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America’s Afghanistan withdrawal, one year later · Apple News Today

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  Gideon Resnick, Narrating: Good morning! It's Tuesday, Aug. 30. I'm Gideon Resnick in for Shumita Basu, this is "Apple News Today." Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news, and how the world's best journalists are covering them.
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  Today marks one year since U.S. troops withdrew from Afghanistan. The weeks before were chaotic. President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, militants occupied the presidential palace, and the Taliban took control much faster than expected. Thousands of Afghans rushed to the Kabul airport hoping to leave. There a suicide bombing killed more than 170 people, including 13 U.S. service members.
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  "Vox's" senior policy writer takes stock of what led up to the collapse and asks who is to blame. The short answer in Jonathan Guyer's piece is "everyone."
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  Jonathan Guyer: There's this huge swath of responsibility that spreads throughout the U.S. government and its partners in South Asia. This was a systemic problem, and the issues run far deeper than the Biden administration.
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  For years, he argues there was a series of military, diplomatic and intelligence failures. Mistakes made by both the Biden and Trump administrations. Ultimately, there were big problems with execution when President Biden made the call to exit the country.
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  Guyer: The president had this pretty audacious plan to say this part of the war on terrorism is over, but the U.S. government just wasn't there to back that up.
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  And the Afghan government that America supported wasn't strong enough.
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  Guyer: It was kind of a disaster, in part because I don't think the U.S. government could totally fathom how quickly 20 years of investments would fall. That the U.S. backed government of Afghanistan would just totally crumble. Just the fact that perhaps the U.S. government couldn't see the shell of an administration that it had created in Afghanistan, which just, whether it was the popular support or the military support, it just wasn't there.
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  Once the Taliban takeover was clear, Biden did take responsibility.
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  President Joe Biden: I am President of the United States of America, and the buck stops with me.
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  Guyer says previous administrations share blame as well.
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  Guyer: I think Obama continued the war, and he could have ended it, let's say, when Osama Bin Laden was captured and killed. And then, of course, I think George W. Bush perhaps bears the most responsibility for doing an incredibly catastrophic invasion that led to nation building.
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  Today, six million people in Afghanistan are at risk of famine. Hospitals are overwhelmed. Guyer says another problem is that the U.S. froze billions in Afghan bank assets abroad.
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  Guyer: And what that means is that there's just an incredible currency crunch in Afghanistan. So, although the United States no longer has that kind of presence there, it is effecting the economy and the food-security conditions.
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  The pullout a year ago may have ended things for the American military, but the Afghan people face an ongoing fight to survive.
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  Let's move from Afghanistan to neighboring Pakistan where more than 1,100 people are dead. Historic flooding driven by climate change is swamping entire communities. Early estimates say the water has caused more than $10 billion in damages.
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  The "Guardian" reports that the extreme monsoon rainfall has one third of Pakistan at risk of going underwater, and about one in seven Pakistanis are affected by the flooding. Monsoon season causes damage every year, but this one has been an outlier. The flooding right now is on par with Pakistan's worst ever on record. The "Guardian's" coverage includes voices of families suffering.
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  She says she's living in a rickshaw with her children because her roof is leaking. She says gutters are overflowing, sewage is everywhere. As she puts it, "The houses and alleys have become one." Pakistan's Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman told Britain's "Channel 4" that humanitarian disasters like this are part of the future.
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  Sherry Rehman: We're at this ground zero of a climate dystopia. This is nature not going back to normal. This is the new normal, we will have to adapt ourselves. There's no natural default setting that'll fix itself.
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  There are two key developments in the fight against COVID in the U.S. unfolding in the next few days. They involve testing and vaccination.
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  First, the Biden administration is going to hit pause on giving Americans free at-home rapid tests. The COVID.gov page now says that the program will be suspended on Friday. It says that is because Congress hasn't given more money to replenish the national stockpile of tests.
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  A Biden administration official tells "ABC News," more than 600 million tests were distributed through COVID.gov. When that program is suspended, tests are still going to be distributed to places like local pharmacies and libraries. And it'll be possible to get reimbursed for tests through private insurance, Medicare, and Medicaid.
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  The other part of the fall plan? It involves updated boosters. "POLITICO" reports that the FDA is expected to authorize new boosters from Pfizer and Moderna as soon as tomorrow. These boosters are tailored to go after the more contagious Omicron subvariants. Now, that would be a key step toward a government plan to roll out 175 million doses of the new boosters starting shortly after Labor Day.
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  People have been around for a while, and so have jellyfish. So, you might think scientists have learned just about all there is to know about these things. But maybe not. New research points the way to something jellyfish may have to teach us about human aging.
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  "The Wall Street Journal" reports on how scientists have mapped the genome of a very special jellyfish. It's known as the "immortal jellyfish." This needle-sized creature has some kind of strange powers, including the ability to basically reverse its aging. It can turn itself back into a lump of juvenile cells, and then it can reproduce itself. It's not exactly Marvel comics kind of immortality, but it is pretty neat.
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  Scientists are now trying to learn more about how it can turn its biological clock backwards. That might lead to insights relevant to how we, as non-jellyfish, age. So, don't expect them to give us the key to immortality, but those jellyfish may have a few lessons on how to give people a few more healthy years.
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  You can find all those stories and more in the Apple News app. There's also coverage of the U.S. Open and Serena Williams' first-round win last night. This is her final Grand Slam. We'll talk with you again tomorrow.
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