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During Friday's event, the Republican encouraged people to get vaccinated against the virus but voiced opposition to mandates. "I think I'm in the middle ground of the vaccines," Paul said. "CNN invites me on all the time. They have announcers calling me an 'ass' on TV. Then they have doctors saying I'm thoroughly anti-vaccine. You heard me, I'm not against the vaccine. I've already recommended if you're at risk to take it. ... It's still your choice if it's a free country."

The Hurricane Ida death toll rose to five late on Monday after a 71-year-old man was thought to have been killed by an alligator in Louisiana, while a Mississippi highway collapse killed two people and injured ten others. The alligator attack took place in the man's shed in the town of Slidell in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, according to WWL-TV, citing the man's wife who called the police. The victim's body has not been found. Meanwhile, pictures from the scene of the highway collapse showed two badly damaged vehicles in a large hole which the road had fallen into, with...

Afghan Resistance leader Amrullah Saleh – formerly the Vice President of Afghanistan until President Ashraf Ghani fled to the United Arab Emirates and the Taliban took power – joined "Hannity" on Friday to call for the return of American leadership and dominance; and invited American citizens who may be stranded by President Biden's August 31 withdrawal deadline to seek refuge in his new "capital." Saleh said he and his supporters have been building an anti-Taliban resistance in the Panjshir Valley, near the Hindu Kush Mountains in northeastern Afghanistan. He told host Sean Hannity that the United States government has been...

Britain is prepared to launch air strikes against Isis terrorists in Afghanistan, the head of the Royal Air Force has signalled. Air Chief Marshal Sir Mike Wigston, the Chief of the Air Staff, said the UK must be able to 'play a global role in the global coalition to defeat Daesh' and that could include strikes. Meanwhile, Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, has said the UK will work with other nations to defeat Isis 'by all means available'. Mr Raab said Britain 'retains the right to exercise self-defence and that must include in relation to terrorist groups operating from abroad'.

resident Joe Biden describes his $3.5 trillion spending scheme as a way to improve the economy and "build back better." The intention is a good one, but at its core, this plan isn't so much about growing people's wealth as it is redistributing it. The goal is to make the economy not more prosperous but more equitable -- fairer. The multi-trillion dollar spending plan offers lower-income and even middle-income people truckloads of free things: health care, dental care, food, pre-K, child care, rental assistance, student loan forgiveness and free community college. And we know that Americans love freebies. But nothing...

If Senate Republicans seem conservative now, just wait until next year. The 2022 midterms could usher in a wave of full-spectrum MAGA supporters who would turn the GOP conference an even deeper shade of red — and make the Senate a lot more like the fractious House. In the five states where Republican senators are retiring, the primary election fields to succeed them are crowded with Donald Trump supporters who have made loyalty to the former president a cornerstone of their campaigns. The three top candidates to succeed Sen. Richard Burr in North Carolina have all denounced his vote to...

Aug 31 (Reuters) - Taliban forces clashed with militia fighters in the Panjshir valley north of the Afghan capital Kabul on Monday night, losing eight killed, a representative of the main anti-Taliban opposition group said. Since the fall of Kabul on Aug. 15, the Panjshir has been the only province to hold out against the Taliban, although there has also been fighting in neighbouring Baghlan province,,,

Source: Photo/Salena ZitoLEBANON, Kansas -- There is something uplifting about standing in the center point of the United States of America. It evokes a sense that is both spiritual and patriotic, particularly if you reach this point having traveled on both sides of the monument that marks the spot. There is a restorative energy you absorb, no matter where the back roads take you. You have to take time listening to folks in city neighborhoods, tree-lined suburbs and small towns. No one person's story is perfect. No situation or place is perfect. There is plenty of despair among people in...

LONDON, Aug 31 (Reuters) - Britain co-ordinated closely with the United States and did not push to keep a gate open at Kabul airport where a suicide bomber killed 13 U.S. troops and scores of Afghan civilians, British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said on Tuesday. A Politico report on Monday said American forces decided to keep the Abbey Gate open longer than they wanted to allow Britain to continue evacuating personnel. "We got our civilian staff out of the processing centre by Abbey Gate, but it's just not true to suggest that, other than securing our civilian staff inside the...

“People are thinking, do I want to be in Hong Kong for the next 3-5 years, as they see the world opening up,” said Kher Sheng Lee, co-head of the Asia Pacific Alternative Investment Management Association. Singapore, a rival financial hub, is set to further reopensoon. Lee said the group had met with the government to discuss the quarantine rules as they were hindering new investors. A senior banker at a top U.S. bank said if there was no change in rules by the second quarter next year, he would move even without a job. “For a lot of people...

Are those who oppose a ban on cars or a radical reduction in speed limits sociopaths, given the huge number of people they are knowingly consigning to death or maiming? In virtually every realm of public policy, Americans embrace policies which they know will kill people, sometimes large numbers of people. They do so not because they are psychopaths but because they are rational: they assess that those deaths that will inevitably result from the policies they support are worth it in exchange for the benefits those policies provide. This rational cost-benefit analysis, even when not expressed in such explicit...

The top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee said Monday the GOP has more than 50 amendments that seek to address the shortcomings Republicans see in the Biden administration’s handling of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. “We want to find out what happened to the equipment that was left behind. We want to know why specifically Bagram was abandoned,” Alabama Rep. Mike D. Rogers said, referring to U.S. military equipment left by U.S. troops that ended up in the possession of the Taliban, the Afghan political movement now running the country, and why the U.S. decided to leave Bagram...

How does a leader decide what to do? The most logical response is: "Cui bono?" -- "Who benefits?" -- from the decision. If some policy benefits your country most, you should, within moral bounds, pursue it. If your enemies benefit most, you should avoid it. I'd be curious to learn what answer proponents of America leaving Afghanistan -- conservative or liberal -- would give to the question, "Cui bono?" I can say that until this moment, I have not read or heard a single cogent argument from proponents of American withdrawal as to how exactly it benefits America. "Twenty years...

New Zealand has been in a strict national lockdown since Aug. 17, after a single case of the more contagious Delta variant was identified in the community. The country has since reported more than 600 cases, with 33 hospitalizations. Beginning Wednesday, most of New Zealand will move to a less severe Level 3 lockdown, while Auckland will remain under the heaviest level of restrictions for another two weeks. Crossing the border between regions is permitted only under very limited circumstances, including for freight deliveries, to receive a dose of a Covid-19 vaccine or to take care of an ill person....

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On Saturday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) stated that the drone strike against ISIS-K isn’t going to stop further attacks and warned that ISIS-K will end up in possession of U.S. military equipment and use it in “a much more lethal and dangerous way than the Taliban would ever use it.” Bank stated, “We would be naïve to believe that this one drone strike on an ISIS planner — which, by the way, was successful, and I’m glad he was killed — is going to stop more attacks like what we saw...

When did the GOP cease to be a functioning party? When was the exact moment that you knew the GOP establishment stands for nothing and stands against nothing? For many, this became apparent in the awful months immediately after Election Day 2020, of course, when a steady stream of GOP leaders took to the airwaves to let their voters know that “the most secure election in history” had just taken place. For others, it was the Second Impeachment of Citizen Trump — a symbolic exercise that only served to destroy the political career of Mitch McConnell, and raze his reputation...

A group of nearly 90 retired generals and admirals called for the resignations of the secretary of defense and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff over the disaster of the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. The letter was released as the Pentagon announced on Monday that the last flight out of Kabul airport had taken off to the skies, ending the war that lasted two decades. The letter accused Defense Secretary Gen. Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley of culpability in the disastrous withdrawal that has already cost the lives of 13 U.S....

At some point you almost have to feel bad for the people who work for Joe Biden. Every single day, they go to work not know what they’re going to have to clean up today; what mess he’s going to create, or what stupid thing is going to come out of his mouth. Or whether or not what comes out of his mouth is even words at all. Then you realize those people are enabling this senile old fool in his quest to destroy the country and whatever thought you’d had to feel badly is replaced with contempt. I’ve known...

The Taliban are pinning letters to the doors of those who worked with West The notes order their victims to attend a Taliban-convened court Failure to do so will result in the death penalty 'It is a clear message that they want to kill me' said Naz, whose construction company helped to build roads in Helmand and the runway at Camp Bastion Naz applied for sanctuary in Britain but has been rejected Often used in rural communities, the letters are now being circulated in cities