USA

GRIZZLY FLATS, Calif. (AP) — A wildfire raged through a small Northern California forest town Tuesday, burning dozens of homes as dangerously dry and windy weather also continued to fuel other massive blazes and prompted the nation’s largest utility to begin shutting off power to 51,000 customers.

The Caldor fire in the northern Sierra Nevada had burned an estimated 50 homes in and around Grizzly Flats, a town of about 1,200 people, fire officials said at a community meeting.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott tested positive for COVID-19 on Tuesday, according to his office, who said the Republican is in good health and experiencing no symptoms.

WASHINGTON, Aug 17 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned against travel to Turkey because of a rising number of COVID-19 cases in that nation but eased its advisory for India.

The CDC added Turkey to its “Level 4: Very High” COVID-19 level, while lowering India to “Level 2: Moderate.”

US President Joe Biden on April 30 imposed new travel restrictions on India in light of COVID-19, barring most non-US citizens from entering the United States who had been in India within the previous 14 days.

NEW YORK, Aug. 16 (Xinhua) -- The United States remains among nations with the highest rate of new COVID-19 cases, driven mostly by a surge in the south, where many states are lagging in getting people vaccinated against the coronavirus, CNN has reported.

In August, the United States has so far reported more than 1.5 million new cases, more than three times the numbers for Iran and India, which now hold second and third place respectively, according to Johns Hopkins University.

WASHINGTON (AP) — When President Joe Biden announced he would stick to his predecessor’s plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan, Republican reaction was mixed and largely muted. Foreign policy had become so contentious that the party’s own leaders had no single position on the end of the nation’s longest war.

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. experts are expected to recommend COVID-19 vaccine boosters for all Americans, regardless of age, eight months after they received their second dose of the shot, to ensure lasting protection against the coronavirus as the delta variant spreads across the country.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A defiant President Joe Biden rejected blame for chaotic scenes of Afghans clinging to U.S. military planes in Kabul in a desperate bid to flee their home country after the Taliban’s easy victory over an Afghan military that America and NATO allies had spent two decades trying to build.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Three tropical systems were churning early Monday in the Atlantic basin and threatening to impact the U.S. Gulf Coast, some Caribbean islands including earthquake-damaged Haiti, and the island territory of Bermuda.

Tropical Storm Fred was located in the Gulf of Mexico and could make landfall by Monday evening along the Florida Panhandle, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. A tropical storm warning and a storm surge warning were in effect for coastal areas.

QUINCY, Calif. (AP) — Thousands of homes in Northern California remain threatened by the nation’s largest wildfire as unstable weather creates a high danger of new blazes erupting across the West.

Weekend thunderstorms across the northern Sierra didn’t produce much rain, instead whipping up winds and unleashing lightning strikes that that bedeviled the more than 6,000 firefighters trying to contain the month-old Dixie Fire amid temperatures forecast to top 100 degrees (38 Celsius).

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Former Detroit Police Chief James Craig on Monday called for strengthening law enforcement amid what he labeled a public safety “crisis,” announcing several moves to focus on policing while he prepares to formally run for Michigan governor.