Tuesday, August 31 top stories
It is Tuesday, August 31. Here are today’s top stories.
On Monday afternoon, the U.S. military announced it has completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan with the last C-17 plane leaving the Kabul airport.
This photograph shows the last U.S. service member to leave Afghanistan soil during the nearly 20-year war.
General Kenneth McKenzie Jr. said in an address yesterday that they couldn’t get out the remaining Americans in the country. He said the U.S. was in touch with some of them and was ready to bring them on the planes, but that the Americans didn’t make it to the airport.
He said the last five planes to leave had no American (civilians) in it.
The Kabul airport is now under the control of the Taliban. News videos showed Taliban leaders and Taliban fighters on the tarmac. The Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said America was defeated. He said they are now fully independent and want to have good relations with the rest of the world.
Sec. of State Antony Blinken said he believes there are between 100 to 200 Americans who are still in Afghanistan that want to leave. He said the U.S. would still help them but that the evacuation process won’t be easy or fast.
Today House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif) called on President Biden and Democrats to come up with a plan to evacuate the remaining Americans still in Afghanistan.
President Joe Biden gave an address from the White House this afternoon. He said the withdrawal process was “successful” because over 120,000 people were evacuated. He said the U.S. has been reaching out to Americans in Afghanistan to warn about the withdrawal since March. Biden put some of the blame for Taliban’s strength on former President Donald Trump’s deal that released 5,000 Taliban prisoners. Biden said the U.S. would help the remaining Americans get out if they wanted to. He said he couldn’t imagine another way to evacuate from Afghanistan and to end the “forever” war.
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On Friday, a 27-year-old man in Vancouver, Washington was found guilty of murdering a 17-year-old transgender girl named Nikki Kuhnhausen.
Prosecutors said the man, David Bogdanov, strangled Nikki with a phone charger cable in 2019 after he found out she was a transgender while they engaged in sexual contact in the back seat of his car. He then dumped her body down a mountain and fled to Ukraine for six weeks.
Bogdanov’s defense team said he tried to use the cable to pull the girl’s shoulder so she couldn’t reach his gun, but the cable slipped to her neck.
A jury found Bogdanov guilty of second-degree murder and a hate-crime offense. He faces 11 to 19 years in prison at sentencing.
A white Chicago police officer was seen on a bystander video physically grabbing and wrestling with a Black woman who was walking her small dog on a Chicago lakefront park after midnight on Saturday. The video shows that the officer struggled with the woman for about two minutes before they went their separate ways. There was no arrest.
Attorneys for the woman, Nikkita Brown, said the officer violently attacked her for no reason and that the officer was obviously racially profiling her.
The Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown said he directed that the officer be placed on desk duty while they investigate what happened.
The Chicago Office of Police Accountability (COPA) said they recommended that the officer be relieved of his police powers or be placed on administrative duties during the course of his investigation.
Here are updates with the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, which struck Louisiana as a Category 4 storm on Sunday.
A highway bridge in Mississippi collapsed on Monday night and several cars fell into a 20-foot deep hole. Sadly, two people died and 10 were injured. Police said the bridge was likely damaged from flooding due to the hurricane.
nola.com reported that a 71-year-old man in Slidell may have been killed by an alligator that grabbed him when he went outside to check his shed. His wife said she saw that the alligator had him in a death roll and bit off his arm. The wife said when she went to get help, the husband’s body disappeared. Police are investigating.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards warned that some areas of southwest Louisiana could be without power for over a month.
That is all the top stories for today. See you tomorrow and stay with the light.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4975236/house-gop-leader-calls-plan-remaining-americans-afghanistan
https://twitter.com/AJEnglish/status/1432676101210398728
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1278012
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/chicago-officer-desk-duty-struggle-black-woman-79740910
https://www.nola.com/news/article_474367d0-0a04-11ec-a07a-f3b6d310d9f5.html