Afghan Fear Complete Taliban Takeover

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Young people who have spoken against Taliban rule in Afghanistan or who adopted lifestyles that don’t fit the fundamentalist regime say they fear for their livelihoods and lives as the insurgent group gains more territory. “We live in very critical and dangerous circumstances right now,” said Murtaza Ahmadi, a writer, part-time teacher and government employee. “The Afghan government is losing power and authority across the country while the Taliban are gaining,” he said. “Thousands of people are leaving Afghanistan because they think the Taliban are slowly gaining power all over the country and they don’t trust the Afghan government.” Since international troops startedmore

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Schumer: US Senators Will ‘Get the Job Done’ on Infrastructure

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The Senate convened for a rare weekend session on Saturday, with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer encouraging the authors of a bipartisan infrastructure plan to finish writing their nearly $1 trillion bill so that senators can begin offering amendments.Several senators had predicted that the text of the bill would be ready for review late Friday or early Saturday, but it was not done when the Senate opened for business late in the morning. Nor was it ready when Schumer came to the floor in the early evening.“I’ve been informed the group is working hard to bring this negotiation to a conclusion,more

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US Eviction Ban Set to Expire With 6.5M Households Behind on Payments 

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A pandemic-related U.S. government ban on residential evictions was set to expire at midnight Saturday, putting millions of American renters at risk of being forced from their homes.On Friday, the U.S. House of Representatives adjourned without reviewing the tenant protections after a Republican congressman blocked a bid to extend it by unanimous consent until October 18. Democratic leaders said they lacked sufficient support to put the proposal to a formal vote.The U.S. Senate was in session Saturday, but leaders gave no indication they would consider extending the eviction ban. The White House has made clear it will not unilaterally extendmore

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Evictions Looming in US as Congress Fails to Extend Ban

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A nationwide eviction moratorium is set to expire Saturday after President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress worked furiously but ultimately failed to align on a long-shot strategy to prevent millions of Americans from being forced from their homes during a COVID-19 surge.More than 3.6 million Americans are at risk of eviction, some in a matter of days, as nearly $47 billion in federal housing aid to the states during the pandemic has been slow to make it into the hands of renters and landlords owed payments.Tensions mounted late Friday as it became clear there would be no resolution inmore

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Trump Urged Justice Officials to Declare Election ‘Corrupt,’ Notes Say

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President Donald Trump urged senior Justice Department officials to declare the results of the 2020 election “corrupt” in a December phone call, according to handwritten notes from one of the participants in the conversation.”Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen,” Trump said at one point to then-Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, according to notes taken by Richard Donoghue, who was then Rosen’s deputy and who was also on the call.The notes of the December 27 call, released Friday by the House Oversight Committee, underscore the lengths to which Trump went tomore

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IRS Must Give Trump Tax Returns to Congress, Justice Department Says

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The Justice Department, in a reversal, says the Treasury Department must provide former President Donald Trump’s tax returns to the House Ways and Means Committee, apparently ending a long legal showdown over the records.  In a memo dated Friday, Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel said the committee chairman “has invoked sufficient reasons for requesting the former president’s tax information” and that under federal law, “Treasury must furnish the information to the committee.” The 39-page memo is signed by Dawn Johnsen, installed by the Biden administration as the acting head of the legal counsel office. FILE – Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin testifies onmore

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Trump Election Pressure Memo Disclosed; Lawmakers to Get His Tax Returns 

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Former President Donald Trump suffered a pair of setbacks Friday when the Justice Department cleared the way for the release of his tax records and also disclosed a memo showing he urged top officials to falsely claim his election defeat was “corrupt.”Handwritten notes taken by Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue in December and released Friday by the chair of the House of Representatives Oversight and Reform Committee paint a damning picture of Trump as he desperately sought to get the department to take the unprecedented step of intervening to try to upend his 2020 election loss.Hours later, the departmentmore

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Afghan Biker Climbs Mountain for Education’s Uphill Battle

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Farid Noori was teaching online from the United States to high school students in Kabul, Afghanistan, when a bomb attack started.“At that very moment,” Noori said, “I had an online, remote class on Afghanistan’s environment with some of the school’s students. One of my students got injured. As days went by, the death toll climbed to 100, mostly schoolgirls, making this one of the deadliest attacks in Kabul’s history.”At least 90 students were killed and 275 others were injured May 8 at Sayed Ul Shuhada high school, mostly girls and mostly Hazara, an ethnic minority often the target of Islamicmore

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Biden, Centrist Lawmakers Reach Infrastructure Deal

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U.S. President Joe Biden and a group of centrist Republican and Democratic senators said Wednesday they had reached agreement on a new U.S. infrastructure spending package after weeks of wrangling over the details of what to include and how to pay for it.The White House declared that the roughly $1 trillion package, including $550 billion in new allocations, would add about 2 million jobs to the U.S. economy each year for a decade. Many of those will be in construction work to repair the country’s deteriorating roads and bridges, build new broadband connections in rural areas of the U.S. andmore

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Largest US Employer to Pay Workers’ Tuition

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The largest private employer in the U.S. — Walmart — said Wednesday it will pay 100% of tuition and books for its U.S.-based employees to attend its Live Better U Education Program.  Walmart, a worldwide retailer that typically offers low prices because of the volume of goods it trades, operates 5,342 retail outlets in the U.S., employing 1.6 million people. Internationally, it has 2,653 stores in Mexico, 435 in China, 408 in Canada, 377 in Chile, 29 in India, and 5 in Nigeria, as well as outlets in at least 15 other countries, according to its website. Overseas it employsmore

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US Justice Department Warns States Over Post-Election Audits

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The U.S. Justice Department is warning states that are conducting or considering audits of the 2020 election that they may be using procedures that violate federal protections against voter intimidation and other statutes.     The warning comes as Arizona Republicans continue a controversial review of the 2020 vote count in the state’s largest county while Republican officials in four other battleground states where former President Donald Trump lost to President Joe Biden are pursuing similar efforts.     “Election audits are exceedingly rare,” the Justice Department said in new guidance on post-election audits issued on Wednesday. “But the Departmentmore

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US Senators Reach Deal on Major Points of Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill

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U.S. Senate negotiators to a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill have reached agreement on the major components of the measure, Republican Senator Rob Portman told reporters on Wednesday. That could clear the way for the legislation to begin moving through the Senate following months of talks. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said a procedural vote on a bipartisan bill was possible as soon as Wednesday night. FILE – U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer attends a news conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, July 20, 2021.”Senators continue to make good progress,” Democrat Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor. Republicanmore

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GOP’s Jake Ellzey Wins US House Seat Over Trump-backed Rival

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Republican Jake Ellzey of Texas won a U.S. House seat on Tuesday night over rival backed by Donald Trump, dealing the former president a defeat in a test of his endorsement power since leaving office. Ellzey’s come-from-behind victory over Republican Susan Wright, the widow of the late Rep. Ron Wright, in a special congressional election runoff near Dallas is likely to be celebrated by Trump antagonists who have warned against his continued hold on the GOP. Ellzey was carrying more than 53% of the vote in Texas’ 6th Congressional District with results from almost all precincts reported. Ellzey is a Republican state legislator who finishedmore

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‘This Was a Coup’: Police Officers Describe Capitol Riot to US Lawmakers

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Warning: This TV package includes a soundbite from Tuesday’s congressional hearing that contains profane and racist language.U.S. lawmakers heard emotional testimony from four members of law enforcement Tuesday as a special panel met for the first time to investigate the events of the January 6 attempt by Trump supporters to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson reports the panel will probe former President Donald Trump’s role in the riot.Produced by: Katherine Gypson   …

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Biden Accuses Russia of Already Interfering in 2022 Election

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Russia is already interfering in next year’s midterm U.S. elections, President Joe Biden said Tuesday in a speech at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).  Referencing the day’s classified briefing prepared by the intelligence community for him, Biden said: “Look at what Russia’s doing already about the 2022 election and misinformation.” Such actions by Moscow are a “pure violation of our sovereignty,” the president said, without elaborating, in remarks to about 120 representatives of the U.S. intelligence community who gathered in northern Virginia at the ODNI headquarters.  Biden’s public reference to something contained in that day’s top secretmore

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Four US Police Officers Grippingly Describe January 6 Attack on US Capitol

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Four U.S. police officers told a congressional investigating committee in tearful, gripping detail on Tuesday how an angry mob of supporters of then-President Donald Trump rampaged into the U.S. Capitol last January 6 in a futile attempt to block certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in last November’s presidential election.The officers – two on the U.S. Capitol Police force and two with the Washington city police department — said they feared for their lives as about 800 rioters stormed past outmanned law enforcement authorities, taunted them with racial and political epithets, fought hand-to-hand with police, sprayed chemical irritants at themmore

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Former US Senator Enzi of Wyoming Dies After Bicycle Accident

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Retired U.S. Senator Mike Enzi, a Wyoming Republican known as a consensus-builder in an increasingly polarized Washington, has died. He was 77. Enzi died Monday surrounded by family and friends, former spokesman Max D’Onofrio said. Enzi had been hospitalized with a broken neck and ribs after a bicycle accident near Gillette on Friday. He was stabilized before being flown to a hospital in Colorado but remained unconscious, D’Onofrio said. Enzi fell near his home about 8:30 p.m. Friday, family friend John Daly said, around the time Gillette police received a report of a man lying unresponsive in a road near a bike. Police havemore

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US Infrastructure Legislation Stalls

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A group of centrist U.S. senators remained deadlocked Monday on trying to reach agreement on a $1.2 trillion infrastructure package to repair the country’s deteriorating roads and bridges and boost funding for broadband internet service.The Republican and Democratic lawmakers had hoped to finalize their plan but still had not reached agreement for specific funding totals for public transit, water projects, highways and broadband improvements for rural parts of the country.A month ago, President Joe Biden announced basic agreement with the senators on the plan, but negotiations have lingered on the details of the spending and how to pay for it.Biden,more

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Pelosi Names 2nd Republican to January 6 US Capitol Riot Probe

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Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, on Sunday named a second Republican, Congressman Adam Kinzinger, to the select committee to investigate the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by hundreds of supporters of then-President Donald Trump.   Kinzinger, an Illinois lawmaker, joins Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney, both of them vocal critics of Trump, on the panel, which is set to start hearing testimony on Tuesday. The panel is investigating the chaos that occurred as lawmakers were certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in last November’s election to become the country’s 46th president.more

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Republicans May Leave the Democrats Holding the Bag on Raising the Debt Ceiling

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As lawmakers on Capitol Hill struggle to advance a bipartisan bill to invest in the country’s critical infrastructure, the most powerful Republican in Washington signaled that his party’s cooperation with Democrats has limits.Specifically, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Wednesday that he does not expect members of his party to support a measure authorizing the government to borrow the money it will need to meet its obligations later this year.Because the amount of debt the U.S. Treasury can issue is capped by statute, whenever Congress approves spending that exceeds revenues – which it has done with every budget sincemore

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Malawi Begins Classes in World’s First 3D-Printed School

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Adifu Maulana quit school in 2014 to escape punishment she often received for arriving late.She had to walk 7 kilometers to attend classes held under a tree because of Malawi’s shortage of classrooms.But thanks to what is being called the world’s first 3D-printed school, constructed by joint-venture group 14Trees, Maulana has resumed learning. The Swiss-British group says the fast construction of computer-built schools could help alleviate a shortage of classrooms in countries like Malawi.Maulana said she is happy because she can realize her dreams of becoming a teacher. The school is near now, she said, so she won’t arrive latemore

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Biden Condemns Cuba for Crackdown on Freedom Protesters 

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U.S. President Joe Biden assailed the Cuban government Thursday for its crackdown on freedom protesters on the island nation and imposed sanctions on the head of the Cuban military and the internal security division that led the attacks on demonstrators.“I unequivocally condemn the mass detentions and sham trials that are unjustly sentencing to prison those who dared to speak out in an effort to intimidate and threaten the Cuban people into silence,” Biden said in announcing the sanctions.”The Cuban people have the same right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly as all people,” Biden said. “The United States standsmore

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