and the growing number of vaccine mandates&nbsp;along with the likely approval of the Pfizer vaccine for children ages 5 to 11 will increase the number of vaccinations this fall. Almost as important, something like one-half of Americans have probably had the COVID virus already, giving them some natural immunity.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/new-zealand-drops-its-covid-19-elimination-plan-as-delta-persists-418063">Also read |&nbsp;New Zealand drops its COVID-19 elimination plan as Delta persists</a>

Eventually, immunity will become widespread enough that another wave as large and damaging as the delta wave will not be possible. “Barring something unexpected,” said Dr. Scott Gottleib, a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner and author of “Uncontrolled Spread,” a new book on COVID, “I’m of the opinion that this is the last major wave of infection.”

COVID has not only been one of the worst pandemics in modern times. It has been an unnecessarily terrible pandemic. Of the more than 700,000 Americans who have died from it, nearly 200,000 probably could have been saved if they had chosen to take a vaccine. That is a national tragedy.

COVID also isn’t going to disappear anytime soon. It will continue to circulate for years, many scientists believe. But the vaccines can transform COVID into a manageable disease, not so different from a flu or common cold. In the past few weeks, the country appears to have moved closer to that less-grim future.

Whatever the next few months bring, the worst of the pandemic is almost certainly behind us.

COVID-19 is once again in retreat. The reasons remain somewhat unclear, and there is no guarantee that the decline in caseloads will continue. But the turnaround is now large enough, and been going on long enough to deserve attention.

COVID-19 is once again in retreat. The reasons remain somewhat unclear, and there is no guarantee that the decline in caseloads will continue. But the turnaround is now large enough, and been going on long enough to deserve attention. The number of new daily cases in the United States has fallen 35% since Sept. 1. Worldwide, cases have also dropped more than 30% since late August. “This is as good as the world has looked in many months,” Dr Eric Topol of Scripps Research wrote last week. The most encouraging news is that the most serious forms of COVID are also declining. The number of Americans hospitalised with COVID has fallen about 25% since Sept. 1. Daily deaths which typically change direction a few weeks after cases and hospitalisations have fallen 10% since Sept. 20. It is the first sustained decline in deaths since early summer. These declines are consistent with a pattern that readers will recognise: COVID’s mysterious two-month cycle. Since the COVID virus began spreading in late 2019, cases have often surged for about two months, sometimes because of a variant, such as delta, and then declined for about two months. Public health researchers do not understand why. Many popular explanations such as seasonality or the ebbs and flows of mask wearing and social distancing are clearly insufficient, if not wrong. The two-month cycle has occurred during different seasons of the year and occurred even when human behavior was not changing in obvious ways. The most-plausible explanations involve some combination of virus biology and social networks. Perhaps each virus variant is especially likely to infect some people but not others and once many of the most vulnerable have been exposed, the virus recedes. And perhaps a variant needs about two months to circulate through an average-sized community. Also read | 'Too soon to tell': Fauci talks about Christmas gatherings as he warns Americans to not be complacent Human behaviour does play a role, with people often becoming more careful once caseloads begin to rise. But social distancing is not as important as public discussion of the virus often imagines. “We’ve ascribed far too much human authority over the virus,” as Michael Osterholm, an infectious-disease expert at the University of Minnesota, has told me. The recent declines, for example, have occurred even as millions of American children have again crowded into school buildings. Whatever the reasons, the two-month cycle keeps happening. It is visible in the global numbers: Cases worldwide rose from late February to late April, then fell until late June, rose again until late August and have been falling since. The pattern has also been evident within countries, including India, Indonesia, Thailand, Britain, France and Spain. In each of them, the delta variant led to a surge in cases lasting somewhere from 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 months. In the US, the delta surge started in several Southern states in June and began receding in those states in August. In much of the rest of the US, it began in July, and cases have begun falling the past few weeks. Even pediatric cases are falling, despite the lack of vaccine authorisation for children younger than 12, as Jennifer Nuzzo of Johns Hopkins University told The Washington Post. I want to emphasise that these declines may not persist. COVID’s two-month cycle is not some kind of iron law of science. There have been plenty of exceptions. In Britain, for example, caseloads have seesawed over the past two months, rather than consistently fallen. In the US, the onset of cold weather and the increase in indoor activities or some other unknown factor could potentially spark a rise in cases this fall. The course of the pandemic remains highly uncertain. But this uncertainty also means that the near future could also prove to be more encouraging than we expect. And there are some legitimate reasons for COVID optimism. The share of Americans ages 12 and older who have received at least one vaccine shot has reached 76%, and the growing number of vaccine mandates along with the likely approval of the Pfizer vaccine for children ages 5 to 11 will increase the number of vaccinations this fall. Almost as important, something like one-half of Americans have probably had the COVID virus already, giving them some natural immunity. Also read | New Zealand drops its COVID-19 elimination plan as Delta persists Eventually, immunity will become widespread enough that another wave as large and damaging as the delta wave will not be possible. “Barring something unexpected,” said Dr. Scott Gottleib, a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner and author of “Uncontrolled Spread,” a new book on COVID, “I’m of the opinion that this is the last major wave of infection.” COVID has not only been one of the worst pandemics in modern times. It has been an unnecessarily terrible pandemic. Of the more than 700,000 Americans who have died from it, nearly 200,000 probably could have been saved if they had chosen to take a vaccine. That is a national tragedy. COVID also isn’t going to disappear anytime soon. It will continue to circulate for years, many scientists believe. But the vaccines can transform COVID into a manageable disease, not so different from a flu or common cold. In the past few weeks, the country appears to have moved closer to that less-grim future. Whatever the next few months bring, the worst of the pandemic is almost certainly behind us.

Trying to Make Sense of COVID’s Mysterious 2-Month Cycle

Chief medical adviser to US President Biden, Dr Anthony Fauci has said that it is too early to say whether Americans should avoid larger family gatherings for Christmas.&nbsp;

This comes in when the nation experiences a surge in new COVID-19 infections among children alongside lagging vaccination rates.&nbsp;

In an interview with "Face the Nation," Fauci said that it is too soon to tell whether holiday gatherings should be limited due to the ongoing pandemic. He further added that Americans need to focus on lowering the number of new infections and hospitalisations.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/fauci-says-americans-should-get-vaccinated-even-if-mercks-covid-pill-cuts-deaths-418016">Also read |&nbsp;Fauci says Americans should get vaccinated even if Merck’s Covid pill cuts deaths&nbsp;</a>

"We've just got to concentrate on continuing to get those numbers down and not try to jump ahead by weeks or months and say what we're going to do at a particular time," Fauci said.

"Let's focus like a laser on continuing to get those cases down. And we can do it by people getting vaccinated and also in the situation where boosters are appropriate to get people boosted," he added.&nbsp;

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/new-zealand-drops-its-covid-19-elimination-plan-as-delta-persists-418063">Also read |&nbsp;New Zealand drops its COVID-19 elimination plan as Delta persists</a>

The US recently surpassed 700,000 deaths from COVID-19.&nbsp;However, the surge of new cases, hospitalisations and deaths by the &nbsp;Delta variant now appears to be slowing.

Fauci warned that the Americans should not be complacent. "If you look at the history ... of the different surges we've had, it's come up, start to come down and then all of a sudden boom, come back up again," he said.

Chief medical adviser to US President Biden, Dr Anthony Fauci has said that it is too early to say whether Americans should avoid larger family gatherings for Christmas.

Chief medical adviser to US President Biden, Dr Anthony Fauci has said that it is too early to say whether Americans should avoid larger family gatherings for Christmas. This comes in when the nation experiences a surge in new COVID-19 infections among children alongside lagging vaccination rates. In an interview with "Face the Nation," Fauci said that it is too soon to tell whether holiday gatherings should be limited due to the ongoing pandemic. He further added that Americans need to focus on lowering the number of new infections and hospitalisations. Also read | Fauci says Americans should get vaccinated even if Merck’s Covid pill cuts deaths "We've just got to concentrate on continuing to get those numbers down and not try to jump ahead by weeks or months and say what we're going to do at a particular time," Fauci said. "Let's focus like a laser on continuing to get those cases down. And we can do it by people getting vaccinated and also in the situation where boosters are appropriate to get people boosted," he added. Also read | New Zealand drops its COVID-19 elimination plan as Delta persists The US recently surpassed 700,000 deaths from COVID-19. However, the surge of new cases, hospitalisations and deaths by the Delta variant now appears to be slowing. Fauci warned that the Americans should not be complacent. "If you look at the history ... of the different surges we've had, it's come up, start to come down and then all of a sudden boom, come back up again," he said.

'Too soon to tell': Fauci talks about Christmas gatherings as he warns Americans to not be complacent

The situation in Western Sahara has "significantly deteriorated" over the past year, the UN Secretary-General has said, citing the resumption of hostilities between Morocco and the Polisario independence movement in the disputed territory.

Morocco views Western Sahara as an integral part of its territory, but the Polisario -&nbsp;recognized internationally as the representative of the Sahrawi people - has long sought independence.

The "resumption of hostilities between Morocco and Frente POLISARIO is a major setback toward the achievement of a political solution," Antonio Guterres said in a report submitted to the Security Council.

"There remains a clear risk of escalation while hostilities persist," he added in the report, not yet published and obtained by AFP on Saturday.

"I therefore call on the parties to de-escalate the situation and immediately cease hostilities."

Guterres said the two sides must agree on the appointment of a UN envoy to restart political dialogue on Western Sahara.

The Polisario fought a war of independence with Morocco from 1975 until a UN-brokered ceasefire in 1991.

The conflict has continued to simmer, and has been without an emissary since May 2019, with all candidates proposed by Guterres rejected by one side or the other.

In his report, Guterres noted that in November 2020, the Polisario had announced -- after incidents with Morocco -- that it no longer felt committed to the ceasefire.

In December 2020, then-president Donald Trump broke with previous US positions and recognized Morocco's sovereignty over the whole of Western Sahara.

President Joe Biden has yet to comment on that move.

At the end of August, Algeria -- Morocco's neighbor and rival, and a key backer of the Polisario -- broke off diplomatic relations with Rabat, particularly over Western Sahara.

Polisario wants a UN referendum on self-determination, while Morocco -- which controls more than two-thirds of the former Spanish colony -- has proposed a plan for Polisario autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty.

The situation in Western Sahara has "significantly deteriorated" over the past year, the UN Secretary-General has said, citing the resumption of hostilities between Morocco and the Polisario independence movement in the disputed territory.

The situation in Western Sahara has "significantly deteriorated" over the past year, the UN Secretary-General has said, citing the resumption of hostilities between Morocco and the Polisario independence movement in the disputed territory. Morocco views Western Sahara as an integral part of its territory, but the Polisario - recognized internationally as the representative of the Sahrawi people - has long sought independence. The "resumption of hostilities between Morocco and Frente POLISARIO is a major setback toward the achievement of a political solution," Antonio Guterres said in a report submitted to the Security Council. "There remains a clear risk of escalation while hostilities persist," he added in the report, not yet published and obtained by AFP on Saturday. "I therefore call on the parties to de-escalate the situation and immediately cease hostilities." Guterres said the two sides must agree on the appointment of a UN envoy to restart political dialogue on Western Sahara. The Polisario fought a war of independence with Morocco from 1975 until a UN-brokered ceasefire in 1991. The conflict has continued to simmer, and has been without an emissary since May 2019, with all candidates proposed by Guterres rejected by one side or the other. In his report, Guterres noted that in November 2020, the Polisario had announced -- after incidents with Morocco -- that it no longer felt committed to the ceasefire. In December 2020, then-president Donald Trump broke with previous US positions and recognized Morocco's sovereignty over the whole of Western Sahara. President Joe Biden has yet to comment on that move. At the end of August, Algeria -- Morocco's neighbor and rival, and a key backer of the Polisario -- broke off diplomatic relations with Rabat, particularly over Western Sahara. Polisario wants a UN referendum on self-determination, while Morocco -- which controls more than two-thirds of the former Spanish colony -- has proposed a plan for Polisario autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty.

Western Sahara situation 'significantly deteriorated', UN chief says

Something unexpected is happening at U.S. military bases hosting Afghan evacuees: Many hundreds of them are simply leaving before receiving U.S. resettlement services, two sources familiar with the data told Reuters.

The number of "independent departures," which top 700 and could be higher, has not been previously reported. But the phenomenon is raising alarms among immigration advocates concerned about the risks to Afghans who give up on what is now an open-ended, complex and completely voluntary resettlement process.

In the speed and chaos of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August following 20 years of war, many evacuees were brought into the United States under a temporary status of "humanitarian parole." Once transferred to U.S. military bases, refugee resettlement groups and U.S. officials have been trying to connect people with services for a smooth transition to the United States.

In a statement, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson declined to comment on the figures provided to Reuters by sources but said people who had left the bases "generally" had ties to the United States, like family members of friends, and resources to support themselves.

The spokesperson said that in addition, at the outset of the operation many of those evacuated were U.S. citizens, permanent residents or had approved Special Immigrant Visas so were able to depart quickly.

But leaving early could cost other Afghan evacuees critical benefits - like expedited work permits - and create a slew of legal problems down the road, given the complexities of the U.S. immigration system.

"It`s a giant can of worms," said one U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"This could lead to years and years of terrible immigration status problems."

The benefits the evacuees have received have been more limited, so far, than what`s offered to refugees. But that appears set to change following legislation passed on Thursday by Congress - despite opposition from Republicans - that would give Afghan evacuees the more extensive assistance usually provided to refugees.

"We should do everything in our power to help our Afghan allies get off to a strong start in their new homes," Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley said in a statement.

The new legislation says Afghan asylum applications should be expedited. But those who leave U.S. bases early might not get all the legal orientation they need start their applications.

One-way trip off base

Immigration experts say Afghans who leave the bases are not breaking U.S. laws and military officials have no legal authority to hold law-abiding Afghans against their will at any of the eight locations hosting 53,000 Afghans who fled the Taliban on U.S. evacuation flights.

The scale of the independent departures vary from base to base, according to the sources - more than 300 alone at Fort Bliss in Texas - a figure that is likely to alarm both advocates and critics of the massive U.S. resettlement operation.

However, U.S. officials stress that all of the Afghans leaving U.S. bases had already undergone security screening before arriving in the United States. The risk of the independent departures is to the Afghans themselves.

Reuters viewed a document, entitled "Departee Information," that is meant to warn Afghans considering leaving before completing their resettlement. It reminds them that, on base, they can get their immigration paperwork processed and even cash to help pay for travel to their destination in the United States.

"Once you leave this base, you forfeit these advantages and may not return," it reads. 
Margaret Stock, an immigration lawyer with expertise in cases related to the military, said the warning was not ill-intentioned.

"I think they`re trying to look out for people," she said.

"The people managing the bases are rightfully concerned that somebody might not be fully aware of the consequences of wandering off."

Afghans leaving U.S. bases can be a touchy issue in some parts of the country, particularly given media coverage of security incidents at Fort McCoy, in Wisconsin, and Fort Bliss.

But General Glen VanHerck, head of Northern Command, pushed back on the idea that criminality was a problem on the U.S. bases. He told Pentagon reporters on Thursday that the numbers of incidents involving robbery and theft were substantially lower than in the general U.S. population, with only eight cases in six weeks.

Asked what was the limiting factor in getting Afghans processed for resettlement, VanHerck said it was not vaccinations against measles or the coronavirus or security checks.

Instead, it was efforts by U.S. officials to ensure "each of the Afghan guests have a great place to land and have assurances for where they`re going to relocate to."

"So I understand that, right now, is the limiting factor on output," he said.

Something unexpected is happening at U.S. military bases hosting Afghan evacuees: Many hundreds of them are simply leaving before receiving U.S. resettlement services, two sources familiar with the data told Reuters.

Something unexpected is happening at U.S. military bases hosting Afghan evacuees: Many hundreds of them are simply leaving before receiving U.S. resettlement services, two sources familiar with the data told Reuters. The number of "independent departures," which top 700 and could be higher, has not been previously reported. But the phenomenon is raising alarms among immigration advocates concerned about the risks to Afghans who give up on what is now an open-ended, complex and completely voluntary resettlement process. In the speed and chaos of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August following 20 years of war, many evacuees were brought into the United States under a temporary status of "humanitarian parole." Once transferred to U.S. military bases, refugee resettlement groups and U.S. officials have been trying to connect people with services for a smooth transition to the United States. In a statement, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson declined to comment on the figures provided to Reuters by sources but said people who had left the bases "generally" had ties to the United States, like family members of friends, and resources to support themselves. The spokesperson said that in addition, at the outset of the operation many of those evacuated were U.S. citizens, permanent residents or had approved Special Immigrant Visas so were able to depart quickly. But leaving early could cost other Afghan evacuees critical benefits - like expedited work permits - and create a slew of legal problems down the road, given the complexities of the U.S. immigration system. "It`s a giant can of worms," said one U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "This could lead to years and years of terrible immigration status problems." The benefits the evacuees have received have been more limited, so far, than what`s offered to refugees. But that appears set to change following legislation passed on Thursday by Congress - despite opposition from Republicans - that would give Afghan evacuees the more extensive assistance usually provided to refugees. "We should do everything in our power to help our Afghan allies get off to a strong start in their new homes," Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley said in a statement. The new legislation says Afghan asylum applications should be expedited. But those who leave U.S. bases early might not get all the legal orientation they need start their applications. One-way trip off base Immigration experts say Afghans who leave the bases are not breaking U.S. laws and military officials have no legal authority to hold law-abiding Afghans against their will at any of the eight locations hosting 53,000 Afghans who fled the Taliban on U.S. evacuation flights. The scale of the independent departures vary from base to base, according to the sources - more than 300 alone at Fort Bliss in Texas - a figure that is likely to alarm both advocates and critics of the massive U.S. resettlement operation. However, U.S. officials stress that all of the Afghans leaving U.S. bases had already undergone security screening before arriving in the United States. The risk of the independent departures is to the Afghans themselves. Reuters viewed a document, entitled "Departee Information," that is meant to warn Afghans considering leaving before completing their resettlement. It reminds them that, on base, they can get their immigration paperwork processed and even cash to help pay for travel to their destination in the United States. "Once you leave this base, you forfeit these advantages and may not return," it reads. Margaret Stock, an immigration lawyer with expertise in cases related to the military, said the warning was not ill-intentioned. "I think they`re trying to look out for people," she said. "The people managing the bases are rightfully concerned that somebody might not be fully aware of the consequences of wandering off." Afghans leaving U.S. bases can be a touchy issue in some parts of the country, particularly given media coverage of security incidents at Fort McCoy, in Wisconsin, and Fort Bliss. But General Glen VanHerck, head of Northern Command, pushed back on the idea that criminality was a problem on the U.S. bases. He told Pentagon reporters on Thursday that the numbers of incidents involving robbery and theft were substantially lower than in the general U.S. population, with only eight cases in six weeks. Asked what was the limiting factor in getting Afghans processed for resettlement, VanHerck said it was not vaccinations against measles or the coronavirus or security checks. Instead, it was efforts by U.S. officials to ensure "each of the Afghan guests have a great place to land and have assurances for where they`re going to relocate to." "So I understand that, right now, is the limiting factor on output," he said.

Exclusive-Some Afghan evacuees leaving military bases in U.S. before resettlement

For well over a year now, President Joe Biden’s vaunted negotiating style largely boiled down to this: I’m with you.

After he vanquished Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in the Democratic primary, he brought the liberal icon’s ardent supporters into the fold by embracing much of the senator’s platform even as he ran on unifying the country. When moderate Democrats came to call, he used the tones of centrism to assure them of his conciliatory bona fides.

But when Biden ventured to the Capitol on Friday to help House Democrats out of their thicket, he had to choose sides. He effectively chose the left.

“The way he is governing doesn’t reflect the skills I know he must have from his years as a legislator,” said Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla., who had been one of the moderates demanding an immediate vote on a trillion-dollar infrastructure bill, convinced that was what the president wanted — or at least needed. She called Biden’s refusal to push harder for legislation he had embraced “disappointing and frustrating.”

“I’m not clear why he came up to the Hill,” she grumbled.

Since the president claimed his party’s nomination last year, he has nurtured the fragile peace between his party’s fractious center and left by convincing both sides he is their ally. Unified first by their shared disdain for former President Donald Trump, and then by Biden’s adoption of an expansive platform, the two factions remained in harmony into this year. They responded to the pandemic by passing a sweeping stimulus package in the spring.

Now the two factions are at loggerheads — one flexing its power but as yet empty-handed, the other feeling betrayed, both claiming they have the president on their side — and the outcome of their battle over Biden’s proposals could determine Democrats’ fate in the midterms and the success of his presidency.

That agenda consists of two sweeping domestic proposals resembling a modern Great Society: the “American Jobs Plan,” spending $1 trillion over 10 years on traditional infrastructure like roads, bridges and tunnels; and a bigger and more controversial “American Family Plan,” which the Democrats labeled “soft infrastructure,” including universal prekindergarten and community college, paid family and medical leave, child care and elder care support, and an expansion of Medicare.

But liberals feared that moderate Democrats would vote for the infrastructure bill, claim victory and peel away from the social policy measure, so they refused to support the smaller infrastructure bill until the larger social policy package had been passed.

Heading into last week, both the moderates and the progressives felt as if they had ironclad promises: the moderates, that a vote on infrastructure would happen before October; the liberals, that the bill, a crucial part of the president’s domestic agenda, was inextricably twinned with their higher priority, the more expansive measure addressing climate change and the frayed social safety net.

The liberals, however, used their larger numbers to blockade the infrastructure bill — and they said they did it for Biden. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., one of the left-wing leaders of the blockade, stood before reporters last week and said the blockaders were the ones “trying to make sure that the president has a success.”

“If we pass the infrastructure bill alone, we are not even accomplishing 10% of his agenda,” said Omar, the vote-counter in the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a bloc of Democrats nearly 100 strong, who showed their cohesion in last week’s showdown.

This enraged both the nine centrist lawmakers who had forced Speaker Nancy Pelosi to promise an infrastructure vote by the end of September, and a larger, quieter group of backbench House Democrats, many from swing districts, who were eager for the president to sign the public works bill and start trumpeting the funding for roads, bridges and broadband in their districts, at a time when Biden’s approval ratings were sagging.

“I don’t think it’s good for the Joe Biden administration, and I don’t think it’s good for Democrats,” said Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, suggesting that Biden was effectively siding with the left by not lobbying for passage of the infrastructure package.

In part, that anger stemmed from Biden’s go-along-to-get-along style.

“You got the feeling that Uncle Joe is for everybody, he likes everybody,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo.

Members of the moderate wing were explicit Friday, blaming the liberals but also insisting that they themselves were Biden’s true torch bearers. Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., denounced a “small faction on the far left” that he said had employed “Freedom Caucus tactics” to “destroy the president’s agenda” — a reference to the hard-right faction of the House that bedeviled Republican leaders when they were in charge.

“We were elected to achieve reasonable, common-sense solutions for the American people — not to obstruct from the far wings,” Gottheimer fumed in a statement released late Friday night. “This far-left faction is willing to put the president’s entire agenda, including this historic bipartisan infrastructure package, at risk. They’ve put civility and bipartisan governing at risk.”

Given the range of the party’s suburbanites-to-socialists coalition, it may have been inevitable that Biden would eventually anger one wing of his party. What was striking, and perhaps equally surprising to both blocs, was that he alienated the moderates who had propelled him to the nomination while delighting the progressives who vociferously opposed him in the primary.

The president is not backing off the public works measure so treasured by the moderates.

But as he told House Democrats on Friday, he believes it’s “just reality” that the infrastructure legislation will not pass without assurances from two centrist senators, Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., that they will support the more wide-ranging bill.

Although, as Biden conceded in the Capitol, that will not happen until the more expansive bill is pared back to meet the two senators’ approval.

The decision to keep the fate of each bill tied to the other’s measure amounts to a gamble. Infrastructure was the bird in hand; it passed the Senate with bipartisan bonhomie in August with 69 votes.

Together, they are in trouble, which deepens with every new demand by Manchin and Sinema that pulls the social policy bill further from the liberals’ vision. If the two factions cannot agree on that measure, Biden might end up with nothing — a catastrophic blow for his party and its leader.

Delaying the infrastructure bill is not, as Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., put it, “the linear and expeditious path to which most of us would aspire.”

Phillips, a well-liked moderate who captured a Republican district in 2018, expressed hope earlier in the week that Biden could serve as a bridge between the party’s factions. But he acknowledged Friday that those chances had “been sadly diminished” in light of what he called the president’s “nothing-burger” of a visit to the Capitol.

Phillips said he thought both bills would still get done. But privately, other lawmakers from competitive seats were disconsolate that they would not be able to spend the remainder of this fall holding up evidence of bipartisan achievement in Washington.

Biden is eager to sign both bills. One of his aides Friday likened them to children he loves equally.

That has not, though, stopped both factions of the party from claiming that they are the ones seeking to assure passage of his agenda.

The result is quite a turnabout.

“We are fighting for the Build Back Better agenda,” said Omar, employing Biden’s preferred slogan — which would have been shocking at this time two years ago, when she rallied early to Sanders’ candidacy.

Throughout 2019 and in the first months of 2020, Biden was an object of scorn from the left. He was too old, too moderate and an obviously bad fit for an increasingly young, diverse and progressive party, they said, often mocking him in harsh terms.

Biden believed liberals were the ones out of step with the Democratic center of gravity. And he effectively proved it by assembling a multiracial coalition that was animated by defeating Trump more than by any bold policy agenda.

Yet because his primary had largely centered on ousting Trump and unifying the country, he had little in the way of firm policy plans. And in making peace with progressives after he secured the nomination, he adopted a number of their ideas.

That has allowed left-wing Democrats to say, with wide smiles, that they are only trying to fulfill Biden’s vision. The question now is whether his attempt to pass both bills will pay off — or if his decision to not push for quick passage of the infrastructure bill will leave him with a protracted standoff or nothing at all.

What is certain, however, is that after Biden’s all-things-to-all-people campaign, he has committed himself to many of the policies that his liberal critics were skeptical he would embrace.

“For all of the progressives who kept telling me there was no difference between Joe Biden and Mike Bloomberg,” said Rep. Brendan Boyle, D-Pa., an early Biden supporter, “where Biden has come down in this internal debate shows how absurd that claim always was.”

For well over a year now, President Joe Biden’s vaunted negotiating style largely boiled down to this: I’m with you. After he vanquished Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

For well over a year now, President Joe Biden’s vaunted negotiating style largely boiled down to this: I’m with you. After he vanquished Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in the Democratic primary, he brought the liberal icon’s ardent supporters into the fold by embracing much of the senator’s platform even as he ran on unifying the country. When moderate Democrats came to call, he used the tones of centrism to assure them of his conciliatory bona fides. But when Biden ventured to the Capitol on Friday to help House Democrats out of their thicket, he had to choose sides. He effectively chose the left. “The way he is governing doesn’t reflect the skills I know he must have from his years as a legislator,” said Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla., who had been one of the moderates demanding an immediate vote on a trillion-dollar infrastructure bill, convinced that was what the president wanted — or at least needed. She called Biden’s refusal to push harder for legislation he had embraced “disappointing and frustrating.” “I’m not clear why he came up to the Hill,” she grumbled. Since the president claimed his party’s nomination last year, he has nurtured the fragile peace between his party’s fractious center and left by convincing both sides he is their ally. Unified first by their shared disdain for former President Donald Trump, and then by Biden’s adoption of an expansive platform, the two factions remained in harmony into this year. They responded to the pandemic by passing a sweeping stimulus package in the spring. Now the two factions are at loggerheads — one flexing its power but as yet empty-handed, the other feeling betrayed, both claiming they have the president on their side — and the outcome of their battle over Biden’s proposals could determine Democrats’ fate in the midterms and the success of his presidency. That agenda consists of two sweeping domestic proposals resembling a modern Great Society: the “American Jobs Plan,” spending $1 trillion over 10 years on traditional infrastructure like roads, bridges and tunnels; and a bigger and more controversial “American Family Plan,” which the Democrats labeled “soft infrastructure,” including universal prekindergarten and community college, paid family and medical leave, child care and elder care support, and an expansion of Medicare. But liberals feared that moderate Democrats would vote for the infrastructure bill, claim victory and peel away from the social policy measure, so they refused to support the smaller infrastructure bill until the larger social policy package had been passed. Heading into last week, both the moderates and the progressives felt as if they had ironclad promises: the moderates, that a vote on infrastructure would happen before October; the liberals, that the bill, a crucial part of the president’s domestic agenda, was inextricably twinned with their higher priority, the more expansive measure addressing climate change and the frayed social safety net. The liberals, however, used their larger numbers to blockade the infrastructure bill — and they said they did it for Biden. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., one of the left-wing leaders of the blockade, stood before reporters last week and said the blockaders were the ones “trying to make sure that the president has a success.” “If we pass the infrastructure bill alone, we are not even accomplishing 10% of his agenda,” said Omar, the vote-counter in the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a bloc of Democrats nearly 100 strong, who showed their cohesion in last week’s showdown. This enraged both the nine centrist lawmakers who had forced Speaker Nancy Pelosi to promise an infrastructure vote by the end of September, and a larger, quieter group of backbench House Democrats, many from swing districts, who were eager for the president to sign the public works bill and start trumpeting the funding for roads, bridges and broadband in their districts, at a time when Biden’s approval ratings were sagging. “I don’t think it’s good for the Joe Biden administration, and I don’t think it’s good for Democrats,” said Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, suggesting that Biden was effectively siding with the left by not lobbying for passage of the infrastructure package. In part, that anger stemmed from Biden’s go-along-to-get-along style. “You got the feeling that Uncle Joe is for everybody, he likes everybody,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo. Members of the moderate wing were explicit Friday, blaming the liberals but also insisting that they themselves were Biden’s true torch bearers. Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., denounced a “small faction on the far left” that he said had employed “Freedom Caucus tactics” to “destroy the president’s agenda” — a reference to the hard-right faction of the House that bedeviled Republican leaders when they were in charge. “We were elected to achieve reasonable, common-sense solutions for the American people — not to obstruct from the far wings,” Gottheimer fumed in a statement released late Friday night. “This far-left faction is willing to put the president’s entire agenda, including this historic bipartisan infrastructure package, at risk. They’ve put civility and bipartisan governing at risk.” Given the range of the party’s suburbanites-to-socialists coalition, it may have been inevitable that Biden would eventually anger one wing of his party. What was striking, and perhaps equally surprising to both blocs, was that he alienated the moderates who had propelled him to the nomination while delighting the progressives who vociferously opposed him in the primary. The president is not backing off the public works measure so treasured by the moderates. But as he told House Democrats on Friday, he believes it’s “just reality” that the infrastructure legislation will not pass without assurances from two centrist senators, Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., that they will support the more wide-ranging bill. Although, as Biden conceded in the Capitol, that will not happen until the more expansive bill is pared back to meet the two senators’ approval. The decision to keep the fate of each bill tied to the other’s measure amounts to a gamble. Infrastructure was the bird in hand; it passed the Senate with bipartisan bonhomie in August with 69 votes. Together, they are in trouble, which deepens with every new demand by Manchin and Sinema that pulls the social policy bill further from the liberals’ vision. If the two factions cannot agree on that measure, Biden might end up with nothing — a catastrophic blow for his party and its leader. Delaying the infrastructure bill is not, as Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., put it, “the linear and expeditious path to which most of us would aspire.” Phillips, a well-liked moderate who captured a Republican district in 2018, expressed hope earlier in the week that Biden could serve as a bridge between the party’s factions. But he acknowledged Friday that those chances had “been sadly diminished” in light of what he called the president’s “nothing-burger” of a visit to the Capitol. Phillips said he thought both bills would still get done. But privately, other lawmakers from competitive seats were disconsolate that they would not be able to spend the remainder of this fall holding up evidence of bipartisan achievement in Washington. Biden is eager to sign both bills. One of his aides Friday likened them to children he loves equally. That has not, though, stopped both factions of the party from claiming that they are the ones seeking to assure passage of his agenda. The result is quite a turnabout. “We are fighting for the Build Back Better agenda,” said Omar, employing Biden’s preferred slogan — which would have been shocking at this time two years ago, when she rallied early to Sanders’ candidacy. Throughout 2019 and in the first months of 2020, Biden was an object of scorn from the left. He was too old, too moderate and an obviously bad fit for an increasingly young, diverse and progressive party, they said, often mocking him in harsh terms. Biden believed liberals were the ones out of step with the Democratic center of gravity. And he effectively proved it by assembling a multiracial coalition that was animated by defeating Trump more than by any bold policy agenda. Yet because his primary had largely centered on ousting Trump and unifying the country, he had little in the way of firm policy plans. And in making peace with progressives after he secured the nomination, he adopted a number of their ideas. That has allowed left-wing Democrats to say, with wide smiles, that they are only trying to fulfill Biden’s vision. The question now is whether his attempt to pass both bills will pay off — or if his decision to not push for quick passage of the infrastructure bill will leave him with a protracted standoff or nothing at all. What is certain, however, is that after Biden’s all-things-to-all-people campaign, he has committed himself to many of the policies that his liberal critics were skeptical he would embrace. “For all of the progressives who kept telling me there was no difference between Joe Biden and Mike Bloomberg,” said Rep. Brendan Boyle, D-Pa., an early Biden supporter, “where Biden has come down in this internal debate shows how absurd that claim always was.”

Biden throws in with Left, leaving his agenda in doubt

There was one bed coming available in the intensive care unit in Alaska’s largest hospital.

It was the middle of the night, and the hospital, Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage, had been hit with a deluge of coronavirus patients. Doctors now had a choice to make: Several more patients at the hospital, most of them with COVID-19, were in line to take that last ICU spot. But there was also someone from one of the state’s isolated rural communities who needed to be flown in for emergency surgery.

Who should get the final bed?

Dr&nbsp;​​Steven Floerchinger gathered with his colleagues for an agonising discussion. They had a better chance of saving one of the patients in the emergency room, they determined. The other person would have to wait.

That patient died.

“This is gut-wrenching, and I never thought I’d see it,” said Floerchinger, who has been in practice for 30 years. “We are taxed to a point of making decisions of who will and who will not live.”

Since that night, more grim choices have had to be made as Alaska confronts what is currently the nation’s worst coronavirus outbreak. Nearly two years after the virus began circulating in the United States, some of the scenes here on the country’s northern frontier echo the darkest early days of the pandemic: testing supplies are depleted, patients are being treated in hallways and doctors are rationing oxygen. With emergency rooms overwhelmed, the governor has asked hundreds of medical workers to fly in from around the country to help.

Through much of the pandemic, Alaska’s natural isolation had shielded the state, with the early months defined by strict testing protocols for people arriving from the outside. Many villages locked down. When vaccines arrived, there was a legion of planes, ferries and sleds to bring doses to far-flung communities. The state has maintained some of the lowest death numbers in the country.

But with some pockets of the state wary of taking vaccines — only about half the state’s residents are fully vaccinated — and Gov. Mike Dunleavy resisting restrictions to curtail the virus, the state’s isolation has become a growing liability as the delta variant sweeps through. The state’s surge has continued even as the virus has receded nationwide, with new daily cases down by about one-third and hospitalisations by about one-quarter since Sept. 1.

Much of the nation’s hospital system has been stressed, but overloaded facilities in the lower 48 states have had more flexibility to transfer patients to neighboring cities or other states. In Anchorage, most of the help is 1,500 miles away in Seattle, and hospitals in the Pacific Northwest have been challenged by their own disastrous virus outbreak.

“When your hospitals are full, you can’t just put them into an ambulance and take them to another town,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski said of Alaskan patients in a floor speech to Congress on Friday. She described her own trip to an emergency room in Fairbanks, where a loved one needed help for a non-COVID problem. They were told that critical care beds were full and that they might have to fly to Seattle.

Doctors and nurses have started speaking out in meetings, urging the public to take the virus more seriously, but they have repeatedly encountered hostility.

When the Anchorage Assembly considered a mask mandate last week, some of the doctors who came to speak were jeered at. “Do you use ivermectin?” someone in the crowd shouted, referring to a deworming medicine that has been touted as a COVID-19 treatment on social media even as the Food and Drug Administration has warned people against taking it.

As a group of doctors left the meeting, one person followed them outside, heckling. “You guys have sold out and are liars,” he shouted. Others outside holding signs — “Liberty or Tyranny,” one of them said — also mocked the physicians.

Dr. Leslie Gonsette, an internal medicine hospitalist who often works at Providence Alaska Medical Center, said some of her colleagues had debated whether to even go to the meeting.

“There was an element of caution and worry for our safety,” she said. But in the end, she added, they concluded they had an obligation to tell people about the calamitous scenes playing out at hospitals.

At another meeting of the Assembly the following night, one person was arrested on a charge of disorderly conduct and found to be carrying a concealed weapon. Many people in the audience wore a yellow Star of David, likening the proposed mask mandate to the Holocaust, which led other speakers to express outrage. Mayor Dave Bronson, who has vigorously opposed a mask mandate, argued that it was appropriate to “borrow” the symbol and then later apologised for his remarks.

The debate was scheduled to resume for a fourth day Monday.

Doctors at Providence, which has now put into place “crisis standards of care” that provide legal clearance for the challenging process of rationing health care, said the process had been traumatic. They have been consulting an ethicist and a triage team. Few have experience navigating such difficult ethical terrain.

The patient who died after being denied emergency surgery was not the only one to undergo a triage choice. In one case, two patients needed continuous dialysis but only one machine was available. Doctors placed one patient on the machine and then switched it to the other. The first patient then died.

Patients with COVID-19, which often results in serious damage to kidneys, have often monopolised dialysis resources, doctors said. When there were not enough machines available at Providence, everyone on dialysis was a COVID-19 patient.

In another case, described by the hospital’s chief medical officer, Dr. Michael Bernstein, a patient with both COVID-19 and extensive cancer was on the verge of needing a ventilator. But with so many patients needing such intense care, that patient was not given life support, and died.

The “crisis standards of care” generally are intended to prioritise the patients most likely to survive. Many states have discussed and approved crisis care guidelines during the pandemic, but few have formally carried them out statewide. Alaska has done so.

Bernstein said that the triage team had to make rationing decisions in about 10 cases, and that the hospital had also been forced to postpone care in other ways. Twenty-nine cardiac patients have had operations postponed, and the hospital has refused to accept transfer requests for 21 patients.

“This morning, the ICU was completely full, and we had four patients in the emergency room that needed intensive care,” he saids

The struggle is spreading beyond Anchorage. On Wednesday, the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation in Bethel announced that it, too, had turned to crisis standards of care. “We are now in a position of making these difficult decisions on a daily basis,” the hospital’s chief of staff, Dr. Ellen Hodges, said.

On Saturday, the state said it had activated crisis standards for 20 health care facilities, covering larger cities such as Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau, along with smaller ones such as Cordova, Dillingham and Kotzebue.

At the Providence hospital in Valdez, high-need patients who would otherwise transfer to Anchorage are staying put, and there is so much demand for oxygen that the hospital has had to limit the amount each person receives. While patients would normally be kept at oxygen saturation levels of 93%, that has now dropped to 90%.

Dr. Anne Zink is Alaska’s chief medical officer, helping lead the state’s pandemic response, but she also works as a physician in the emergency room at Mat-Su Regional Medical Center, northeast of Anchorage, a region with some of the state’s lowest vaccination rates and highest hospitalization rates.

Zink said she had been examining patients in the waiting room and caring for them in hallways. One day, with not even stretchers available, she found herself sitting on the floor to stitch a foot laceration.

“Our goal has always been to avoid having systems overwhelmed,” Zink said. “And right now we have systems overwhelmed.”

Dunleavy has avoided ordering a statewide mask mandate or other restrictions during the latest surge, saying such requirements should be decided locally in a vast state where some communities have had few or no cases. A draft statewide mask mandate had been drawn up early in the pandemic, Zink said, but it was never put into place.

With each COVID-19 patient, Zink said, she wonders if there was more she could have done, something she could have said, to convince more people to get vaccinated or take precautions.

She became a household name at the start of the pandemic, when she gave video briefings to the public from a heated yurt behind her family’s home. In many corners of the state, she has been widely praised. On a recent day, while talking with a reporter at an Anchorage park, a couple walking their dog recognised Zink and waved. “We are fans,” the man called out.

But Zink is spending time trying to reach people who are not fans. She has been appearing on conservative talk radio, answering questions and trying to ease fears about the vaccines.

While some people have made up their minds, Zink said, she still regularly finds others making the decision to get vaccinated. A state survey, she said, found that 60% of unvaccinated people are open to it. In trying to encourage people to consider vaccines, she often uses references to moose hunting and berry foraging and all the ways that Alaskans are used to taking care of themselves.

“Just like when we go out in a storm, we layer up,” she said.

“We do multiple things together: We change our snow tires and we wear a jacket and we wear a hat,” she said. “So make sure you’re vaccinated and wear a mask and keep your distance. We know how to do this.”

There was one bed coming available in the intensive care unit in Alaska’s largest hospital. It was the middle of the night, and the hospital, Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage, had been hit with a deluge of coronavirus patients.

There was one bed coming available in the intensive care unit in Alaska’s largest hospital. It was the middle of the night, and the hospital, Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage, had been hit with a deluge of coronavirus patients. Doctors now had a choice to make: Several more patients at the hospital, most of them with COVID-19, were in line to take that last ICU spot. But there was also someone from one of the state’s isolated rural communities who needed to be flown in for emergency surgery. Who should get the final bed? Dr Steven Floerchinger gathered with his colleagues for an agonising discussion. They had a better chance of saving one of the patients in the emergency room, they determined. The other person would have to wait. That patient died. “This is gut-wrenching, and I never thought I’d see it,” said Floerchinger, who has been in practice for 30 years. “We are taxed to a point of making decisions of who will and who will not live.” Since that night, more grim choices have had to be made as Alaska confronts what is currently the nation’s worst coronavirus outbreak. Nearly two years after the virus began circulating in the United States, some of the scenes here on the country’s northern frontier echo the darkest early days of the pandemic: testing supplies are depleted, patients are being treated in hallways and doctors are rationing oxygen. With emergency rooms overwhelmed, the governor has asked hundreds of medical workers to fly in from around the country to help. Through much of the pandemic, Alaska’s natural isolation had shielded the state, with the early months defined by strict testing protocols for people arriving from the outside. Many villages locked down. When vaccines arrived, there was a legion of planes, ferries and sleds to bring doses to far-flung communities. The state has maintained some of the lowest death numbers in the country. But with some pockets of the state wary of taking vaccines — only about half the state’s residents are fully vaccinated — and Gov. Mike Dunleavy resisting restrictions to curtail the virus, the state’s isolation has become a growing liability as the delta variant sweeps through. The state’s surge has continued even as the virus has receded nationwide, with new daily cases down by about one-third and hospitalisations by about one-quarter since Sept. 1. Much of the nation’s hospital system has been stressed, but overloaded facilities in the lower 48 states have had more flexibility to transfer patients to neighboring cities or other states. In Anchorage, most of the help is 1,500 miles away in Seattle, and hospitals in the Pacific Northwest have been challenged by their own disastrous virus outbreak. “When your hospitals are full, you can’t just put them into an ambulance and take them to another town,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski said of Alaskan patients in a floor speech to Congress on Friday. She described her own trip to an emergency room in Fairbanks, where a loved one needed help for a non-COVID problem. They were told that critical care beds were full and that they might have to fly to Seattle. Doctors and nurses have started speaking out in meetings, urging the public to take the virus more seriously, but they have repeatedly encountered hostility. When the Anchorage Assembly considered a mask mandate last week, some of the doctors who came to speak were jeered at. “Do you use ivermectin?” someone in the crowd shouted, referring to a deworming medicine that has been touted as a COVID-19 treatment on social media even as the Food and Drug Administration has warned people against taking it. As a group of doctors left the meeting, one person followed them outside, heckling. “You guys have sold out and are liars,” he shouted. Others outside holding signs — “Liberty or Tyranny,” one of them said — also mocked the physicians. Dr. Leslie Gonsette, an internal medicine hospitalist who often works at Providence Alaska Medical Center, said some of her colleagues had debated whether to even go to the meeting. “There was an element of caution and worry for our safety,” she said. But in the end, she added, they concluded they had an obligation to tell people about the calamitous scenes playing out at hospitals. At another meeting of the Assembly the following night, one person was arrested on a charge of disorderly conduct and found to be carrying a concealed weapon. Many people in the audience wore a yellow Star of David, likening the proposed mask mandate to the Holocaust, which led other speakers to express outrage. Mayor Dave Bronson, who has vigorously opposed a mask mandate, argued that it was appropriate to “borrow” the symbol and then later apologised for his remarks. The debate was scheduled to resume for a fourth day Monday. Doctors at Providence, which has now put into place “crisis standards of care” that provide legal clearance for the challenging process of rationing health care, said the process had been traumatic. They have been consulting an ethicist and a triage team. Few have experience navigating such difficult ethical terrain. The patient who died after being denied emergency surgery was not the only one to undergo a triage choice. In one case, two patients needed continuous dialysis but only one machine was available. Doctors placed one patient on the machine and then switched it to the other. The first patient then died. Patients with COVID-19, which often results in serious damage to kidneys, have often monopolised dialysis resources, doctors said. When there were not enough machines available at Providence, everyone on dialysis was a COVID-19 patient. In another case, described by the hospital’s chief medical officer, Dr. Michael Bernstein, a patient with both COVID-19 and extensive cancer was on the verge of needing a ventilator. But with so many patients needing such intense care, that patient was not given life support, and died. The “crisis standards of care” generally are intended to prioritise the patients most likely to survive. Many states have discussed and approved crisis care guidelines during the pandemic, but few have formally carried them out statewide. Alaska has done so. Bernstein said that the triage team had to make rationing decisions in about 10 cases, and that the hospital had also been forced to postpone care in other ways. Twenty-nine cardiac patients have had operations postponed, and the hospital has refused to accept transfer requests for 21 patients. “This morning, the ICU was completely full, and we had four patients in the emergency room that needed intensive care,” he saids The struggle is spreading beyond Anchorage. On Wednesday, the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation in Bethel announced that it, too, had turned to crisis standards of care. “We are now in a position of making these difficult decisions on a daily basis,” the hospital’s chief of staff, Dr. Ellen Hodges, said. On Saturday, the state said it had activated crisis standards for 20 health care facilities, covering larger cities such as Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau, along with smaller ones such as Cordova, Dillingham and Kotzebue. At the Providence hospital in Valdez, high-need patients who would otherwise transfer to Anchorage are staying put, and there is so much demand for oxygen that the hospital has had to limit the amount each person receives. While patients would normally be kept at oxygen saturation levels of 93%, that has now dropped to 90%. Dr. Anne Zink is Alaska’s chief medical officer, helping lead the state’s pandemic response, but she also works as a physician in the emergency room at Mat-Su Regional Medical Center, northeast of Anchorage, a region with some of the state’s lowest vaccination rates and highest hospitalization rates. Zink said she had been examining patients in the waiting room and caring for them in hallways. One day, with not even stretchers available, she found herself sitting on the floor to stitch a foot laceration. “Our goal has always been to avoid having systems overwhelmed,” Zink said. “And right now we have systems overwhelmed.” Dunleavy has avoided ordering a statewide mask mandate or other restrictions during the latest surge, saying such requirements should be decided locally in a vast state where some communities have had few or no cases. A draft statewide mask mandate had been drawn up early in the pandemic, Zink said, but it was never put into place. With each COVID-19 patient, Zink said, she wonders if there was more she could have done, something she could have said, to convince more people to get vaccinated or take precautions. She became a household name at the start of the pandemic, when she gave video briefings to the public from a heated yurt behind her family’s home. In many corners of the state, she has been widely praised. On a recent day, while talking with a reporter at an Anchorage park, a couple walking their dog recognised Zink and waved. “We are fans,” the man called out. But Zink is spending time trying to reach people who are not fans. She has been appearing on conservative talk radio, answering questions and trying to ease fears about the vaccines. While some people have made up their minds, Zink said, she still regularly finds others making the decision to get vaccinated. A state survey, she said, found that 60% of unvaccinated people are open to it. In trying to encourage people to consider vaccines, she often uses references to moose hunting and berry foraging and all the ways that Alaskans are used to taking care of themselves. “Just like when we go out in a storm, we layer up,” she said. “We do multiple things together: We change our snow tires and we wear a jacket and we wear a hat,” she said. “So make sure you’re vaccinated and wear a mask and keep your distance. We know how to do this.”

In Alaska’s COVID Crisis, Doctors Must Decide Who Lives and Who Dies

After his small Manhattan food stand lost its customers during the coronavirus pandemic, Abdul Rahman -- an Afghan vendor who arrived in New York in 1992 -- has resumed service, albeit at a fraction of former business since offices are still far from full.

Rahman and the thousands of street vendors like him, emblematic of New York's sidewalks, were hoping things would finally go back to normal in September.

But that's far from the case: "The business is like, 20, 30 per cent (less) than before the pandemic," Rahman, 44, told AFP, standing in front of a display case of doughnuts and other pastries. On the counter is a jug of coffee, which he says he has trouble emptying.

With a wave of his arm, he points to where customers used to form long lines in front of his mobile stand.

Like yellow taxis, the metal food carts -- stocked with coffee, muffins, bananas and hard boiled eggs -- are part of New York's cityscape.

An estimated 20,000 vendors are on the streets of the Big Apple, and many of them are immigrants who have no other way of earning money.

A city hall permit is clearly visible on Rahman's cart, as is a photo of his three children, all born in the United States.

It has been 20 years since Rahman arrived in New York to escape the war back home in Afghanistan.&nbsp;

He set up shop on the sidewalk of Whitehall Street, in the south of Manhattan. It is a good location, at the foot of office buildings, near a subway exit and not far from the docks where ferries full of tourists leave and return for the Statue of Liberty, as well as boats transporting workers from Staten Island.

- 'Better than nothing' -

Some customers are loyal, such as Mike Reyes, a maintenance worker, who says he comes every morning.

"We need affordable (things) like donuts, coffee, because I do know in the city it's very expensive," he explained. "To me, they are really essential."

But tourists are still few and far between as a result of the Delta variant, so "people work mostly from home," said Rahman.

According to a survey conducted by the Partnership for New York City organization, only 23 per cent of the one million office workers in Manhattan had returned to their offices by August, and employers were anticipating a rate of 41 per cent by the end of September -&nbsp;well below the two-thirds expected in May.

With a baseball cap on his head and black mask over his nose and mouth, Rahman hopes things will go back to normal in October&nbsp;or maybe January.

"I don't know what's going on in the future," he said worriedly, noting that he relies on his wife's salary as a teacher to support the family.

For the time being, after 15 months of inactivity due to the pandemic, during which he was able to receive public aid, he prefers to go to work.&nbsp;

In order to get into the city from his home in Nassau County in eastern Long Island he has to get up at 2:30 am, Monday through Friday.&nbsp;

"It's better than nothing," he said, although the times of earning $800-900 in a good week are a distant memory.

"If I stay home, (there's) more pressure on me, and what should you do at home?" he said.

After 20 years on the job, Rahman is thinking of switching to another line of work. His wife tried to find him a job as a school bus driver, but it was only part-time.

Besides, "I know all the people here," he said. "It's almost 21 years, it looks like a life here."

After his small Manhattan food stand lost its customers during the coronavirus pandemic, Abdul Rahman -- an Afghan vendor who arrived in New York in 1992 -- has resumed service, albeit at a fraction of former business since offices are still far from full.

After his small Manhattan food stand lost its customers during the coronavirus pandemic, Abdul Rahman -- an Afghan vendor who arrived in New York in 1992 -- has resumed service, albeit at a fraction of former business since offices are still far from full. Rahman and the thousands of street vendors like him, emblematic of New York's sidewalks, were hoping things would finally go back to normal in September. But that's far from the case: "The business is like, 20, 30 per cent (less) than before the pandemic," Rahman, 44, told AFP, standing in front of a display case of doughnuts and other pastries. On the counter is a jug of coffee, which he says he has trouble emptying. With a wave of his arm, he points to where customers used to form long lines in front of his mobile stand. Like yellow taxis, the metal food carts -- stocked with coffee, muffins, bananas and hard boiled eggs -- are part of New York's cityscape. An estimated 20,000 vendors are on the streets of the Big Apple, and many of them are immigrants who have no other way of earning money. A city hall permit is clearly visible on Rahman's cart, as is a photo of his three children, all born in the United States. It has been 20 years since Rahman arrived in New York to escape the war back home in Afghanistan. He set up shop on the sidewalk of Whitehall Street, in the south of Manhattan. It is a good location, at the foot of office buildings, near a subway exit and not far from the docks where ferries full of tourists leave and return for the Statue of Liberty, as well as boats transporting workers from Staten Island. - 'Better than nothing' - Some customers are loyal, such as Mike Reyes, a maintenance worker, who says he comes every morning. "We need affordable (things) like donuts, coffee, because I do know in the city it's very expensive," he explained. "To me, they are really essential." But tourists are still few and far between as a result of the Delta variant, so "people work mostly from home," said Rahman. According to a survey conducted by the Partnership for New York City organization, only 23 per cent of the one million office workers in Manhattan had returned to their offices by August, and employers were anticipating a rate of 41 per cent by the end of September - well below the two-thirds expected in May. With a baseball cap on his head and black mask over his nose and mouth, Rahman hopes things will go back to normal in October or maybe January. "I don't know what's going on in the future," he said worriedly, noting that he relies on his wife's salary as a teacher to support the family. For the time being, after 15 months of inactivity due to the pandemic, during which he was able to receive public aid, he prefers to go to work. In order to get into the city from his home in Nassau County in eastern Long Island he has to get up at 2:30 am, Monday through Friday. "It's better than nothing," he said, although the times of earning $800-900 in a good week are a distant memory. "If I stay home, (there's) more pressure on me, and what should you do at home?" he said. After 20 years on the job, Rahman is thinking of switching to another line of work. His wife tried to find him a job as a school bus driver, but it was only part-time. Besides, "I know all the people here," he said. "It's almost 21 years, it looks like a life here."

New York's street vendors still waiting for pandemic recovery

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