West warns of possible attack at Kabul airport amid airlift

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Western nations warned Thursday of a possible attack on Kabul’s airport, where thousands have flocked as they try to flee Taliban-controlled Afghanistan in the waning days of a massive airlift. Britain said an attack could come within hours.

Several countries urged people to avoid the airport, where Belgium said there was a threat of a suicide bombing. But with just days left before the evacuation effort ends and American troops withdraw, few appeared to heed the call.

Over the last week, the airport has been the scene of some of the most searing images of the chaotic end of America’s longest war and the Taliban’s takeover, as flight after flight landed to pull out those who fear a return to the militants’ brutal rule.

Already, some countries have ended their evacuations and begun to withdraw their soldiers and diplomats, signaling the beginning of the end of one of history’s largest airlifts. The Taliban have so far honored a pledge not to attack Western forces during the evacuation, but insist the foreign troops must be out by America’s self-imposed deadline of Aug. 31.

But overnight, new warnings emerged from Western capitals about a threat from Afghanistan’s Islamic State group affiliate, which likely has seen its ranks boosted by the Taliban’s freeing of prisoners during their blitz across the country.

British Armed Forces Minister James Heappey told the BBC on Thursday there was ”very, very credible reporting of an imminent attack” at the airport, possibly within “hours.”

Heappey conceded that people are desperate to leave and “there is an appetite by many in the queue to take their chances, but the reporting of this threat is very credible indeed and there is a real imminence to it.”

“There is every chance that as further reporting comes in, we may be able to change the advice again and process people anew, but there’s no guarantee of that,” he added.

Late Wednesday, the U.S. Embassy warned citizens at three airport gates to leave immediately due to an unspecified security threat. Australia, Britain and New Zealand also advised their citizens Thursday not to go to the airport, with Australia’s foreign minister saying there was a “very high threat of a terrorist attack.”

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid denied that any attack was imminent. “It’s not correct,” he wrote in a text message after being asked about the warnings. He did not elaborate.

On Thursday, the Taliban sprayed a water cannon at those gathered at one airport gate to try to drive the crowd away, as someone launched tear gas canisters elsewhere. While some fled, others just sat on the ground, covered their face and waited in the noxious fumes.

Nadia, a 27-year-old Afghan woman who gave only her first name for fear of reprisals, carried her 2-year-old daughter with her outside the airport, braving the chaos. She and her husband, who had worked with coalition forces, missed a call from a number they believed was the State Department and were trying to get into the airport without any luck. Her husband had pressed ahead in the crowd to try and get them inside.

“We have to find a way to evacuate because our lives are in danger,” Nadia said. “My husband received several threatening messages from unknown sources. We have no chance except escaping.”

Many Afghans have felt the same in the wake of the Taliban’s takeover. The hard-line Islamic group wrested back control of the country nearly 20 years after being ousted in a U.S.-led invasion following the 9/11 attacks, which al-Qaida orchestrated while being sheltered by the group.

Amid concerns about attacks, military cargo planes leaving Kabul airport already use flares to disrupt any potential missile fire. But there are also worries someone could detonate explosives in the teeming crowds outside the airport.

“We received information at the military level from the United States, but also from other countries, that there were indications that there was a threat of suicide attacks on the mass of people,” Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said, talking about the threat around Kabul airport.

Senior U.S. officials said Wednesday’s warning from the embassy was related to specific threats involving the Islamic State group and potential vehicle bombs. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss ongoing military operations.

The Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan grew out of disaffected Taliban members who hold an even-more extreme view of Islam. Naming themselves after Khorasan, a historic name for the greater region, the extremists embarked on a series of brutal attacks in Afghanistan that included a 2020 assault on a maternity hospital in Kabul that saw infants and women killed.

The Taliban have fought against Islamic State militants in Afghanistan. However, their advance across the country likely saw IS fighters freed alongside the Taliban’s own. There are particular concerns that extremists may have seized heavy weapons and equipment abandoned by Afghan troops who fled the Taliban advance.

Amid the warnings and the pending American withdrawal, some European nations said they would have to end their evacuations.

French Prime Minister Jean Castex told RTL radio said his country’s efforts would end Friday evening due to the U.S. pullout.

Danish Defense Minister Trine Bramsen bluntly warned: “It is no longer safe to fly in or out of Kabul.”

Denmark’s last flight has already departed, and Poland and Belgium have also announced the end of their evacuations. The Dutch government said it had been told by the U.S. to leave Thursday.

The Taliban have said they’ll allow Afghans to leave via commercial flights after the deadline next week, but it remains unclear which airlines would return to an airport controlled by the militants. Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said talks were underway between his country and the Taliban about allowing Turkish civilian experts to help run the facility.

The Taliban have promised to return Afghanistan to security and pledged they won’t seek revenge on those who opposed them or roll back progress on human rights. But many Afghans are skeptical.

Fueling fears of what Taliban rule might hold, a journalist from private broadcaster Tolo News described being beaten by Taliban. Ziar Yad said the fighters also beat his colleague and confiscated their cameras, technical equipment and a mobile phone as they tried to report on poverty in Kabul.

“The issue has been shared with Taliban leaders; however, the perpetrators have not yet been arrested, which is a serious threat to freedom of expression,” Yad wrote on Twitter.

…………………………………………………………

Learning to trust the internet again

Wikipedia can serve as a model to combat disinformation and distrust online.

Every single day, we must navigate what is real and what is fake online. The internet is integral to our daily lives, yet it is constantly inundated with inaccuracies, misinformation, and viral “fake news”.

The spread of false information can be deadly. It can stop a family member from choosing to get a life-saving vaccine. It can undermine elections and inspire hateful reactions. Echo chambers have divided local communities across ideological spectrums that sometimes seem irreconcilable. At our dinner tables, we often cannot agree on what a “fact” even is anymore.

Twenty years ago, the internet was a very different place. The early days of the web were a time of great experimentation and curiosity. The first pioneers of the internet were rooted in the values of open-source and free knowledge, designing a new frontier for communicating information. This made our world feel smaller and bigger all at once, as we were more connected than ever before.

When I created Wikipedia in 2001, I was inspired by this vision of digital collaboration.  Wikipedia is founded on the idea that spreading knowledge could happen through collaborative effort instead of top-down authority. Thanks to the work and generosity of volunteers around the world, Wikipedia has become a living, breathing and ever-evolving record of all human knowledge, accessible online and offline. As the go-to source for facts on any topic from around the globe, Wikipedia was, and still is, the cornerstone of the free web.

Wikipedia is also the last remaining relic of the ideals of the early internet. And as we worry about a future without reliable information that we can all agree upon, Wikipedia is not just an exception. It is the blueprint for restoring public trust in the web again.

This year, as Wikipedia celebrates its 20th birthday, it remains a standout example of how collaboration and collective action can be used to promote facts instead of amplifying misinformation. I believe that there are three main lessons we can learn from Wikipedia’s success to create the internet of the future that we want.

First, we must acknowledge our individual responsibility to the truth. As we discover more about how influential a dozen people can be in spreading disinformation far and wide, Wikipedia highlights the role we each can play in providing good information. Anyone can edit Wikipedia, and that means that hundreds of thousands of people are also involved in the integrity of protecting the knowledge that we find on it.

When the COVID-19 pandemic changed life as we know it, volunteer editors on Wikipedia acted in real-time to combat disinformation and ensure the world had access to science-based health resources, across 188 languages and every continent. Through an open, decentralised model, Wikipedians created unparalleled amounts of accurate, life-saving content.

Wikipedia shows us that rebuilding trust in the internet requires our active participation as users of the internet, as fact-checkers and critical consumers of the information we read.

Once we recognise our role as users in building the future of the internet, the second lesson is that purveyors of news and information, including large technology companies, must create a common agreement about the need for information to be factual, reliable, and up to date. The content you read on Wikipedia is guided by community-created policies that outline common values of neutrality, verifiability, and transparency, policies built by and for volunteer editors.

No matter their political leanings or backgrounds, all of our editors must follow the same standard for fact-checking. Shared norms and policies developed by users can be a powerful tool to combat misinformation and rebuild trust in internet institutions. Social media platforms can learn from this model and can follow suit by adopting more democratic processes.

In recent years, I’ve been encouraged to see several platforms introduce new user-developed policies for combating misinformation, but we can do more. Our users have opinions on how they engage on these platforms and how to effectively build common standards of truth and accuracy. It is time to listen.

Finally, rebuilding trust in the internet depends on transparency. On Wikipedia, I can see every edit to an article; all contributions and discussions about content are part of the public record for anyone to read. This commitment to transparency is a core part of the reason why Wikipedia remains one of the most trusted sites on the internet.

Other platforms can benefit from an increasingly open approach, such as allowing users to see their review processes for flagged content and inviting feedback on proposed policy changes before they are enforced. Social media can incentivise sharing quality information over the number of likes and shares that an individual post receives. Transparency in online spaces will empower internet users to have open, civil debates where we can embrace our differences and be clear about our own personal biases. This creates more productive conversations and will build communities instead of promoting conflict.

This month, Wikipedians around the world came together for the first-ever all-virtual celebration of their work, Wikimania 2021. As thousands of volunteer editors connect across time zones and languages, these moments of collaboration show us how we can use the power of the internet for good. We will achieve this, not as individuals, but as a collaborative movement of knowledge seekers. Together, we can rebuild trust in the internet, and by extension, in each other.

……………………………………………………

Coronavirus origins: US intelligence report ‘inconclusive

A US intelligence report requested by President Biden into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic is inconclusive, US media reports say.

Agencies are reportedly divided on whether the virus – first seen in China – was the result of a natural spillover from animal to human or was caused by a laboratory accident.

An summary of the report is expected to be published in the coming days.

The pandemic has claimed more than four million lives around the world.

While countries have been working to contain the spread of the virus, scientists have been trying to work out from where it first appeared in early 2020 in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

A team from the World Health Organization, who visited Wuhan, concluded in a report earlier this year that the disease most likely spilled over from an animal sold at a market.

But its apparent dismissal of the possibility the virus might have leaked accidentally from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has studied coronaviruses in bats for more than a decade, has been rejected by some scientists.

In May President Biden gave the US intelligence agencies 90 days to assess the data and produce a report that “could bring us closer to a definitive conclusion” on the virus’s origins.

Intelligence that several researchers at the Wuhan lab were hospitalised in November 2019, and China’s refusal to allow a thorough investigation into the lab theory, is said to have prompted Mr Biden’s decision.

However, in June, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines played down hopes of reaching a conclusion, telling Yahoo News: “We’re hoping to find a smoking gun, but it might not happen.”

Many scientists believe it could take years of research before a definitive conclusion on the virus’s origins is reached.

“We should not even be thinking about closing the book or backing off, but rather ratcheting up the effort,” David Relman, a Stanford University microbiologist, told the Washington post.

The intelligence report was delivered to President Biden on Monday. White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said it might take “a couple of days, if not longer, to put together an unclassified version” for the public.

………………………………………………………

UK study suggests vaccine protection waning in first jabbed

London, Aug. 25, (PA Media/dpa/GNA) – The protection provided by two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech and the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccines starts to wane within six months, new research from Britain suggests.

A reasonable worst-case scenario could see protection fall to below 50 per cent for the elderly and healthcare workers by winter, an expert has said.

The Pfizer jab was 88 per cent effective at preventing Covid-19 infection a month after the second dose.

But after five to six months the protection decreased to 74 per cent, suggesting protection fell 14 percentage points in four months, latest analysis from the Zoe Covid study indicates.

With the AstraZeneca vaccine, there was a protection against infection of 77 per cent one month after the second dose.

After four to five months protection decreased to 67 per cent, suggesting protection fell by 10 percentage points over three months.

The study drew on more than 1.2 million test results and participants.

The mid-term efficacy trial by Pfizer observed an initial 96.2 per cent risk reduction in infection (up to two months after the second dose).

There was an 83.7 per cent reduction more than four months after the second dose, a 12.5 percentage point risk reduction.

Real world analysis would be expected to show less protection than clinical trials, and the vaccines were not trialled against the now dominant Delta variant of the virus.

The Zoe Covid Study launched an app feature on December 11, 2020 to enable logging of Covid-19 vaccines and monitor real-world side-effects and effectiveness in its cohort of over a million active users.

Zoe used data from vaccines which were logged from December 8 last year to July 3, 2021 and from infections which occurred between May 26 this year when the Delta variant became dominant, and July 31.

The results have been adjusted to give an average risk of infection reduction across the population.

While protection appears to decrease steadily, individual risk may vary due to individual variation in antibody duration, researchers say.

Across the UK, vaccines were rolled out among the older and the most vulnerable in society along with health workers before rolling out vaccines to younger age groups across the UK.

This means the majority of people who had their second dose five to six months ago will be older or considered vulnerable due to other health reasons.

This suggests these people are now likely to be at increased risk of Covid-19 compared to those vaccinated more recently.

Researchers say that in order to confidently illustrate how vaccine effectiveness changes over time in different age groups, more data is needed over a longer period of time.

Professor Tim Spector, lead scientist on the Zoe Covid Study app, said: “In my opinion, a reasonable worst-case scenario could see protection below 50 per cent for the elderly and healthcare workers by winter.

“If high levels of infection in the UK, driven by loosened social restrictions and a highly transmissible variant, this scenario could mean increased hospitalisations and deaths.

“We urgently need to make plans for vaccine boosters, and based on vaccine resources, decide if a strategy to vaccinate children is sensible if our aim is to reduce deaths and hospital admissions.

“Waning protection is to be expected and is not a reason to not get vaccinated.

“Vaccines still provide high levels of protection for the majority of the population, especially against the Delta variant, so we still need as many people as possible to get fully vaccinated.”

GNA

…………………………………………………………