North America

WASHINGTON (AP) — White House officials are outlining plans to build and restore more than 2 million homes, a response to the volcanic rise in housing prices over the past year.

Millions of Americans are getting priced out of ownership or stuck spending the bulk of their income on rent. The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller 20-city home price index climbed a record 19.1% in June from a year ago, as too few homes are available to buy and low interest rates have enabled affluent buyers and real estate investors to pay more for homes.

31 Aug 2021; MEMO: A former US ambassador to Israel has joined President Joe Biden's team working on Iran, exposing Israel's very deep influence in Washington. Dan Shapiro served as ambassador under the administration of former President Barack Obama.

31 Aug 2021; MEMO: Canada said on Tuesday it would resettle some 5,000 Afghan refugees evacuated by the United States as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government addresses an issue critics say has been neglected during his campaign for re-election, Reuters reported.

"We know there is more to do with allied evacuation operations ending," Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino told a briefing. "We're pulling out all the stops to help as many Afghans as possible who want to make their home in Canada."

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Ukrainian leader who found himself ensnarled in Donald Trump’s first impeachment comes to Washington on Wednesday to see a new U.S. president, seeking increased military aid and backing for his country’s bid for NATO membership.

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. (AP) — Flames raced across treetops and through drought-stricken vegetation as firefighters scrambled Wednesday to keep a growing California wildfire from reaching a resort city at the southern tip of Lake Tahoe after evacuation orders were expanded to neighboring Nevada.

Thick smoke from the Caldor Fire enveloped the city of South Lake Tahoe, which was all but deserted during a summer week usually bustling with tourists.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Louisiana residents still reeling from flooding and damage caused by Hurricane Ida scrambled for food, gas, water and relief from the sweltering heat as thousands of line workers toiled to restore electricity and officials vowed to set up more sites where people could get free meals and cool off.

Power and water outages affected hundreds of thousands of people, many of them with no way to get immediate relief.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A defensive President Joe Biden called the U.S. airlift to extract more than 120,000 Americans, Afghans and other allies from Afghanistan to end a 20-year war an “extraordinary success,” though more than 100 Americans and thousands of others were left behind.

Twenty-four hours after the last American C-17 cargo plane roared off from Kabul, Biden spoke to the nation and vigorously defended his decision to end America’s longest war and withdraw all U.S. troops ahead of an Aug. 31 deadline.

WASHINGTON, Aug 31 (APP): Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States, Asad Majeed Khan, has urged the international community to facilitate the Taliban and other Afghan parties to come to a common understanding and form an inclusive government in a bid to stabilize the situation in Afghanistan.

CHICAGO, Aug 31 (NNN-XINHUA) – Students of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) went back to schools yesterday, after 18 months of online studying, since the COVID-19 pandemic erupted.

CPS is preparing for hundreds of thousands of students to head back to classrooms, the first complete resumption of in-person learning, since the pandemic forced classes to go online in Mar, 2020, Chicago Tribune reported yesterday.

WASHINGTON, Aug 31 (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department has raised its travel advisory alert for Canada to a "level  3 – reconsider travel" status amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, it said in a statement on Tuesday.

The department, along with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on Monday warned against travel to Switzerland, among other countries because of rising cases of the novel coronavirus.