US Representative Seth Moulton is back to a familiar place in the Massachusetts congressional delegation — out there, alone, as he speaks the truth about the chaotic aftermath of President Biden’s decision to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan.“
To say that today is anything short of a disaster would be dishonest,” Moulton said in a statement he also posted on Facebook after the Taliban took over Kabul and scenes of Afghans, desperate to leave their country, took over cable news. When Biden first went on television to defend the withdrawal and blamed the chaos on Afghans who “did not want to leave earlier,” Moulton called out that presidential excuse as “utter BS.” He also told CNN’s Jake Tapper that the hasty withdrawal could lead to more veteran suicides.
Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., and Rep. Peter Meijer, R-Mich flew unannounced into Kabul airport in the middle of the ongoing chaotic evacuation Tuesday, stunning State Department and U.S. military personnel who had to divert resources to provide security and information to the lawmakers, U.S. officials said.
Moulton and Meijer were on the ground at the Kabul airport for several hours. That led officials to complain that they could be taking seats that would have otherwise gone to other Americans or Afghans fleeing the country, but the congressmen said in a joint statement that they made sure to leave on a flight with empty seats.
“As Members of Congress, we have a duty to provide oversight on the executive branch,’” the two said in their statement. “We conducted this visit in secret, speaking about it only after our departure, to minimize the risk and disruption to the people on the ground, and because we were there to gather information, not to grandstand.”
One of the men was shot in the leg and ribs, and officers applied a tourniquet until paramedics got there, police said. He was taken to a hospital in serious condition.
The other man was shot in his right leg and suffered a graze wound to his head, police said. He was taken to a hospital in stable condition.
A third victim, a 21-year-old woman, showed up at a hospital with gunshot wounds to her right leg and left arm, police said.
Police were notified of the shooting by a ShotSpotter alert, which was followed by 911 calls. No arrests have been made.
However, a vaccine mandate for federal employees states that they have to be regularly tested for the virus if they choose not to be vaccinated.
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ContextAs of August 2021, employees of the White House, CDC, FDA, WHO, Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson, were not required to be vaccinated for COVID-19. However, some of these places required regular testing and various precautions for people who did not wish to be vaccinated. Also, both Moderna and Johnson & Johnson have set a deadline of early October for all workers to be vaccinated, unless they have a specific exemption.
PITTSBURGH — Officers with Pittsburgh police, the Bomb Squad, the Hazardous Materials Response Team, and the Spill Truck responded to a school in Squirrel Hill after a suspicious package was reported Tuesday.
Police said the package contained an unknown white powder and was delivered by mail on Monday to the Community Day School in the 6400 block of Forward Avenue.
The package came from outside of the country, police said, and was reported to police at 9 a.m.
Charlie Watts, the self-effacing and unshakeable Rolling Stones drummer who helped anchor one of rock’s greatest rhythm sections and used his “day job” to support his enduring love of jazz, has died, according to his publicist. He was 80.
Watts provided the backbone of the Rolling Stones’ songs for more than half a century.
A man was shot and killed by police in Butler after stabbing an officer Tuesday morning, state police said.
The incident happened in the area of the 300 block of West Jefferson Street, as the officer responded to a 911 call about a man acting erratically and jumping in and out of traffic, state police said.
No information on the officer’s condition was immediately available.
Police have not identified the man who was killed.
The investigation is ongoing. State police said they would discuss the incident at the Butler station at 10:30 a.m.
PITTSBURGH — A woman was hit by a motorcycle that went off the road and onto a sidewalk in Pittsburgh’s Shadyside neighborhood Monday evening.
Police said the driver of the motorcycle was speeding and weaving in and out of traffic on Fifth Avenue near South Aiken Avenue before the crash, which happened just after 6 p.m.
Officers had activated their lights and sirens to pull the motorcyclist over, but before they could even pursue or follow the bike, it jumped up onto the sidewalk and hit the woman as she was walking.
The woman was taken to a hospital in critical condition, police said. Two people who were in the area and have medical training helped her until paramedics arrived.
The man who was driving the motorcycle was taken to a hospital with jaw injuries, police said.
The Pittsburgh Public Schools district’s plan to open for in-person instruction five days a week got a major boost Monday as members of the city’s teachers union ratified a contract that includes a provision giving district officials the power to adjust school start and end times.
The issue became a flashpoint in negotiations as the district sought the ability to modify the times so that school buses could run extra routes in the morning and afternoon — providing transportation to thousands of city students who may have not had a ride to school otherwise — but the union initially fought back against the idea.
“We’re hopeful that the district is able to get many students back in their seats,” Nina Esposito-Visgitis, president of the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers, said in an interview at the union offices on the South Side. “This was a very difficult part of the contract, but we’re hoping to bring lots of students back, and that this will be something that we continue to work on together.”
The contract will now go before the school board Wednesday night for final approval.
Dr. Anthony Fauci walked back his prediction Monday that it will take the United States more than one year to get control of COVID-19.
During an appearance on CNN, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser offered an apology and said he meant to say the goal is actually within reach sooner — the spring of 2022 instead of the fall of next year as he said earlier in the day — but only if people holding out on getting vaccinated decide to get the jab.
“No, Anderson, I have to apologize,” he told anchor Anderson Cooper. “When I listened to the tape, I meant to say the spring of 2022, so I did misspeak. And in the conversation with Mary Louise Kelly, she was saying, when do I think we can get some control? I said if we can get through this winter and get really the overwhelming majority of the 90 million people who have not been vaccinated, vaccinated, I hope we could start to get some good control in the spring of 2022. I didn’t mean the fall. I misspoke, my bad.”
Earlier, on NPR , Fauci made the comment about the fall of 2022. He said it was contingent on widespread vaccinations, a contentious issue lingering more than eight months after the jabs became available to the public, as the more contagious delta variant causes a new spike in cases and health officials push for booster shots.
PITTSBURGH — Two people were injured, including a pedestrian, after a motorcycle crash in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh on Monday.
The incident occurred on Fifth Avenue and South Aiken Avenue around 6:15 p.m.
Police said a motorcycle struck a pedestrian who was walking on the sidewalk. The motorcycle had been traveling at a high rate of speed and weaving in and out of traffic just before the incident, police said.
Officers activated their lights and sirens, but before they could even pursue or follow the motorcycle, the vehicle had jumped up onto the sidewalk and struck a female pedestrian.
(CNN)The US Capitol Police officer who shot and killed pro-Trump rioter Ashli Babbitt on January 6 will not face any disciplinary action, the department said Monday.
“USCP’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) determined the officer’s conduct was lawful and within Department policy, which says an officer may use deadly force only when the officer reasonably believes that action is in the defense of human life, including the officer’s own life, or in the defense of any person in immediate danger of serious physical injury,” the department said in a statement.
The officer will not be named, the department said, out of consideration for the officer’s safety.
“This officer and the officer’s family have been the subject of numerous credible and specific threats,” the department sad.
Democrats fear that if the pandemic or the situation in Afghanistan continues to worsen, their party may lose the confidence of the moderate swing voters who lifted it to victory in 2020.
“We’ve experienced devastating loss of life over the last couple days,” Grant Gillespie, the police and fire chief of Waverly, Tennessee, said in a news conference Sunday evening.
Twenty of those killed in the flooding Saturday were confirmed dead within the city of Waverly, the county seat, a news release from the Humphreys County Emergency Management Agency said. One other was confirmed dead elsewhere in the county.
Local officials revised the number of missing down from an earlier count of 45. Gillespie explained the figure was high because the storm had knocked out cell service, making it difficult for people to reach their loved ones.
In a separate news conference in Nashville, Gov. Bill Lee described a “tremendous loss of life” in Waverly, with “homes washed off their foundations, cars strewn around the community.”
“It is a devastating picture of loss and heartache,” he said.
The director of the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency said his agency had confirmed 16 fatalities but acknowledged the discrepancy with local authorities, saying it was due to the state’s validation process.
“You might see a discrepancy in numbers sometimes, what’s coming from the sheriff or what’s coming from our official reports, and it’s really just a matter of process,” Director Patrick Sheehan said. “What we know is there are a number of people still missing.”
PORTLAND, OR (KPTV) – On the one-year anniversary of demonstrators fighting in downtown Portland, groups again faced off against each other on Sunday.
A group of about 100 gathered at the old K-Mart on Northeast 122nd Avenue and Sandy Boulevard was met by another group around 4 p.m. The latter group of about 50 set off fireworks, smoke bombs and shot paintballs briefly. The crowd then advanced and retreated for about 45 minutes.
Afghan security forces stationed at the Kabul international airport on Monday engaged in a firefight with “unknown attackers” that resulted in the death of one Afghan officer, the German military said on Twitter.
PITTSBURGH — A man is in stable condition in hospital after being stabbed several times during an argument in Pittsburgh’s South Side neighborhood early Sunday.
Police said the incident occurred in the 2200 block of E. Carson Street around 2 a.m. Officers responded to a call for a man who was stabbed, and found him with multiple stab wounds to the upper body.
He was taken to hospital in critical condition, but was upgraded to stable condition shortly before arriving at the hospital.
Witnesses stated the victim was stabbed after an argument. There were no suspect descriptions and the investigation is ongoing.
(CNN)A pair of young brothers had to take control of their SUV and steer themselves to safety when their dad was fatally shot Friday night while driving on a Texas freeway.
Their father, a 29-year-old man, had been driving a Toyota Sequoia on Interstate 10 in Houston with his sons, ages 8 and 6, when he was shot just before 11 p.m., Houston Police Department (HPD) Public Information Officer John Cannon told CNN.
The victim’s sons then steered the SUV off the freeway to a strip mall parking lot where one of the children got out of the car and ran to get help, Cannon said.
Their father was pronounced dead at the scene and both boys were unharmed, he added.
(Zane Storms) Pictured is a teacher at Lehi High who spouted off to her class about former President Donald Trump and the COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2021. Zane Storms, a student in the class, captured the exchange on video.
By Courtney Tanner
| Aug. 19, 2021, 11:34 a.m.
| Updated: Aug. 20, 2021, 11:23 a.m.
A teacher is no longer working at a Utah high school after she was recorded sounding off to her students in a profane speech that jumped from former President Donald Trump to the COVID-19 vaccine, climate change and the LGBTQ community.
The video of her sharing her opinions in front of a class at Lehi High School on Tuesday was shared widely on social media. And by Wednesday morning — the second day of the new school year — Alpine School District in Utah County confirmed that she wasn’t employed there any more.
Spokesman David Stephenson said in a statement that he cannot comment on personnel matters and would not say whether the teacher was fired, only that she was not working there now. She had originally been put on leave Tuesday while the district investigated.
“This behavior is inappropriate, not reflective of the professional conduct and decorum we expect of our teachers, and will not be tolerated,” Stephenson said.
Attempts to reach the teacher were unsuccessful. The Salt Lake Tribune has decided not to name her.
The Tribune confirmed it with one of three students who captured the footage, Zane Storms. The four-minute clip from Storms begins with the teacher telling her students that she would be “super proud” if they got the COVID-19 vaccine.
“We’ll just keep getting variants over and over and over until people get vaccinated. It’s never going to end,” she said. “It could end in five seconds if people would get vaccinated.”
Some of the students push back. Then the teacher starts talking about Trump.
“I hate Donald Trump,” she said. “I’m going to say. I don’t care what you all think. Trump sucks.”
Vice President Kamala Harris chuckled at and cut off a reporter to say that Afghanistan is the administration’s top priority.
Harris, who is currently traveling through South Asia, was asked about the situation in Afghanistan, where the United States and other Western countries have been rapidly working to get their own citizens as well as Afghan refugees out of the country since the Taliban took over.
“Hold on. Hold on. Slow down, everybody,” she said when approached with questions after disembarking from her voyage. “Hahaha. Um, I want to talk about two things. First, Afghanistan — we couldn’t have a higher priority right now.”
The Biden administration, which was slow to address the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan publicly, has sought to protect Americans and Afghan allies from danger after the Taliban quickly and easily rose to power in Afghanistan, the speed of which caught U.S. officials by surprise.
Military and intelligence experts said the Taliban could defeat the Afghan army in a matter of months or years, even though the latter had both greater numbers and nearly two decades of U.S. military training. However, the Taliban were able to capture nearly the entire country during an 11-day offensive.
President Joe Biden is struggling against an intensifying examination of his judgment, competence and even his empathy over the chaotic US exit from Afghanistan. And each attempt the administration makes to quell a furor that’s tarnishing America’s image only provokes more questions about its failures of planning and execution.
While much of the nation has experienced a dramatic increase in murders and other violent crimes, Pittsburgh has seen a 46% rise in shootings that left people injured and a similar percentage jump in homicides over the same time last year.
Perhaps the most alarming statistic to neighborhood activists is the number of young people dying from bullets: nearly one-third of the city’s 41 homicide victims were teens.
One 15-year-old boy was fatally shot on Brookline’s Creedmoor Avenue after several individuals chased him down, witnesses told reporters. Weeks earlier, a 17-year-old boy was followed from an Allentown convenience store and shot five times.
In April, a teenager was shot and killed in a Hill District apartment stairwell where a group of teens were “play fighting” with a gun, court records state. A 15-year-old was taken into custody in the shooting.
“It’s almost traumatizing to see so many young people dying prematurely, especially African-Americans,” said local anti-violence advocate the Rev. Glenn Grayson, who partners with the city on the Reach Initiative, a violence intervention program.
“We’re losing our future, the gifts and talents that could’ve been major contributions to society.”
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A panicked crush of people trying to enter Kabul’s international airport killed seven Afghan civilians in the crowds, the British military said Sunday, showing the danger still posed to those trying to flee the Taliban’s takeover of the country.
The deaths come as a new, perceived threat from the Islamic State group affiliate in Afghanistan has seen U.S. military planes do rapid, diving combat landings at the airport surrounded by Taliban fighters. Other aircraft have shot off flares on takeoff, an effort to confuse possible heat-seeking missiles targeting the planes.
The changes come as the U.S. Embassy issued a new security warning Saturday telling citizens not to travel to the Kabul airport without individual instruction from a U.S. government representative. Officials declined to provide more specifics about the IS threat but described it as significant. They said there have been no confirmed attacks as yet by the militants, who have battled the Taliban in the past.
On Sunday, the British military acknowledged the seven deaths of civilians in the crowds in Kabul. There have been stampedes and crushing injuries in the crowds, especially as Taliban fighters fire into the air to drive away those desperate to get on any flight out of the country.
“Conditions on the ground remain extremely challenging but we are doing everything we can to manage the situation as safely and securely as possible,” the Defense Ministry said in a statement.
On Saturday, British and Western troops in full combat gear tried to control the crowds pressing in. They carried away some who were sweating and pale. With temperatures reaching 34 degree Celsius (93 degrees Fahrenheit), the soldiers sprayed water from a hose on those gathered or gave them bottled water to pour over their heads.
“Listen sir, you need to calm down,” one soldier told a man laying in the dirt, as another gave him an orange liquid. “Calm down.”
It wasn’t immediately clear whether those killed had been physically crushed, suffocated or suffered a fatal heart attack in the crowds. Soldiers covered several corpses in white clothes to hide them from view. Other troops stood atop concrete barriers or shipping containers, trying to calm the crowd. Gunshots occasionally rang out.
Speaking to an Iranian state television channel late Saturday night in a video call, Taliban spokesman Mohammad Naeem blamed the deaths at the airport on the Americans in what quickly became a combative interview.
“The Americans announced that we would take you to America with us and people gathered at Kabul airport,” Naeem said. “If it was announced right now in any country in the world, would people not go?”
JOHNSTOWN, Pa. (WJAC) — A Philadelphia man is facing charges for refusing to wear a mask on an Amtrak train in Johnstown, officials say.
According to charging documents, 22-year-old Damier Bingham faces two misdemeanor charges related to disorderly conduct and delaying a train.
The Amtrak Police Department says the incident happened in June when Bingham refused to comply with the Transportation Security Administration’s mask mandate.
According to the federal requirement, Americans must wear masks while on public transportation to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Charlie Watts, the self-effacing and unshakeable Rolling Stones drummer who helped anchor one of rock’s greatest rhythm sections and used his “day job” to support his enduring love of jazz, has died, according to his publicist. He was 80.
(CNN)At least 21 people are confirmed dead while about 20 others remain missing after severe flooding that swept through Humphreys County in Middle Tennessee, local officials said.
“We’ve experienced devastating loss of life over the last couple days,” Grant Gillespie, the police and fire chief of Waverly, Tennessee, said in a news conference Sunday evening.Twenty of those killed in the flooding Saturday were confirmed dead within the city of Waverly, the county seat, a news release from the Humphreys County Emergency Management Agency said. One other was confirmed dead elsewhere in the county.Local officials revised the number of missing down from an earlier count of 45. Gillespie explained the figure was high because the storm had knocked out cell service, making it difficult for people to reach their loved ones.In a separate news conference in Nashville, Gov. Bill Lee described a “tremendous loss of life” in Waverly, with “homes washed off their foundations, cars strewn around the community.”“It is a devastating picture of loss and heartache,” he said.The director of the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency said his agency had confirmed 16 fatalities but acknowledged the discrepancy with local authorities, saying it was due to the state’s validation process.“You might see a discrepancy in numbers sometimes, what’s coming from the sheriff or what’s coming from our official reports, and it’s really just a matter of process,” Director Patrick Sheehan said. “What we know is there are a number of people still missing.”
PORTLAND, OR (KPTV) – On the one-year anniversary of demonstrators fighting in downtown Portland, groups again faced off against each other on Sunday.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A panicked crush of people trying to enter Kabul’s international airport killed seven Afghan civilians in the crowds, the British military said Sunday, showing the danger still posed to those trying to flee the Taliban’s takeover of the country.
