North America

SACO, Maine (AP) — Angry over being fired, a former employee slashed the tires of his boss’ vehicle and still held the knife when police officers arrived.

Three officers positioned themselves at a safe distance as the man yelled and ranted. One officer had a stun gun, another a handgun.

The third used the most important tool — a willingness to talk.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Meeting with the leaders of India, Australia and Japan, President Joe Biden declared Friday that the U.S. and other members of the Indo-Pacific alliance known as “the Quad” are showing they “know how to get things done” in an increasingly complicated corner of the globe.

Biden and his fellow leaders— Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga — are all grappling with a rising China that Biden has accused of coercive economic practices and unsettling military maneuvering.

REDDING, Calif. (AP) — Firefighters hope shifting winds and cooling temperatures over the next few days will aid their efforts to battle a destructive wildfire in a drought-stricken forest in California’s far north that has displaced thousands of people and burned at least 100 structures.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Taliban’s takeover of Kabul has deepened the mutual distrust between the U.S. and Pakistan, two putative allies who have tangled over Afghanistan. But both sides still need each other.

With the Biden administration looking for new ways to stop terrorist threats in Afghanistan, it will likely look again to Pakistan, which remains critical to U.S. intelligence and national security because of its proximity to Afghanistan and connections to the Taliban leaders now in charge.

NEW YORK (AP) — Two Canadians detained in China on spying charges were released from prison and flown out of the country on Friday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, just after a top executive of Chinese communications giant Huawei Technologies reached a deal with the U.S. Justice Department over fraud charges and flew to China.

NEW YORK (AP) — Prime Minister Imran Khan sought to cast Pakistan as the victim of American ungratefulness and an international double standard in his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Friday.

In a prerecorded speech aired during the evening, the Pakistani prime minister touched on a range of topics that included climate change, global Islamophobia and “the plunder of the developing world by their corrupt elites” — the latter of which he likened to what the East India Company did to India.

DEL RIO, Texas (AP) — No migrants are left at a Texas border encampment, about a week after nearly 15,000 people — most of them Haitians — huddled in makeshift shelters hoping for the chance to seek asylum.

Some will get that chance, while the others will be expelled to their homeland. The Department of Homeland Security planned to continue flights to Haiti throughout the weekend, ignoring criticism from Democratic lawmakers and human rights groups who say Haitian migrants are being sent back to a troubled country that some left more than a decade ago.

NEW YORK, Sep 24 (APP): Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Friday met the Foreign Minister of Japan, Motegi Toshimitsu, on the sidelines of the 76th session of the UN General Assembly in New York.

The two Foreign Ministers exchanged views on bilateral relations between Pakistan and Japan as well as on other issues of mutual interest including the situation in Afghanistan.

24 Sep 2021; MEMO: The window is still open to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal but won't be forever, a senior US official said yesterday, saying Iran has yet to name a negotiator, set a date for talks or say whether it would resume where they left off in June, Reuters reports.

Washington was prepared to be patient, the US official told reporters, but said at some point Iran's nuclear advances would overtake the deal and the United States and its partners would have to decide whether Iran was willing to revive it.

LOS ANGELES, Sept 24 (NNN-Xinhua) — An explosive wildfire in northern California expanded to 4.9 square km in 24 hours, triggering multiple mandatory evacuation orders, under which over 4,000 residents fled from their homes.

Dubbed Fawn Fire, the fire started some 19 km north of Redding city on Wednesday night, burned wildly Thursday afternoon and threatened Redding city, which has a population of 100,000, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire).