USA

WASHINGTON, Mar 21 (APP): Khalid Payenda, who resigned as Afghanistan’s finance minister days before Kabul fell to the Taliban and now drives Uber taxi around Washington, has said that the country had 20 years and the whole world’s support to build a system that would work for the people, but “We miserably failed.”

According to a report in The Washington Post, Payenda, 40, who oversaw a $6 billion budget in his homeland but fled as the country teetered on the verge of collapse, also works as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University.

WASHINGTON, March 21 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The International Monetary Fund announced that its board of directors will discuss Argentina’s $45 billion agreement on Friday, the final step of approval after two years of negotiations.

If approved, it would be Argentina’s 22nd IMF program and the latest chapter in the country’s tumultuous relationship with the Washington-based lender. The pending agreement would refinance payments owed from a record IMF bailout given to the previous government in 2018 that failed to stabilize the economy.

WASHINGTON, March 21 (Reuters) - The United States cannot independently confirm or refute a Russian claim over the weekend that it fired hypersonic missiles at a Ukrainian target, but the use of such a weapon makes little sense from a military perspective, a senior U.S. defense official said on Monday.

"It could be that they're trying to send a message to the West," the official said on condition of anonymity. From a military perspective, the official added, "there's just not a lot of practicality about it."

WASHINGTON, March 21 (Reuters) - The United States formally determined that Myanmar's army committed genocide and crimes against humanity in its violence against the Rohingya minority, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday, warning that as long as a military junta was in power nobody in the country would be safe.

Announcing the decision, which was first reported by Reuters on Sunday, Blinken said the attacks against Rohingya were "widespread and systematic" and that evidence pointed to a clear intent to destroy the mainly Muslim minority. 

WASHINGTON (AP) — Justice Clarence Thomas, who remains hospitalized in Washington, does not have COVID-19, the Supreme Court said Monday.

The court provided no additional information about the infection that put Thomas in the hospital on Friday, other than to say he is responding to intravenous antibiotics.

The 73-year-old justice has been vaccinated and boosted against COVID-19, along with the other eight justices, the court has said.

(AP) --- Stocks edged lower in morning trading on Wall Street Monday as major indexes come off their best week since November 2020.

The S&P 500 fell 0.2% as of 10:21 a.m. Eastern. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 166 points, or 0.5%, to 34,585 and the Nasdaq fell 1%.

Energy stocks made solid gains as oil prices gained ground. U.S. benchmark crude oil rose 5.8% and Exxon Mobil gained 3.5%.

Technology and communications stocks slipped and countered gains elsewhere in the market. Microsoft fell 1.5% and Facebook parent, Meta Platforms, fell 3.8%.

WASHINGTON (AP) — An elected official from New Mexico headed to trial Monday with a judge — not a jury — set to decide if he is guilty of charges that he illegally entered the U.S. Capitol grounds on the day a pro-Trump mob disrupted the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential election victory.

That’s not the only unusual feature of the case against Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin, whose trial in Washington, D.C., is the second among the hundreds of people charged with federal crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, siege.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday gaveled open the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman nominated for the nation’s highest court.

Jackson, 51, is set to give an opening statement later Monday and answer questions on Tuesday and Wednesday from the panel’s 11 Democratic and 11 Republican senators.

Washington, Mar 21 (AP) The Biden administration intends to declare that Myanmar's years-long repression of the Rohingya Muslim population is a genocide," U.S. officials said Sunday.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken plans to make the long-anticipated designation on Monday at an event at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, according to the officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the move had not yet been publicly announced.

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 20 (APP): Healthy forests are “essential” for people and the planet, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in his message marking the International Day of Forests.

“They act as natural filters, providing clean air and water, and they are havens of biological diversity…[and] help to regulate our climate by influencing rainfall patterns, cooling urban areas and absorbing one-third of greenhouse gas emissions,” the UN chief said.