Thursday, August 19 top stories
It is Thursday, August 19. Here are today’s top stories.
Today at the Library of Congress in D.C., a man in a black pickup truck that was parked in front of the building called police and said he had a bomb.
There were many dollar bills thrown out from the side of the truck.
The building and several others near the Capitol were evacuated. Several snipers were photographed nesting in the grass with their scopes trained on the truck while police negotiators talked with the man.
The man in the truck, 49-year-old Floyd Ray Roseberry from North Carolina, went LIVE on Facebook. He said he had five canisters of real gunpowder with him. He challenged President Joe Biden to call him or come out here and talk with him.
This afternoon, police said the suspect surrendered to police.
Tropical Storm Fred is blamed for heavy rainfall in western North Carolina that killed two people. About 20 people are missing.
A river in Haywood County rose to over 19 feet and destroyed many homes and mobile home parks. Over 10 bridges were damaged or destroyed.
Tropical Storm Henri is currently spinning in the Atlantic Ocean and is forecast to intensify into a Category 1 hurricane with a path that may take it towards the Cape Cod and New England area late this weekend. Weather forecasters are warning of heavy rain, strong winds, and flooding in the New England area.
It is very rare for a hurricane to hit New England with the last one being Hurricane Bob in 1991.
A study at the University of Oxford found that fully vaccinated people who contract the Delta variant of Covid-19 in breakthrough infections carry a similar viral load as unvaccinated people who become infected with Delta. Scientists said this means that the concept of “herd immunity” from Covid-19 may not be realistic because those who are vaccinated can still transmit the virus. However, this is important -- the study showed that those who were vaccinated had better protection against becoming infected in the first place and protection against severe illness. Those who are unvaccinated are more at risk of becoming infected and becoming severely ill or dying. That’s the difference.
The study was based on U.K. government data on over 380,000 people who tested positive for Covid-19 between December and May of this year.
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President Joe Biden stood by his decision to quickly withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan in an interview with ABC News. Biden admitted there was a disaster at the Kabul airport several days ago with people being crushed by and falling off military planes, but said he doesn’t know how you can leave without chaos ensuing.
Biden put a lot of blame on the former Afghanistan government and military. See this interview clip.
[Video clip]
Biden: When you had the government of Afghanistan, the leader of that government, get in a plane and taking off and going to another country, when you saw the significant collapse of the Afghan troops we had trained — up to 300,000 of them — just leaving their equipment and taking off, that was, you know, I’m not — that’s what happened. That’s simply what happened.”
Today is the Afghan Independence Day to mark the end of British rule in 1919, and the Taliban is celebrating it by declaring victory over the U.S. But some Afghans are using the day to protest the Taliban.
The New York Times said there was one pro-Afghanistan demonstration with about 200 people in it that was violently broken up by the Taliban. In another protest in another city, the Taliban opened fire and killed several people who were protesting and waving the Afghanistan flag.
The New York Times said many Afghans who are trying to reach the airport face threats from the Taliban who have set up checkpoints on the road. Most at risk are those who used to work with U.S. and NATO forces.
Videos on social media show that there is a frantic, panicked rush of people, including women and children, who are trying to get past the Kabul airport’s walls and to evacuate as armed men block them. Another video showed U.S. soldiers picking up a baby from a crowd and carrying it over a wall.
At least 12 people have died at the airport due to gunfire or stampedes. The U.S. said they can’t provide safe passage to get to the airport — they can only secure the airport itself.
The U.S. State Department said there are 6,000 Afghans with fully processed visas that are waiting at the airport.
That is all the top stories for today. See you tomorrow and stay with the light.
https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1428098017496682503
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/08/19/world/taliban-afghanistan-news
https://apnews.com/article/courts-library-of-congress-171ea9c45873a98f0edb3b9a22997daf
https://twitter.com/ryanjreilly/status/1428395576157249541
https://weather.com/news/news/2021-08-18-north-carolina-flooding-tropical-storm-fred