How Mexico helped the New York Times get its journalists out of Afghanistan

How Mexico helped the New York Times get its journalists out of Afghanistan

Ben Smith reports: A group of Afghans who worked for The New York Times, along with their families, touched down safely early Wednesday — not in New York or Washington, but at Benito Juárez International Airport in Mexico City. The arrival of the 24 families was the latest stop in a harrowing escape from Kabul. And Mexico’s role in the rescue of journalists from The Times and, if all goes as planned, The Wall Street Journal offers a disorienting glimpse…

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Taliban urge women to stay home because fighters haven’t been trained to respect them

Taliban urge women to stay home because fighters haven’t been trained to respect them

The New York Times reports: When the Taliban were last in power, Afghan women were generally not allowed to leave their homes except under certain narrowly defined conditions. Those who did risked being beaten, tortured or executed. In the days since the Taliban swept back into control, their leaders have insisted that this time will be different. Women, they say, will be allowed to work. Girls will be free to attend school. At least within the confines of their interpretation…

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Arkansas runs out of intensive care beds for Covid patients

Arkansas runs out of intensive care beds for Covid patients

The Associated Press reports: Arkansas on Tuesday ran out of intensive care unit beds for COVID-19 patients for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic began, Gov. Asa Hutchinson announced, as a surge in cases continued overwhelming hospitals in the state. The state’s ICU capacity for COVID patients barely eased hours after Hutchinson’s announcement, with only one hospital in southeast Arkansas showing availability, according to the state’s system for coordinating coronavirus patients. Virus patients make up about half of the…

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The social and environmental perils of magical thinking

The social and environmental perils of magical thinking

By Louise Fabiani There has been much coverage in recent media of citizens who fail to acknowledge the existence of such global crises as Covid-19 or anthropogenic climate change. They are said to be skeptical or in denial. They refuse to participate in any solution for the simple reason that they believe them to be non-issues. Just as dangerous to the common good is a person who fully accepts the existence of a problem, yet believes as a matter of…

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The brain doesn’t work the way you think it does

The brain doesn’t work the way you think it does

Jordana Cepelewicz writes: Neuroscientists are the cartographers of the brain’s diverse domains and territories — the features and activities that define them, the roads and highways that connect them, and the boundaries that delineate them. Toward the front of the brain, just behind the forehead, is the prefrontal cortex, celebrated as the seat of judgment. Behind it lies the motor cortex, responsible for planning and coordinating movement. To the sides: the temporal lobes, crucial for memory and the processing of…

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The effort to rescue the Afghans that the U.S. government has abandoned

The effort to rescue the Afghans that the U.S. government has abandoned

Arash Azizzada writes: The day our lives fell apart, Sunday, Aug. 15, I received a call from a close friend in Kabul. Usually cool and confident, vital skills for a community leader in a complex, conflict-ridden place like Afghanistan, my friend now whispered in desperation. “I need to get out,” he said. “Help me.” In the background, I could hear the city bustling nervously as millions of people absorbed the fact of the Taliban’s conquest. My friend, a vocal activist…

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CIA Director William Burns held secret meeting in Kabul with Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar

CIA Director William Burns held secret meeting in Kabul with Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar

The Washington Post reports: CIA Director William J. Burns held a secret meeting Monday in Kabul with the Taliban’s de facto leader, Abdul Ghani Baradar, in the highest-level face-to-face encounter between the Taliban and the Biden administration since the militants seized the Afghan capital, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy. President Biden dispatched his top spy, a veteran of the Foreign Service and the most decorated diplomat…

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Costa Ricans live longer than Americans. What’s their secret?

Costa Ricans live longer than Americans. What’s their secret?

Atul Gawande writes: Life expectancy tends to track national income closely. Costa Rica has emerged as an exception. Searching a newer section of the cemetery that afternoon, I found only one grave for a child. Across all age cohorts, the country’s increase in health has far outpaced its increase in wealth. Although Costa Rica’s per-capita income is a sixth that of the United States—and its per-capita health-care costs are a fraction of ours—life expectancy there is approaching eighty-one years. In…

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The nine Democrats making Nancy Pelosi’s life harder are making a big mistake

The nine Democrats making Nancy Pelosi’s life harder are making a big mistake

Jamelle Bouie writes: Popular or unpopular, good economy or bad, the president’s party almost always loses seats in midterm elections. That there are so few exceptions — Franklin Roosevelt and the Democrats in 1934, Bill Clinton and the Democrats in 1998, and George W. Bush and the Republicans in 2002 — proves the rule. The upshot is that if you are a member of Congress in the majority — and you share a party with the president — the die…

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A lucky few seem ‘resistant’ to Covid-19. Scientists want to know why

A lucky few seem ‘resistant’ to Covid-19. Scientists want to know why

STAT reports: Her husband collapsed just before reaching the top of the stairs in their small one-bedroom house in São Paulo, Brazil. Frantic, Thais Andrade grabbed the portable pulse oximeter she had purchased after hearing that a low oxygen reading could be the first sign of the novel coronavirus. Erik’s reading was hovering eight points lower than it had that morning. He also looked feverish. “When he hit 90% [on the oximeter], I said we can’t wait anymore,” Andrade recalled….

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For most of human history, equality was the norm. What happened?

For most of human history, equality was the norm. What happened?

Kim Sterelny writes: Most of us live in social worlds that are profoundly unequal, where small elites have vastly more power and wealth than everyone else. Very few of the have-nots find this congenial. As experimental economists have shown, we tend to enter social situations prepared to take a chance and cooperate in collective activities. But if others take more than their share, we resent being played for a sucker. We live in unequal worlds, and few of us are…

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The origin of consciousness

The origin of consciousness

Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablonka write: MuZero is an algorithm with a superhuman ability to learn: it has learned to play 57 different Atari video games as well as Chess, Go and Shogi, and defeated the greatest human masters in every one of them. Yet, this amazing algorithm and the computer in which it is implemented are as conscious as your washing machine. Its “intelligence”, manifest in its learning ability, has nothing to do with consciousness – the ability to…

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Twenty years after 9/11, are we any smarter?

Twenty years after 9/11, are we any smarter?

Jordan Michael Smith writes: On a warm June evening in downtown Manhattan, tourists hoping to visit the National September 11 Memorial & Museum are disappointed. The spot is closed after 5 p.m., a security guard repeats patiently to visitors. From behind a rope, the tourists look at the spaces where the Twin Towers used to be. The names of the 2,977 people killed by Al Qaeda in September 2001 are etched into bronze parapets surrounding two pools. Water flows down…

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The chance of a deal with the Taliban that the U.S. squandered twenty years ago

The chance of a deal with the Taliban that the U.S. squandered twenty years ago

Alissa J. Rubin reports: Taliban fighters brandished Kalashnikovs and shook their fists in the air after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, defying American warnings that if they did not hand over Osama Bin Laden, their country would be bombed to smithereens. The bravado faded once American bombs began to fall. Within a few weeks, many of the Taliban had fled the Afghan capital, terrified by the low whine of approaching B-52 aircraft. Soon, they were a spent force, on the…

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