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California's record rain re-ignites Yosemite's famed 'firefall'
David Williams, CNN • Published 29th October 2021
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Scott Oller says the "firefall" at Horsetail Fall in Yosemite National Park is "one of the most surreal things" he's ever seen. He took this photo on Tuesday, October 26.
(CNN) — Some visitors to Yosemite National Park this week were delighted to see a glowing ribbon of water that looked like molten lava cascade down Horsetail Fall on El Capitan.
Horsetail Fall doesn't usually flow at this time of year, but the recent severe storms that swept through the area brought it surging back to life and created the phenomenon known as a "firefall."

The "firefall" usually occurs on clear evenings in late February when the setting sun shines through the fall at just the right angle. The event is such a big attraction that Yosemite required online reservations earlier this year to limit crowds.
Park officials said in a Facebook post on Monday that the Yosemite Valley got more than 6 inches of rain in a 36-hour period and that a few feet of snow fell at higher elevations.
Edgar Le, who was visiting from Rochester, New York, told CNN it was "extraordinary" to see the "firefall" on Tuesday while hiking near the Yosemite Lodge.
"Like looking at a stream of lava purging down from the top of the El Capitan," he said. "Seeing the Firefall is more than a miracle to me as a landscape photographer."

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Biden's botched Afghan exit is a disaster at home and abroad long in the making
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN
Published 12:24 AM EDT, Mon August 16, 2021

00:58 - Source: CNN
Chaos at Kabul airport as Taliban besiege Afghan capital
CNN — 
The debacle of the US defeat and chaotic retreat in Afghanistan is a political disaster for Joe Biden, whose failure to orchestrate an urgent and orderly exit will further rock a presidency plagued by crises and stain his legacy.

But a stunning Taliban blitzkrieg followed more than 20 years of US and allied policy failures, misunderstandings of Afghan politics and culture, public war fatigue and the culpability and corruption of the failed state's leaders.

And while Biden's political and geopolitical rivals rush to exploit his mistakes, the true magnitude of the crisis can only be judged in the human tragedy of a people again subject to Taliban persecution. And a failure to fulfill the now apparently near-impossible tasks of evacuating all the Afghan translators, workers and fixers on whom the US relied and who now face Taliban retribution would besmirch America's conscience and global reputation.

"It is a stain on our nation's integrity and honor that even just a few months ago, we were not meeting our obligation to the men and women, our Afghan allies who served alongside us," Jake Wood, a former US Marine and Afghan war veteran, told CNN's Pamela Brown on Sunday. "We owe them the special immigrant visas. We owe them safety, every bit as much as we owe safety to our embassy workers in Kabul.

The US launched the Afghan war 20 years ago in a mood of vengeance, resolve and unity, after al Qaeda's attacks on New York and Washington shattered the post-Cold War myth of American hyper power. It is ending it in a rushed race to get out, humbled by a primitive militia, that is nevertheless ready to die for jihad on its home soil and is re-imposing its feudal writ on a war-ravaged nation that bleeds foreign invaders dry.

That a war that killed or maimed thousands of Americans, many more Afghan civilians and cost a trillion dollars, ended so abruptly with such an ignominious eclipse was shocking. But it perhaps should not have been.

Ironically, Biden's mismanagement of the withdrawal from Afghanistan underscored his core point — that US visions of forging a functioning nation were illusory and that many more years of US involvement would not make any difference. The evaporating Afghan forces and police that the US spent billions building up to fight the Taliban mystified many Washington officials. This encapsulated how top military brass and diplomats were misled by their own preconceptions and the investment of years of US blood and treasure, troops surges, drawdowns, diplomatic offensives and arbitrary timelines to leave.