US airstrike targets Islamic State member in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON (AP) — Acting swiftly on President Joe Biden’s promise to retaliate for the deadly suicide bombing at Kabul airport, the U.S. military said it used a drone strike to kill a member of the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate Saturday.

The strike came amid what the White House called indications that IS planned to strike again as the U.S.-led evacuation from Kabul airport moved into its final days. Biden has set Tuesday as his deadline for completing the exit.

Biden authorized the drone strike and it was ordered by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, a defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to provide details not yet publicly announced.

The airstrike was launched from beyond Afghanistan less than 48 hours after the devastating Kabul attack that killed 13 Americans and scores of Afghans with just days left in a final U.S. withdrawal after 20 years of war. U.S. Central Command provided few details; it said it believed its strike killed no civilians.

The speed with which the U.S. military retaliated reflected its close monitoring of IS and years of experience in targeting extremists in remote parts of the world. But it also shows the limits of U.S. power to eliminate extremist threats, which some believe will have more freedom of movement in Afghanistan now that the Taliban is in power.

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American forces keep up airlift under high threat warnings

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — American forces working under heightened security and threats of another attack pressed ahead in the closing days of the U.S.-led evacuation from Afghanistan after a devastating suicide bombing, and U.S. officials said they had killed a member of the extremist group that the United States believes responsible for it.

A U.S. drone strike early Saturday in eastern Afghanistan killed a member of the country’s Islamic State affiliate, U.S. Central Command said. President Joe Biden has laid responsibility for Thursday’s suicide bombing on that offshoot extremist group which is an enemy both to the West and to Afghanistan’s Taliban and is known for especially lethal attacks.

The death toll in Thursday’s suicide bombing rose to 169 Afghans, a number that could increase as authorities examine fragmented remains, and 13 U.S. service members.

U.S. Central Command said American officials believed the militant killed in Saturday’s drone strike had been involved in planning strikes against the United States in Kabul, and that there were no other known casualties.

The U.S. retaliation comes amid a steady flow of grim warnings from the White House and the Pentagon that there could be more extremist attacks targeting U.S. forces ahead of President Joe Biden’s fast-approaching deadline Tuesday to end the airlift and withdraw American personnel.

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‘We can’t do enough’: Lawmakers flooded by evacuation pleas

WASHINGTON (AP) — Tissue holders sit atop the conference table where the congressman’s aides field frantic requests from constituents desperate for help in getting friends and loved ones out of Afghanistanbefore it’s too late.

The stories have poured in by the thousands with heartbreaking pleas not to be left behind.

The tissues are used for crying breaks, one of the aides explained.

“The hardest part is just the sense of helplessness,” said Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif. “We’re seeing all of this, you know, anxiety, and we can’t do enough.”

Across the county, the offices of members of Congress have become makeshift crisis centers, flooded with requests for help getting people onto one of the last flightsleaving the Kabul airport before President Joe Biden’s Tuesday deadline for the withdrawal of all U.S. military forces out of Afghanistan.

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Ida aims to hit Louisiana on Hurricane Katrina anniversary

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Hurricane Ida struck Cuba on Friday and threatened to slam into Louisiana with devastating force over the weekend, prompting evacuations in New Orleans and across the coastal region.

Ida intensified rapidly Friday from a tropical storm to a hurricane with top winds of 80 mph (128 kph) as it crossed western Cuba and entered the Gulf of Mexico. The National Hurricane Center predicted Ida would strengthen into an extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane, with top winds of 140 mph (225 kph) before making landfall along the U.S. Gulf Coast late Sunday.

“This will be a life-altering storm for those who aren’t prepared,” National Weather Service meteorologist Benjamin Schott said during a Friday news conference with Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards.

The governor urged residents to quickly prepare, saying: “By nightfall tomorrow night, you need to be where you intend to be to ride out the storm.”

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell ordered a mandatory evacuation for a small area of the city outside the levee system. But with the storm intensifying so much over a short time, she said it wasn’t possible to do so for the entire city. That generally calls for using all lanes of some highways to leave the city.

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RFK assassin moves closer to freedom with help of 2 Kennedys

SAN DIEGO (AP) — California’s parole board voted Friday to free Robert F. Kennedy’s assassin after two of RFK’s sons said they supported releasing him and prosecutors declined to argue he should be kept behind bars. But the governor ultimately will decide if Sirhan Sirhan leaves prison.

Douglas Kennedy was a toddler when his father was gunned down in 1968. He told a two-person board panel that he was moved to tears by Sirhan’s remorse and that the 77-year-old should be released if he’s not a threat to others.

“I’m overwhelmed just by being able to view Mr. Sirhan face to face,” he said. “I’ve lived my life both in fear of him and his name in one way or another. And I am grateful today to see him as a human being worthy of compassion and love.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has spoken in favor of his release in the past wrote in favor of paroling Sirhan. He said in the letter that he met him in prison and was moved by Sirhan “who wept, clinching my hands and asked for forgiveness.”

“While nobody can speak definitively on behalf of my father, I firmly believe that based on his own consuming commitment to fairness and justice, that he would strongly encourage this board to release Mr. Sirhan because of Sirhan’s impressive record of rehabilitation,” he said in a letter submitted during the hearing to the board.

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House panel seeks records from tech companies in riot probe

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House panel investigating the riot at the U.S. Capitol issued sweeping document requests on Friday to social media companies, expanding the scope of its investigation as it seeks to examine the events leading to the Jan. 6 insurrection.

The requests were issued to technology giants, including Google, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok, and also to Reddit, Parler, Telegram, 4chan, 8kun and other platforms.

The committee asked 15 companies to provide copies of any reviews, studies, reports or analysis about misinformation related to the 2020 election, foreign influence in the election, efforts to stop the election certification and “domestic violent extremists” associated with efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including the attack on the Capitol.

“We have received the request and look forward to continuing to work with the committee,” Facebook said in an emailed statement.

Google, which owns YouTube, also confirmed receipt of the letter and said it would work with Congress. “The events of January 6 were unprecedented and tragic, and Google and YouTube strongly condemn them. We’re committed to protecting our platforms from abuse, including by rigorously enforcing our policies for content related to the events of January 6,” the company said.

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Young dad-to-be was among 13 US troops killed in Afghanistan

A young husband with a child on the way. Another man who always wanted to be in the military. A man who planned to become a sheriff’s deputy when his deployment ended. Heartwrenching details began emerging Friday about some of the 13 U.S. troops killed in a horrific suicide bombingat Afghanistan’s Kabul airport, which also claimed the lives of more than 160 Afghans.

Eleven Marines, one Navy sailor and one Army soldier were among the dead, while 18 other U.S. service members were wounded in Thursday’s bombing, which was blamed on Afghanistan’s offshoot of the Islamic State group.The U.S. said it was the most lethal day for American forces in Afghanistan since 2011. The White House said President Joe Biden will look for opportunities to honor the servicemembers who lost their lives, many of whom were men in their early 20s.

Here are the stories of some of the victims and the people who are mourning them:

RYLEE McCOLLUM, 20

Rylee McCollum, a Marine and native of Bondurant, Wyoming, was married and his wife is expecting a baby in three weeks, his sister, Cheyenne McCollum, said.

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3 groups of students freed in Nigeria in 24-hour period

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Authorities in northern Nigeria announced three separate groups of kidnapped students were freed within a 24-hour period, prompting speculation late Friday that large ransoms had been paid to the gunmen blamed for a spate of recent abductions.

Among those now free are some of the youngest children ever taken hostage in Nigeria, a group of 90 pupils who had spent three months in captivity. Hours after those youngsters were brought to the Niger state capital, police in Zamfara state said that 15 older students also had been freed there.

Then late Friday, word came of a third hostage liberation in Kaduna state. Thirty-two more of the students taken from a Baptist high school in early July also had been freed, according to the Rev. Joseph Hayab, chairman of the Kaduna state chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria.

The wave of releases comes after more than 1,000 students have been kidnapped since December, according to an AP tally. While earlier school abductions had been blamed on Islamic extremists in the northeast, authorities have only said that bandits are behind the latest kidnappings for ransom.

“The happiness can’t be quantified,” said Yahya Aliyu Babangida, 54, a teacher whose two children aged 7 and 17 were among those who had been kidnapped from the Salihu Tanko Islamic School in Tegina in late May.

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US intelligence still divided on origins of coronavirus

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. intelligence agencies remain divided on the origins of the coronavirus but believe China’s leaders did not know about the virus before the start of the global pandemic, according to results released Friday of a review ordered by President Joe Biden.

According to an unclassified summary, four members of the U.S. intelligence community say with low confidence that the virus was initially transmitted from an animal to a human. A fifth intelligence agency believes with moderate confidence that the first human infection was linked to a lab. Analysts do not believe the virus was developed as a bioweapon and most agencies believe the virus was not genetically engineered.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a statement Friday that China “continues to hinder the global investigation, resist sharing information and blame other countries, including the United States.” Reaching a conclusion about what caused the virus likely requires China’s cooperation, the office said.

The cause of the coronavirus remains an urgent public health and security concern worldwide. In the U.S., many conservatives have accused Chinese scientists of developing COVID-19 in a lab and allowing it to leak. State Department officials under former President Donald Trump published a fact sheet noting research into coronaviruses conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, located in the Chinese city where the first major known outbreak occurred.

The scientific consensus remains that the virus most likely migrated from animals in what’s known as a zoonotic transmission. So-called “spillover events” occur in nature, and there are at least two coronaviruses that evolved in bats and caused human epidemics, SARS1 and MERS.

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Brazil water survey heightens alarm over extreme drought

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — The Brazilian scientists were skeptical. They ran different models to check calculations, but all returned the same startling result.

The country with the most freshwater resources on the planet steadily lost 15% of its surface water since 1991. Gradual retreat in the Brazilian share of the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland, left water covering just one-quarter the area it did 30 years ago.

And the data only went through 2020 — before this year’s drought that is Brazil’s worst in nine decades.

“When we got the first results, we wondered if there was a problem in the equations,” said Cassio Bernardino, a project manager for environmental group WWF-Brazil, which took part in the survey along with Brazilian universities and local partners like the Amazon Environmental Research Institute, plus international collaborators including Google and The Nature Conservancy. They used artificial intelligence to parse some 150,000 satellite images measuring the surface of lakes, rivers, marshes and all surface water across Brazil.

The figures checked out, and the MapBiomas data published this week has heightened an existing sense of alarm. The ongoing drought has already boosted energy costs and food prices, withered crops, rendered vast swaths of forest more susceptible to wildfire and prompted specialists to warn of possible electricity shortages. President Jair Bolsonaro on Thursday said hydroelectric dam reservoirs are “at the limit of the limit.”