USA

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 14 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on Tuesday opened its 76th session, with the UNGA president and the UN chief imploring member states to embrace hope and strengthen unity after a challenging year of climate disasters, conflict, and COVID-19.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Fearful of Donald Trump’s actions in his final weeks as president, the United States’ top military officer twice called his Chinese counterpart to assure him that the two nations would not suddenly go to war, a senior defense official said after the conversations were described in excerpts from a forthcoming book.

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Democrats began the serious work of trying to implement President Joe Biden’s expansive spending plan, but getting there will require remarkable legislative nimbleness, since Biden has said the revenue to pay for it must come only from Americans who earn more than $400,000 a year.

BOSTON (AP) — Boston was narrowing its field of mayoral hopefuls for the first time to two people of color, possibly both women — a stark change from the unbroken string of white men elected mayor in the city’s first 200 years.

Voters cast ballots in a preliminary mayoral election that will select two contenders from a field of five main candidates, all of whom are people of color, four of them women. Tuesday’s two winners will face off against each other on Nov. 2, ushering in a new era for the city which has wrestled with racial and ethnic strife.

POINTE-AUX-CHENES, La. (AP) — Residents of southern Louisiana still recovering from Hurricane Ida just weeks ago were bracing Wednesday for expected heavy rains as Nicholas crawls across parts of the state from Texas.

Nicholas made landfall as a hurricane early Tuesday on the Texas coast, dumping heavy rain even though it was quickly downgraded to a tropical storm and later a depression. But forecasters said Nicholas could stall over storm-battered Louisiana and spread life-threatening floods across the Deep South over the coming days.

WASHINGTON (AP) — As tens of thousands of Afghan refugees fleeing the Taliban arrive in the U.S., a handful of former Trump administration officials are working to turn Republicans against them.

The former officials are writing position papers, appearing on conservative television outlets and meeting privately with GOP lawmakers — all in an effort to turn the collapse of Afghanistan into another opportunity to push a hard-line immigration agenda.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday emphatically defeated a recall aimed at kicking him out of office early, a contest the Democrat framed as part of a national battle for his party’s values in the face of the coronavirus pandemic and continued threats from “Trumpism.”

WASHINGTON, Sep 14 (APP): Pakistan is monitoring the ability of the new Taliban government in Afghanistan to deliver on the commitments and promises to uphold human rights that they have made to the international community before extending recognition to it, Ambassador Asad Majeed Khan has said.

“Whether the Taliban actually abide by those (commitments) is their call,” the Pakistani envoy said in an interview with The Washington Diplomat, an independent monthly newspaper that servers the diplomatic community here.

WASHINGTON, Sept 14 (Reuters) - Three former U.S. presidents - Republican George W. Bush and Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama - have banded together behind a new group aimed at supporting refugees from Afghanistan settling in the United States following the recent American withdrawal.

The former U.S. leaders and their wives will serve as part of Welcome.US, a coalition of advocacy groups, U.S. businesses and other leaders launching on Tuesday, Welcome.US said in a statement.

14 Sep 2021; MEMO: An official in the Biden administration has announced that the US is holding back some of the military aid it sends to Egypt over human rights concerns.

Of the $1.3 billion of military aid the US gives to Egypt every year, $300 million is conditioned on progress being made over human rights violations.