North America

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A towering statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia, is set to come down on Wednesday, more than 130 years after it was built as a tribute to a Civil War hero who is now widely seen as a symbol of racial injustice, state officials said Monday.

“Virginia’s largest monument to the Confederate insurrection will come down this week,” Gov. Ralph Northam said in news release on Monday. “This is an important step in showing who we are and what we value as a commonwealth.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — Jill Biden is going back to her whiteboard.

After months of teaching writing and English to community college students in boxes on a computer screen, the first lady resumes teaching in person Tuesday from a classroom at Northern Virginia Community College, where she has worked since 2009.

She is the first first lady to leave the White House and log hours at a full-time job.

“There are some things you just can’t replace, and I can’t wait to get back in the classroom,” she recently told Good Housekeeping magazine.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden will survey damage in parts of the northeast that suffered catastrophic flash flooding from the remnants of Hurricane Ida, and use the muddy backdrop to call for federal spending to fortify infrastructure so it can better withstand such powerful storms.

Biden is set o tour Manville, New Jersey, and the New York City borough of Queens on Tuesday.

BOSTON (AP) — Over two decades, the United States and its allies spent hundreds of millions of dollars building databases for the Afghan people. The nobly stated goal: Promote law and order and government accountability and modernize a war-ravaged land.

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. (AP) — Connor Jones sunbathed with his dog on the otherwise empty beach at Ski Run Marina on Monday, as residents trickling back into town filled up their cars at a gas station behind him and employees of a water sports rental company docked jet skis and boats they had anchored away from the shores of Lake Tahoe to prevent them from igniting from wildfire.

He and others living in the resort city of South Lake Tahoe breathed a collective sigh of relief on Sunday when officials downgraded a mandatory evacuation order put in place a week ago to a warning.

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 05 (APP): A United Nations-sponsored international aid conference will convene in Geneva on Sept. 13 to help avert what U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres called a “looming humanitarian catastrophe”.

“We need the international community to stand together and support the Afghan people,” the UN chief has said in a post on Twitter, adding he would seek a swift scale-up in funding for humanitarian relief.

WASHINGTON, Sept 6 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The US economy added fewer jobs than expected in August as employment rose by 235,000.

The figure was well down on the 1.05 million jobs created in July, adding to fears that the recovery from the pandemic may be running out of steam.

Despite the disappointing hiring levels, the unemployment rate fell to 5.2% in August from 5.4% in July.

Economists say rising infections caused by the Delta variant have hit spending on travel, tourism and hospitality.

NEW YORK, Sept 6 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Hurricane Ida’s death toll continued to rise with many in the US Northeast holding out hope for people missing in the floodwaters, while nearly 600,000 customers in Louisiana still lacked power a week after the storm made landfall.

Ida slammed into Louisiana on Aug 29 as a powerful Category 4 hurricane with sustained winds of 240kmh. The latest death toll there rose to at least 13 people on Sunday.

WASHINGTON, Sept 6 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday condemned the "politically motivated conviction and shameful sentencing" of Belarusian opposition figures Maria Kolesnikova and Maxim Znak.

"These sentencings are further evidence of the regime’s total disregard for the human rights and fundamental freedoms of the people of Belarus," Blinken said in a statement.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Divers at the site of an ongoing oil spill that appeared in the Gulf of Mexico after Hurricane Ida have identified the apparent source as one-foot diameter pipeline displaced from a trench on the ocean floor and broken open.

Talos Energy, the Houston-based company currently paying for the cleanup, said in a statement issued Sunday evening that the busted pipeline does not belong to them.