World

Taliban leaders on Monday said they will not accept any effort by the Biden administration to extend its August 31 deadline for the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, warning that such a move would be certain to "provoke a reaction."

"If the U.S. or U.K. were to seek additional time to continue evacuations—the answer is no," Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen told Sky News in an interview Monday. "Or there would be consequences."

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) left a classified briefing on Afghanistan to reveal details to reporters and the news doesn't appear to be positive.

According to CNN's Ryan Nobles, Schiff said that he doesn't believe everyone will be out by the Aug. 31 deadline. The Taliban has said that the United States has until that deadline, and they'll make no concessions for dates beyond that. Speaking to MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Monday, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) said that it would ultimately end with a showdown between the U.S. and Taliban.

Writing for the German magazine Der Spiegel, Christoph Reuter made a stunning allegation: that the United States stood in the way of investigating whether former Afghan President Hamid Karzai ordered a deadly attack on United Nations elections observers seeking to redo the country's fraudulent election in 2009.

"For the lack of other achievements, the international aid community in 2009 sold the mere holding of elections as a great triumph," reported Reuter. "But when more and more evidence began emerging of election fraud orchestrated by Karzai's entourage, the West found itself stuck in an insoluble conundrum... Washington overrode Karzai's objections and pushed through a second vote, one that would be monitored by UN election observers."

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki blasted Fox News reporter Peter Doocy for claiming the Biden administration has "stranded" Americans in Afghanistan.

The Biden administration has airlifted out of that country about 40,000 people, including Afghans and Americans, as of today.

In a brief and fiery monologue on national television Sunday night, MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan took aim at the journalists, hawkish politicians, and defense industry-funded ex-military officials who are currently denouncing the ongoing U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan after playing an integral role in launching—and lying on behalf of—the catastrophic 20-year war that set the stage for the chaotic departure.

"Our newspaper op-ed pages, our TV screens are filled with people who got it wrong still trying to lecture the rest of us about what should happen now in Afghanistan," Hasan said in the "60-second rant" segment of his weekend show.

Fox News host Harris Faulkner demanded that Vice President Kamala Harris be sent to Afghanistan because the Taliban "hunts" women.

Faulkner made the remarks on Monday after Harris said that the U.S. is concerned about women in the country because the nation's capital was taken over by the Taliban.

With feather headdresses, grass skirts and body paint, hundreds of indigenous demonstrators camped out in Brasilia Monday to protest President Jair Bolsonaro's policies and an initiative that could take away their ancestral lands.

Pounding wooden tent poles into the ground, the protesters set up the "Fight for Life" camp outside the seat of power in the Brazilian capital, near the trio of modernist buildings housing the presidency, Congress and the Supreme Court.

With the Taliban now in control of Afghanistan for the first time since 2001, President Joe Biden has been drawing strong criticism from both Republicans and fellow Democrats for withdrawing U.S. troops from the country. But Biden was defended from both the left and the right when conservative ABC News pundit Matthew Dowd and liberal Salon journalist Amanda Marcotte appeared on CNN's "Reliable Sources" on Sunday, August 22. In fact, Dowd — a George W. Bush ally during the 2000s — argued that of the United States' four most recent presidents, Bush is the one who deserves the most criticism over Afghanistan.

Some of the criticism that Biden has been receiving from politicians and media pundits over Afghanistan has at least been balanced; many right-wing Trump critics, including Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, have argued that the Donald Trump/Mike Pompeo plan for withdrawal was horribly flawed and that Biden was wrong to go along with it. And many Trump supporters have pointed the finger at Biden while giving Trump and Pompeo a pass.

Two former members of the Sex Pistols on Monday won a London court battle against ex-frontman John Lydon, better known as Johnny Rotten, who opposed the use of the groundbreaking punk band's music in an upcoming Disney series.

Judge Anthony Mann ruled at the High Court that the band's former drummer Paul Cook and guitarist Steve Jones were entitled to invoke majority voting rules against Lydon to license their 1970s-era back catalogue.

Fish dart across mosaic floors and into the ruined villas, where holidaying Romans once drank, plotted and flirted in the party town of Baiae, now an underwater archaeological park near Naples.

Statues which once decorated luxury abodes in this beachside resort are now playgrounds for crabs off the coast of Italy, where divers can explore ruins of palaces and domed bathhouses built for emperors.