USA

PLACERVILLE, Calif. (AP) — Dry and windy weather dogged firefighters’ efforts to contain destructive fires that are devouring the bone-dry forests of drought-stricken Northern California on Thursday.

An estimated 11,000 firefighters were on the lines of more than a dozen large wildfires that have destroyed hundreds of homes and other buildings, forced thousands of people to flee communities and filled skies with smoke.

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Authorities combing areas of North Carolina flooded by the remnants of Tropical Storm Fred said Thursday that two people have been found dead and about 20 were unaccounted for.

Meanwhile, Fred — now a post-tropical cyclone — was pushing through New York and New England with drenching rains, and Tropical Storm Henri was sending dangerous waves onto East Coast beaches. Forecasters said Henri will likely strengthen into a hurricane as it approaches the northeastern U.S. early next week.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A standoff in Texas over new voting restrictions that gridlocked the state Capitol for 38 consecutive days ended Thursday when some Democrats who fled to Washington, D.C., dropped their holdout, paving the way for Republicans to resume pushing an elections overhaul.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A North Carolina man who claimed to have a bomb in a pickup truck near the U.S. Capitol surrendered to law enforcement after an hourslong standoff Thursday that prompted a massive police response and the evacuations of government buildings in the area.

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 19 (APP): The United Nations’ draft plan to preserve and protect nature must be amended to put human rights at its centre to ensure the future of life on the planet, David Boyd, UN special rapporteur on human rights and environment, said Thursday.

“Leaving human rights on the periphery is simply not an option, because rights-based conservation is the most effective, efficient, and equitable path forward to safeguarding the planet,” he said in a statement.

“I urge Member States to put human rights at the heart of the new Global Biodiversity Framework.”

HOUSTON, Aug 19 (NNN-AGENCIES) – U.S. crude oil imports decreased, while exports increased, during the week ending Aug 13, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said yesterday.

U.S. crude oil imports averaged 6.35 million barrels per day (b/d) last week, down by about 46,000 b/d from the previous week, while crude oil exports averaged about 3.4 million b/d, up by about 768,000 b/d from the previous week, according to the Weekly Petroleum Status Report.

WASHINGTON, Aug 18 (Reuters) - U.S. troops may stay in Afghanistan past an Aug. 31 deadline to evacuate Americans, President Joe Biden said on Wednesday, and the Pentagon said the U.S. military does not currently have the ability to reach people beyond the Kabul airport.

"If there's American citizens left, we're going to stay until we get them all out," Biden told ABC News in an interview conducted on a day many U.S. lawmakers pressed him to extend the deadline that he had set for a final pullout.

UNITED NATIONS, Aug. 18 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Wednesday that UN peacekeeping must embrace the digital world to deal with evolving threats.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 19 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Ambassador to the United States Qin Gang on Wednesday said that people-to-people relations are essential to the development of U.S.-China ties.

Qin made the remarks during a virtual meeting with old friends of the midwestern state of Iowa Sarah Lande, former executive director of Iowa Sister States, and Kenneth Quinn, former U.S. ambassador to Cambodia, according to a press release posted on the website of the Chinese embassy.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden says even with the Taliban in power in Afghanistan, he sees a greater threat from outposts of al-Qaida and its affiliated groups in other countries, and that it was no longer “rational” to continue to focus U.S. military power there.

“We should be focusing on where the threat is the greatest,” Biden said in an interview that aired on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Thursday.