Monday morning news - August 16, 2021

For WORLD Radio, I'm Kent Covington. 

Afghan president flees country as Taliban move into Kabul » The Taliban’s conquest in Afghanistan is virtually complete.

President Ashraf Gani fled the country on Sunday. He joined thousands of his fellow citizens in a stampede fleeing the advancing Taliban.

Secretary of State Tony Blinken said the United States and its allies invested a great deal in the Afghan military and did not expect it to fold so quickly.

BLINKEN: That force proved incapable of defending the country, and that did happen more rapidly than we anticipated.

Some experts say when U.S. troops departed, morale within the Afghan military plummeted, leading to mass defections.

The Taliban fanned out across the capital on Sunday. And an official with the militant group said it would soon announce the creation of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan from the presidential palace in Kabul.

That was the name of the country under Taliban rule before U.S.-led forces ousted them after the 9/11 attacks.

Republicans on Capitol Hill are calling President Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan a tragic mistake. Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney...

CHENEY: We’ve now created a situation where, as we get to the 20th anniversary of 9/11, we are surrendering Afghanistan to the terrorist organization that housed al Qaeda when they plotted and planned the attacks against us.

President Biden has maintained that it was the right decision and he does not regret the move.

The capital city of Kabul was gripped by panic on Sunday, with helicopters racing overhead, evacuating personnel from the U.S. Embassy. Smoke billowed into the clouds above the compound as staff destroyed important documents, and officials lowered the American flag.

Haiti reeling from powerful weekend earthquake » The people of Haiti are still digging through the rubble today after a powerful earthquake struck on Saturday.

The 7.2 magnitude quake killed more than 300 people, injured thousands, and destroyed hundreds of homes. Some people left without shelter have been sleeping on soccer fields.

Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday that Haiti will need help recovering from the disaster.

SCHUMER: Our government has to do everything and go all out with financing, with personnel, with everything it can do to help the Hatian people.

The quake almost entirely destroyed some towns and triggered landslides that hampered rescue efforts in some of the hardest-hit areas.

The disaster added to the plight of Haitians who were already grappling with the pandemic, a presidential assassination, and a wave of gang violence.

COVID-19 delta surge continues » The COVID-19 delta variant continues its rampage across the country. After a very brief dip in new cases last week, infections have continued to rise.

More than 140,000 Americans are testing positive each day. That’s 14 times greater than the caseload in late June.

National Institutes of Health Director, Dr. Francis Collins…

COLLINS: All we can say is if this is going very steeply upward with no signs of having peaked out. So I will be surprised if we don’t cross 200,000 cases a day in the next couple of weeks, and that’s heartbreaking considering we never thought we would be back in that space again.

Fortunately, hospitalizations and deaths have not increased quite as dramatically as the number of new cases, but both numbers are up.

Deaths have more than doubled since the first of July, now more than 500 per day.

During that same period, hospitalizations have increased sixfold. More than 10,000 new admissions each day.

A new analysis of cases in 40 states suggests unvaccinated people are still at least 20 times more likely to fall seriously ill.

Dr. Donald Yealy at Univ. of Pittsburgh Medical Center said that’s consistent with what his hospital is seeing as most new patients are unvaccinated.

YEALY: They make up the biggest chunk of our admissions and particularly people who need advanced care or succumb to the illness. It’s either them or people who have underlying immune system limits that don’t let them respond well to either the vaccine or the infection.

Roughly 51 percent of the U.S. population is now fully vaccinated.

Tropical storm Fred heads for Gulf Coast » Tropical Storm Fred is barreling over the Gulf of Mexico this morning as it takes aim at the Gulf Coast.

The eye of the storm will likely hit the western portion of the Florida Panhandle sometime tonight with forecasted 50 mile per hour winds.

Powerful winds will likely also hit Alabama’s Gulf Coast.

But above all, Richard Pasch with the National Hurricane Center says Fred will be a major rain event.

PASCH: We could see up to 12 inches in a few spots, in the Florida Big Bend and Panhandle area.

But forecasters say the worst of the weather could actually be further inland throughout the week. Fred is expected to bring heavy rain and the risk of flash floods to at least a half-dozen states in the Southeast. And it could dump several inches of rain as far north as Pennsylvania.

I’m Kent Covington. For more news, features, and analysis, visit us at wng.org.

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