Several of the 13 American military personnel killed in the suicide bombing at Kabul airport on Thursday were not even a year old when the US invaded Afghanistan in late 2001.
Related: Afghanistan drone strike targeted Islamic State ‘planner’ in car, US says
Continue reading...MyPillow chief gave out election software at South Dakota event derived from Republican challenges in Colorado and Michigan
Republican efforts to question Donald Trump’s defeat in 2020 have led to voting system breaches experts say pose a risk to future elections.
Copies of Dominion Voting Systems softwares used for designing ballots, configuring voting machines and tallying results were distributed at an event this month in South Dakota organized by the MyPillow chief executive, Mike Lindell, a Trump ally who has made unsubstantiated claims about last year’s election.
Continue reading...Two children of assassinated Senator Robert F Kennedy support California decision which may be reversed
Six children of Robert F Kennedy have condemned the decision to grant parole to Sirhan Sirhan, the man who shot and killed the New York senator as he ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968.
Related: 'Something died in America': John Lewis on Robert Kennedy's legacy
Continue reading...The company has vigorously opposed unions in the past and says its ‘partners’ in Buffalo don’t need one now
Fifty Starbucks workers in New York are trying to form a union, which would be the first in the US for the coffee chain if successful.
Last week, the group of workers in the Buffalo area publicly announced their union organizing drive and the formation of their organizing committee, Starbucks Workers United, in a letter to the Starbucks CEO, Kevin Johnson.
Continue reading...When friends and family disagree about getting vaccinated, close ties can fray. Some siblings have even stopped talking to each other
Megan, a 30-year-old from rural Nebraska, feels torn. She hasn’t been vaccinated against Covid-19, but if left to her own devices, things would be different. She worries about what would happen if she caught the virus and passed it on to her toddler daughter, whose history of health complications includes hospitalization for lung problems. Megan feels a responsibility to protect her child. But she also doesn’t want to keep secrets from her husband – who, along with his mother, is adamantly against the vaccine for political reasons. (All names in this story have been changed.)
As she figures out how to protect herself and her daughter without inciting major family conflict, Megan admits that her husband’s reliance on conspiracy theories he learns from like-minded friends or social media posts has made it difficult to trust him. Especially now.
Continue reading...Tens of thousands in US face evacuation orders as storm makes first landfall in Cuba, sparking fears of floods and mudslides
Hurricane Ida rapidly gained strength on Friday evening as communities in southern Louisiana braced for a major category 4 storm with sustained winds of about 140mph and tens of thousands of residents were placed under mandatory evacuation orders.
The hurricane is due to make landfall in the US on Sunday, with officials warning of a “life-altering storm”. The cities of New Orleans and Lafayette, as well as the state capital, Baton Rouge, are under threat from Ida, which is forecast to reach the US somewhere between the parishes of Terrebone and St Mary, slightly west of New Orleans.
Continue reading...Biden administration divided over whether Chinese laboratory incident was source of disease
The US intelligence community failed to resolve sharp debate within the Biden administration over whether a Chinese laboratory incident was the source of Covid-19, US officials said in a report summary on Friday.
The report, issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in response to Joe Biden’s request, said a satisfying answer to the question of how a virus that has killed 4.6 million people worldwide started remained out of reach.
Continue reading...The man who killed Robert F Kennedy was granted parole on Friday after two of the former attorney general, senator and presidential hopeful’s sons spoke in favor of release and prosecutors declined to argue he should be kept behind bars.
Related: 'Something died in America': John Lewis on Robert Kennedy's legacy
Continue reading...Ruling says parents had no legal right to ‘destroy property that they dislike’
A judge in Michigan has ordered a couple to pay $30,441 (£22,100) to their son, for throwing out his pornography collection.
US district judge Paul Maloney’s decision this week came eight months after David Werking, 43, won a lawsuit against his parents.
Continue reading...Joe Biden’s options are limited in short-term as US troops withdraw from Afghanistan in days
American spies and special forces will be able to hunt down those behind Thursday’s suicide bombing in Kabul, although the effort may take years, experts and former CIA officials believe.
Joe Biden vowed on Thursday to avenge the 13 US service members who died in a suicide bomb attack at the Kabul airport, declaring to the extremists responsible: “We will hunt you down and make you pay.”
Continue reading...WHO to ship 100m doses of Sinovac and Sinopharm by the end of next month, while the number of coronavirus patients in US hospitals has breached the 100,000 mark again
Two government advisers have told i news that prime minister Boris Johnson has privately accepted that there could be at least 30,000 further Covid-related deaths in the UK over the next year.
Johnson would reportedly “only consider imposing further restrictions if that figure looked like it could rise above 50,000”, with the government adopting a cost-benefit analysis on whether to impose restrictions which takes into account the economic impact and controversially put the level of acceptable cost to save a life at up to £30,000.
The prime minister is minded to implement another lockdown or new restrictions only if the figure of annual deaths looks like it’s going to go above 50,000. That means deaths from Covid of 137 a day, or just under 1,000 a week.
However, it won’t be an immediate reaction. A sustained rate of death of around a 1,000 a week for two or three weeks will, though, lead to discussion on restrictions being reimposed. Unfortunately, prime ministers have to weigh up the cost of saving lives to the impact on the economy. No one wants to talk about that’s how it works.
Decisions about how much to intervene to improve public health are always difficult for governments. Measures such as vaccinating children against meningitis or imposing speed limits on roads reduce death and disease, but also cost money and limit freedoms.
Finding the balance is one of the hardest decisions for governments, but is essentially what we vote politicians to do. In normal times, it is possible to use calculations of, say, cost per life saved, to provide some framework to guide decisions. In the UK, if an intervention costs less than £30,000 per year of life saved, then it is usually accepted in terms of healthcare.
That’s it from me today. Time to hand over to my colleague, Mattha Busby.
Here’s a brief roundup of what’s been happening over the past 24 hours:
Continue reading...The state is poised to ban mandates next month – even as the threat to young children grows
Sherry Dorathy has long lived in Miami, Arizona, a small, once prosperous copper mining town tucked behind rugged hills and wind-carved rock formations.
A former special education teacher, she’s now the gentle-voiced superintendent of the Miami Unified school district 40. The district, like at least 13 others in the Grand Canyon state, requires students and staffers to wear masks indoors amid Arizona’s dangerous new surge of Covid-19 spurred by the Delta variant.
Continue reading...Joe Biden left with no good options after deadliest day for US troops in Afghanistan in more than a decade
The tempting comparison between the withdrawals of US forces from Kabul in 2021 and Saigon in 1975 has offered diminishing returns over the past 12 days.
Whereas about 7,000 people were evacuated from Vietnam (5,500 Vietnamese civilians and about 1,500 Americans), more than 95,000 people have left Afghanistan in a historic airlift since 14 August, the day before the capital fell to the Taliban.
Continue reading...Analysis: With little sign of big ideas or ambitious proposals, some analysts say vice-president’s trip reflects how little the administration is investing in the region
In October 2013, as the former US president Barack Obama had to cancel his four-nation tour of south-east Asia due to the congressional impasse at home, China’s president Xi Jinping, instead, made the news headlines across the region.
On that trip to Indonesia, Xi proposed to set up an Asian infrastructure investment bank to support the region’s “connectivity”. He and his Indonesian counterpart, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, also announced $32bn of trade and investment deals. Then in Malaysia, Xi and the prime minister, Najib Razak, vowed to strengthen military ties and triple bilateral trade to $160bn by 2017.
Continue reading...The president said the US would 'hunt down' those responsible for the attack on the international airport in Kabul in which more than 60 people were killed, including 12 US military personnel.
Biden said the evacuation of Americans and others from Afghanistan would continue after two suicide bombers and gunmen attacked crowds of Afghans near the airport on Thursday
Continue reading...• Roger Stone also named in suit by six officers in federal court
• Ex-president worked with others to ‘commit acts of … terrorism’
Capitol police officers who were attacked and beaten during the insurrection at the US Congress on 6 January by extremist supporters of Donald Trump filed a lawsuit on Thursday against the former Republican president, his ally Roger Stone and members of far-right extremist groups.
The officers accused them of intentionally sending a violent mob to disrupt the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the November 2020 election.
Continue reading...
US Capitol Police officers who were attacked and beaten during the insurrection at the US Congress on January 6 by extremist supporters of Donald Trump filed a lawsuit on Thursday against the former Republican president, allies such as Roger Stone and members of far-right extremist groups.
Here’s where the day stands so far:
Continue reading...Fire was less than two dozen miles from Lake Tahoe on Wednesday evening, at times burning 1,000 acres of land an hour
A wind-driven wildfire continued to advance towards Lake Tahoe, clouding the alpine vacation and tourist spot on the California-Nevada state line in a sickly yellow layer of smoke.
The Caldor fire on Wednesday evening was less than two dozen miles (37km) from Lake Tahoe, at times burning 1,000 acres (405 hectares) of land an hour.
Continue reading...The region, which long had the lowest rate of income inequality in the US, is shifting to one of haves and have-nots – and it’s happening fast
I’ve long been accustomed to people outside the American west knowing next to nothing about my home state of Montana. Real things people have said to me over the years: is it part of Canada? Overrun with nothing but meth? A mythical place with big skies and nobody but macho cowfolk?
Of course, none of those statements are true. But in the last couple of years, Montana has become a destination among both the traveling and remote-work class – and my home is changing as fast as in any previous western land rush.
Continue reading...The families of some 9/11 victims are still pursuing compensation from those complicit in the attacks – but is Sudan, already ravaged by years of US sanctions, really the right target?
Five months after the terrorist strikes by al-Qaida on 11 September 2001, a lawyer named Ron Motley received a phone call from Deena Burnett, whose husband had been killed in the attack. Thomas Burnett, she explained, had been on one of the hijacked planes. She wanted to ask whether he would help her to find a way to sue those responsible for the attack that claimed her husband.
Two weeks after the call, on 2 March 2002, Motley and a team of lawyers with his firm, Motley Rice, spent a day with the Burnett family at their home in California. They described how, upon realising the plane had been taken over for a suicide mission, Thomas Burnett had led the charge on the cockpit on flight 93. He and his fellow passengers managed to divert the plane from its target – the White House. The cockpit flight recorder captured his now-famous last words before they stormed the hijackers: “We’re going in!” Shortly after, the plane crashed, killing all 44 people on board. Burnett was 38 years old.
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