ATLANTA — Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms issued an executive order Wednesday requiring masks to be worn in all public places while indoors.

According to a release from the mayor's office, the mandate requires a face mask or cloth covering over a person's nose and mouth while indoors at a public place, including private businesses and establishments in the City of Atlanta. [snip]

“Public health experts overwhelmingly agree, and data has proved, that wearing a face covering helps slow the spread of this deadly virus,” Mayor Bottoms said. “As COVID-19 rates increase, we must remain vigilant, wear a mask, follow CDC guidelines and other measures to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our communities.” [snip]

Meanwhile, Gov. Brian Kemp also announced earlier Wednesday that Georgia will not lockdown and he will not be issuing a statewide mask mandate.

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms criticized Georgia Republican Governor Brian Kemp for prohibiting mask and COVID-19 vaccine mandates statewide for buisnesses, WSB-TV reported on Friday.

Bottoms, a Democrat, said that the order is nothing but politics.

"We're entering political season, and we'll see political theatrics," she said. "But when it comes to this pandemic, that's not sound decision-making. I can't begin to make sense of it. I can't make sense of it last year and I can't make sense of it this year."

On Thursday, Kemp signed an executive order banning vaccine and mask mandates for businesses amid a highly transmissible Delta variant.

Aug 19 (Reuters) - The United States and other Western powers are pressing on with the evacuation from Afghanistan of their nationals and some of their Afghan staff from Kabul airport, from where about 8,000 people have been flown out since Sunday, a Western security official said.

There would be no conditions put on the withdrawal, Mr. Biden told the men, cutting off the last thread — one that had worked with Mr. Trump — and that Mr. Austin and General Milley hoped could stave off a full drawdown.

They were told, Zero meant zero.

In that moment, the war — which had been debated across four presidents, prosecuted with thousands of commando raids, cost 2,400 American fatalities and 20,000 injured, with progress never quite being made — began its final chapter. It will be over, Mr. Biden has promised, by the 20th anniversary of the attacks that stunned the world and led to more than 13,000 airstrikes.

How this last chapter of the American adventure in Afghanistan will end is a story that remains to be written.

PSBlaw @BregmanPs
Replying to @itsJeffTiedrich
And what Pompeo discussed with the new leader Mullah Baradar when they met in Qatar after the election. This may be why they blocked Biden s transition team from getting access to state dept material.
2:39 PM · Aug 17, 2021

But early in the week, word came from the Pentagon that the Biden team would have no engagement with defense intelligence agencies until it had submitted questions in advance and listed the names of the people with whom it wanted to interact.

At that point, the Biden team's requests would be reviewed by the Defense Department's general counsel and Kash Patel, the Trump loyalist appointed to lead the Pentagon's transition last month amid President Donald Trump's purge of civilian leadership at the department. [snip]

"[Director of National Intelligence John] Ratcliffe was hot. He saw it as insubordination," the former intelligence official said. "It was his authority as DNI to set the stage for and processes of the transition." [snip]

Trump appointed Patel and Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the acting under secretary of defense for intelligence and security, to their posts as part of a slew of major changes at the Pentagon, where he has jettisoned much of the civilian leadership in recent weeks, replacing them with political loyalists as his administration winds to a close.

David Rothkopf @djrothkopf

I hear some commentators saying Biden didn't explain why events unfolded as they did. But he did. They just don't want to hear the reasons he gave...that the Afghan military and government provided zero resistance and rejected taking steps to enable earlier evacuations.
4:35 PM · Aug 16, 2021

Vincent Lee @Rover829

https://twitter.com/Rover829/status/1427354474159513608
Bloomberg: Afghan and Taliban negotiators reached a deal for a 2-week ceasefire in exchange for President Ashraf Ghani’s resignation and the start of talks on setting up a transitional government. But it collapsed when Ghani fled the country, sources say

[image]
Afghan Cease-Fire Deal Struck in Doha Collapsed After Ghani Fled
The weeks leading up to Kabul’s collapse saw a flurry of diplomatic activity by the U.S. and its allies in Qatar aimed at heading off exactly the chaotic scenes in the Afghan capital that have so...
bloomberg.com

3:40 PM · Aug 16, 2021