AP News in Brief at 11:02 p.m. EDT

Afghans plead for faster US evacuation from Taliban rule

WASHINGTON (AP) — Educated young women, former U.S. military translators and other Afghans most at-risk from the Taliban appealed to the Biden administration to get them on evacuation flights as the United States struggled on Wednesday to bring order to the continuing chaos at the Kabul airport.

President Joe Biden and his top officials said the U.S. was working to speed up the evacuation, but made no promises how long it would last or how many desperate people it would fly to safety “We don’t have the capability to go out and collect large numbers of people,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters, adding that evacuations would continue “until the clock runs out or we run out of capability.”

Afghans in danger because of their work with the U.S. military or U.S organizations, and Americans scrambling to get them out, also pleaded with Washington to cut the red tape that they say could strand thousands of vulnerable Afghans if U.S. forces withdraw as planned in the coming days.

“If we don’t sort this out, we’ll literally be condemning people to death,” said Marina Kielpinski LeGree, the American head of a nonprofit, Ascend. The organization’s young Afghan female colleagues were in the mass of people waiting for flights at the airport in the wake of days of mayhem, tear gas and gunshots.

The U.S. has rushed in troops, transport planes and commanders to secure the airport, seek Taliban guarantees of safe passage, and ramp up an airlift capable of ferrying between 5,000 and 9,000 people a day.

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US health officials call for booster shots against COVID-19

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. health officials Wednesday announced plans to dispense COVID-19 booster shots to all Americans to shore up their protection amid the surging delta variant and signs that the vaccines’ effectiveness is slipping.

The plan, as outlined by the chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other top health authorities, calls for an extra dose eight months after people get their second shot of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine. The doses could begin the week of Sept. 20.

“Our plan is to protect the American people, to stay ahead of this virus,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said as the agency cited a raft of studies suggesting that the vaccines are losing ground while the highly contagious variant spreads.

People who received the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine will also probably need extra shots, health officials said. But they said they are waiting for more data.

Officials said that before any booster program starts up, the Food and Drug Administration and a CDC advisory panel would need to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of an extra dose.

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Taliban militants violently disperse rare Afghan protest

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Taliban militants attacked protesters Wednesday in Afghanistan who dared to take down their banner and replace it with the country’s flag, killing at least one person and fueling fears about how the insurgents would govern this fractious nation.

While the Taliban have insisted they will respect human rights, unlike during their previously draconian rule, the attack in Jalalabad came as many Afghans were hiding at home or trying to flee the country, fearful of abuses by the loosely controlled militant organization. Many people have expressed dread that the two-decade Western experiment to remake Afghanistan will not survive the resurgent Taliban, who took control of the country in a blitz that took just days.

Taliban leaders talked Wednesday with senior Afghan officials about a future government. In a potential complication to any effort to stabilize the country, the head of the country’s central bank warned that American sanctions over the Taliban’s designation as a terrorist organization threatened Afghanistan’s economy, which already is dangerously low on hard foreign currency.

One figure who was not at the talks in Kabul: Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who fled as the Taliban closed in on the capital. The United Arab Emirates acknowledged Wednesday that the Gulf nation had taken him and his family in on humanitarian grounds.

In an early sign of protest to the Taliban’s rule, dozens gathered in the eastern city of Jalalabad and a nearby market town to raise the tricolor national flag, a day before Afghanistan’s Independence Day, which commemorates the 1919 treaty that ended British rule. They lowered the Taliban flag — a white banner with an Islamic inscription — that the militants have raised in the areas they captured.

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Desperation, pressure for aid increase in Haiti after quake

LES CAYES, Haiti (AP) — Pressure for a coordinated response to Haiti’s deadly weekend earthquake mounted Wednesday as more bodies were pulled from the rubble and the injured continued to arrive from remote areas in search of medical care. Aid was slowly trickling in to help the thousands who were left homeless.

International aid workers on the ground said hospitals in the areas worst hit by Saturday’s quake are mostly incapacitated and that there is a desperate need for medical equipment. But the government told at least one foreign organization that has been operating in the country for nearly three decades that it did not need assistance from hundreds of its medical volunteers.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Ariel Henry said Wednesday that his administration will work to not “repeat history on the mismanagement and coordination of aid,” a reference to the chaos that followed the country’s devastating 2010 earthquake, when the government was accused of not getting all of the money raised by donors to the people who needed it.

In a message on his Twitter account, Henry said that he “personally” will ensure that the aid gets to the victims this time around.

The Core Group, a coalition of key international diplomats from the United States and other nations that monitors Haiti, said in a statement Wednesday that its members are “resolutely committed to working alongside national and local authorities to ensure that impacted people and areas receive adequate assistance as soon as possible.”

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Misread warnings helped lead to chaotic Afghan evacuation

WASHINGTON (AP) — The warnings were clear: The Afghan government would likely fall once U.S. troops pulled out. But intelligence agencies and ultimately President Joe Biden missed how quickly it would happen, losing weeks that could have been used for evacuations and spurring a foreign policy crisis.

Without a sense that the country could collapse so quickly, the administration heard out Afghan President Ashraf Ghani when he met face-to-face with Biden in June. Biden says Ghani pressed him to hold off on any urgent evacuation of Americans, arguing that it would be inviting the Taliban to advance more quickly — as it turned out they did anyway— and telling the Afghan army to give up.

It was an ask that Biden heeded, despite more than a decade of deep-rooted skepticism of the competence of the Afghan government and military, marred by widespread corruption and mismanagement.

Biden on Wednesday blamed Ghani for fleeing the country and Afghan forces for surrendering so easily to the Taliban. He told ABC News that he believed the problems with the withdrawal were inevitable.

“The idea that somehow, there’s a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, I don’t know how that happens,” he said.

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With no beds, hospitals ship patients to far-off cities

MISSION, Kan. (AP) — Many overwhelmed hospitals, with no beds to offer, are putting critically ill COVID-19 patients on planes, helicopters and ambulances and sending them hundreds of miles to far-flung states for treatment.

The surge in the delta variant of the virus, combined with low vaccination rates, has pushed hospitals to the brink in many states and resulted in a desperate scramble to find beds for patients.

The issue is that large hospitals in urban areas already were running short of space and staff with non-COVID procedures like cancer biopsies and hip replacements when the summer surge started. That means they have very few free beds to offer to patients from small rural hospitals without ICUs or from medical centers in virus hotspots.

“Just imagine not having the support of your family near, to have that kind of anxiety if you have someone grow acutely ill,” said Steve Edwards, CEO of CoxHealth, whose hospital in Springfield, Missouri, is treating patients from as far away as Alabama.

Hospitals across the U.S. had more than 75,000 coronavirus patients as of last week, a dramatic increase from a few weeks ago but still well below the winter surge records. However, Florida, Arkansas, Oregon, Hawaii, Louisiana and Mississippi all have set pandemic records for COVID hospitalizations in recent weeks.

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Judge rejects charges for Hawaii officers in teen’s killing

HONOLULU (AP) — A Hawaii judge on Tuesday rejected murder and attempted murder charges against three Honolulu police officers in the fatal shooting of a teenager, preventing the case from going to trial.

District Court Judge William Domingo, in a ruling from the bench, said there was no probable cause that the officers committed the crimes they were accused of.

He noted the teenager, 16-year-old Iremamber Sykap, led the officers on a high-speed chase immediately before the April 5 shooting, refusing commands to stop. He said the incident only ended after the Sykap was shot and the car fell into a canal.

Honolulu prosecutors filed charges against the three officers after a grand jury declined to indict them. It’s the first time in more than 40 years that a Honolulu police officer has been charged in a fatal shooting.

Officer Geoffrey Thom was charged with murder. Prosecutors said he fired 10 rounds at Sykap through the rear window of the car after it stopped at an intersection. Officers Zackary Ah Nee and Fredeluces, who also opened fire, were charged with second-degree attempted murder.

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Fires harming California’s efforts to curb climate change

POLLOCK PINES, Calif. (AP) — Record-setting blazes raging across Northern California are wiping out forests central to plans to reduce carbon emissions and testing projects designed to protect communities, the state’s top fire official said Wednesday, hours before a fast-moving new blaze erupted.

Fires that are “exceedingly resistant to control” in drought-sapped vegetation are on pace to exceed the amount of land burned last year — the most in modern history — and having broader effects, said Thom Porter, chief of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Hours after Porter spoke, a grass fire spurred by winds up to 30 mph (48 kilometers per hour) swiftly burned dozens of homes, forced the evacuation of schools and threatened the city of Clearlake about 80 miles north of San Francisco.

Rows of homes were destroyed on at least two blocks and television footage showed crews dousing burning homes with water. Children were rushed out of an elementary school as a field across the street burned.

Lake County Sheriff Brian Martin issued a warning of “immediate threat to life and property.”

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Years in the making, R. Kelly sex abuse trial gets underway

NEW YORK (AP) — R&B star R. Kellyis a predator who lured girls, boys and young women with his fame and dominated them physically, sexually and psychologically, a prosecutor said Wednesday, while a defense lawyer warned jurors they’ll have to sift through lies from accusers with agendas to find the truth.

The differing perspectives came as the long-anticipated trial began unfolding in a Brooklyn courtroom where several accusers were scheduled to testify in the next month about the Grammy-winning, multiplatinum-selling singer whose career has been derailed by charges that have left him jailed as he goes broke.

Jerhonda Pace, the first government witness, told jurors Wednesday that she was a 16-year-old virgin and a member of Kelly’s fan club when he invited her to his mansion in 2010. He immediately told her to take off her clothing, Pace said.

“He asked me to continue to tell everyone I was 19 and act like I was 21,” she said. Kelly responded “that’s good” when she revealed her virginity, said that he wanted to “train her” sexually and ordered her to call him “Daddy,” she said.

They continued to see each other for another six months, with Kelly growing more and more controlling and erupting in violence when she broke what she called “Rob’s rules.” One time he grew so angry, “He slapped me and choked me until I passed out,” she said with no hint of emotion.

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Report: Census hit by cyberattack, US count unaffected

U.S. Census Bureau computer servers were exploited last year during a cybersecurity attack, but it didn’t involve the 2020 census, and hackers’ attempts to keep access to the system were unsuccessful, according to a watchdog report released Wednesday.

The attack took place in January 2020 on the bureau’s remote access servers.

According to the Office of Inspector General, the Census Bureau missed opportunities to limit its vulnerability to the attack and didn’t discover and report the attack in a timely manner. The statistical agency also failed to keep sufficient system logs, which hindered the investigation, and was using operating system no longer supported by the vendor, the watchdog report said.

The bureau’s firewalls stopped the attacker’s attempts to maintain access to the system through a backdoor, but unauthorized changes were still made, including the creation of user accounts, the report said.

In a written response, acting Census Bureau director Ron Jarmin reiterated that none of the systems used for the 2020 census were compromised, nor was the nation’s once-a-decade head count affected in any way.