US troops surge evacuations out of Kabul but threats persist

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. military pulled off its biggest day of evacuation flights out of Afghanistan by far on Monday, but deadly violence that has blocked many desperate evacuees from entering Kabul's airport persisted, and the Taliban signaled they might soon seek to shut down the airlifts.

Twenty-eight U.S. military flights ferried about 10,400 people to safety out of Taliban-held Afghanistan over 24 hours that ended early Monday morning, and 15 C-17 flights over the next 12 hours brought out another 6,660, White House officials said. The chief Pentagon spokesman, John Kirby, said the faster pace of evacuation was due in part to coordination with Taliban commanders on getting evacuees into the airport.

“Thus far, and going forward, it does require constant coordination and deconfliction with the Taliban,” Kirby said. “What we've seen is, this deconfliction has worked well in terms of allowing access and flow as well as reducing the overall size of the crowds just outside the airport.”

With access still difficult, the U.S. military went beyond the airport to carry out another helicopter retrieval of Americans. U.S. officials said a military helicopter picked up 16 American citizens Monday and brought them onto the airfield for evacuation. This was at least the second such rescue mission beyond the airport; Kirby said that last Thursday, three Army helicopters picked up 169 Americans near a hotel just beyond the airport gate and flew them onto the airfield.

President Joe Biden's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said at the White House that talks with the Taliban are continuing as the administration looks for additional ways to safely move more Americans and others into the Kabul airport.

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US regulators give full approval to Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. gave full approval to Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine Monday, potentially boosting public confidence in the shots and instantly opening the way for more universities, companies and local governments to make vaccinations mandatory.

The Pentagon promptly announced it will press ahead with plans to force members of the military to get vaccinated amid the battle against the extra-contagious delta variant. The University of Minnesota likewise said it will require its students get the shot, as did Louisiana's major public universities, including LSU, though state law there allows broad exemptions.

More than 200 million Pfizer doses have been administered in the U.S. under emergency provisions — and hundreds of millions more worldwide — since December. In going a step further and granting full approval, the Food and Drug Administration cited months of real-world evidence that serious side effects are extremely rare.

President Joe Biden said that for those who hesitated to get the vaccine until it received what he dubbed the “gold standard” of FDA approval, “the moment you’ve been waiting for is here.”

“Please get vaccinated today,” he said.

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Survivors grapple with aftermath of deadly Tennessee flood

WAVERLY, Tenn. (AP) — Anna Mays woke up in a panic attack Monday, thinking she was back in the rising floodwater.

Two days ago, she had been clinging for her life to the front door of her duplex in rural Tennessee as the water inched up to her neck. Her brother was hanging onto a tree.

Then Mays realized where she was: The gym at the Waverly Church of Christ, now her temporary home alongside other victims of record-breaking rain Saturday that sent floodwaters surging through the region, killing at least 22 people.

Her story has become a familiar one in Humphreys County, and particularly the small town of Waverly. Large swaths of the community are suddenly displaced, sorting through difficult decisions about what comes next even as they relive the horror of what just happened.

“This morning I was having a panic attack and thought I was in water, and I was trying to get that way and trying to get this way. I was just scared half to death," said Mays, who doesn't know how to swim. "I was just, something woke me up and I thought I was in the water, and — I never have seen — I’ve seen it on TV, but I’ve never have seen it like it in life, where cars was going by.”

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Taliban takeover prompts fears of a resurgent al-Qaida

WASHINGTON (AP) — The lightning-fast changes in Afghanistan are forcing the Biden administration to confront the prospect of a resurgent al-Qaida, the group that attacked America on Sept. 11, 2001, at the same time the U.S. is trying to stanch violent extremism at home and cyberattacks from Russia and China.

With the rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces and rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, “I think al-Qaida has an opportunity, and they’re going to take advantage of that opportunity," says Chris Costa, who was senior director for counterterrorism in the Trump administration.

“This is a galvanizing event for jihadists everywhere.”

Al-Qaida's ranks have been significantly diminished by 20 years of war in Afghanistan, and it's far from clear that the group has the capacity in the near future to carry out catastrophic attacks on America such as the 9/11 strikes, especially given how the U.S. has fortified itself in the past two decades with surveillance and other protective measures.

But a June report from the U.N. Security Council said the group's senior leadership remains present inside Afghanistan, along with hundreds of armed operatives. It noted that the Taliban, who sheltered al-Qaida fighters before the Sept. 11 attacks, “remain close, based on friendship, a history of shared struggle, ideological sympathy and intermarriage.”

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Harris to offer vision for Indo-Pacific in major speech

SINGAPORE (AP) — U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris is preparing to lay out the Biden administration’s vision for the Indo-Pacific region, an area of growing importance to a government that has made countering China’s influence globally a centerpiece of its foreign policy.

The address Tuesday morning at Singapore’s iconic Gardens by the Bay waterfront park is an opportunity for the former state attorney general and U.S. senator to prove her fluidity with diplomatic and security issues.

Harris' remarks also come during a critical moment for the United States as the Biden administration seeks to further solidify its pivot towards Asia while America’s decades-long focus on the Middle East comes to a messy end with the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Harris will speak about security, economic partnerships and global health in the region, said a White House official who requested anonymity to preview the speech. She also will emphasize the need for a free and open Indo-Pacific — an implicit contrast with Beijing, whose incursions in the disputed South China Sea have raised alarms among some nations in the region.

Aides say Harris' remarks are likely to echo and expand upon those she delivered at the U.S. Naval Academy graduation in June, where she described a world that is “interconnected," “interdependent” and “fragile.”

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Oregon, once a virus success story, struggles with surge

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Oregon was once the poster child for limiting the spread of the coronavirus, after its Democratic governor imposed some of the nation’s strictest safety measures, including mask mandates indoors and outdoors, limits on gatherings and an order closing restaurants.

But now the state is being hammered by the super-transmissible delta variant, and hospitals are getting stretched to the breaking point. The vast majority of hospitalized COVID-19 patients are unvaccinated.

The intensive care unit at Salem Hospital in Oregon’s capital city is completely full, with 19 of the 30 beds occupied last week by COVID-19 patients, the youngest only 20 years old. It's the same at a hospital in Roseburg, a former timber town in western Oregon. A COVID-19 patient died in its emergency room last week while waiting for an ICU bed to open, an event that was deeply distressing to the medical staff.

“We need your help, grace and kindness,” the staff of CHI Health Medical Center said on Facebook. They are reeling “from the extraordinary onslaught of new cases and hospitalizations."

Oregon is among a handful of states, including Florida, Arkansas and Louisiana, that have more people hospitalized with COVID-19 than ever before.

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Moderates bring House to standstill in Biden budget clash

WASHINGTON (AP) — Brushing past moderates, House Democratic leaders tried to muscle President Joe Biden's multitrillion-dollar budget blueprint over a key hurdle Monday night, hoping to shelve for now an intraparty showdown that risks upending their domestic infrastructure agenda.

Tensions rose as lawmakers returned for the evening session and a band of moderate lawmakers threatened to withhold their votes for the $3.5 trillion plan. They were demanding the House first approve a $1 trillion package of road, power grid, broadband and other infrastructure projects that’s already passed the Senate.

But as the evening dragged on the chamber came to a standstill and plans were thrown into flux as leaders and lawmakers huddled privately at the Capitol trying to broker an agreement.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi implored Democrats during a private caucus not to bog down and miss this chance to deliver on the promises Biden and the party have made to Americans.

“Right now, we have an opportunity to pass something so substantial for our country, so transformative we haven’t seen anything like it,” Pelosi said, according to a person who requested anonymity to disclose the private comments.

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Proud Boys leader who burned BLM flag gets 5 months in jail

The leader of the Proud Boys extremist group was sentenced to more than five months in jail on Monday for burning a Black Lives Matter banner that was torn down from a historic Black church in downtown Washington and bringing two high-capacity firearm magazines into the nation's capital days shortly before the Jan. 6 riot.

Enrique Tarrio told the court he was “profusely” sorry for his actions, calling them a “grave mistake.”

“What I did was wrong,” Tarrio said during the hearing held via videoconference.

Tarrio, from Miami, was arrested as he arrived in Washington two days before thousands of supporters of then-President Donald Trump — including members of the Proud Boys — descended on the U.S. Capitol and disrupted the certification of the Electoral College vote. Tarrio was ordered to stay away from Washington, and law enforcement later said Tarrio was picked up in part to help quell potential violence.

Authorities say Proud Boys members stole the banner that read #BLACKLIVESMATTER from the Asbury United Methodist Church on Dec. 12 and then set it ablaze using lighter fluid and lighters. Tarrio posted a picture of himself holding an unlit lighter to his Parler account and admitted days later in an interview with The Washington Post that he joined in the burning of the banner.

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Hochul to become NY's first female governor as Cuomo exits

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Kathy Hochul was set to become the first female governor of New York at the stroke of midnight, taking control of a state government desperate to get back to business after months of distractions over sexual harassment allegations against Andrew Cuomo.

The Democrat from western New York was to be sworn in as governor in the first minutes of Tuesday in a brief, private ceremony overseen by the state’s chief judge, Janet DiFiore.

Her ascent to the top job will be a history-making moment in a capital where women have only recently begun chipping away at what was long a male-dominated political culture.

Cuomo submitted a letter late Monday to the leaders of the state Assembly and Senate saying his resignation was effective at midnight. He announced he was quitting two weeks ago, saying he wanted to avoid a likely impeachment battle.

On his final day in office, Cuomo released a pre-recorded farewell address in which he defended his record over a decade as New York’s governor and portrayed himself as the victim of a “media frenzy.”

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US WWII veteran reunites with Italians he saved as children

BOLOGNA, Italy (AP) — For more than seven decades, Martin Adler treasured a black-and-white photo of himself as a young American soldier with a broad smile with three impeccably dressed Italian children he is credited with saving as the Nazis retreated northward in 1944.

On Monday, the 97-year-old World War II veteran met the three siblings — now octogenarians themselves — in person for the first time since the war.

Adler held out his hand to grasp those of Bruno, Mafalda and Giuliana Naldi for the joyful reunion at Bologna's airport after a 20-hour journey from Boca Raton, Florida. Then, just as he did as a 20-year-old soldier in their village of Monterenzio, he handed out bars of American chocolate.

“Look at my smile,’’ Adler said of the long-awaited in-person reunion, made possible by the reach of social media.

It was a happy ending to a story that could easily have been a tragedy.

© 2021 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved., source Canadian Press DataFile