World

Grace regained hurricane strength Friday as it barreled towards Mexico for a second time, triggering warnings of flooding and mudslides in mountains on the eastern mainland.

The hurricane first struck Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula on Thursday as a Category One storm -- the lowest on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale -- near the town of Tulum, famed for its Mayan temples.

On Fox News Friday night, Rob O'Neill, the former Navy SEAL who claims he was the shooter in the Bin Laden raid, suggested that if he were in Afghanistan he would just indiscriminately kill people in his path to get American troops out of the country.

"I don't want to be in charge, but if I was ... give me nine guys, I'm gonna walk through the streets and I'm gonna kill everyone I see, and I'm gonna grab the Americans," said O'Neill. "It is not difficult."

On Friday, writing for The Washington Post's "Plum Line," columnist Paul Waldman argued that the Afghanistan debate has been "distorted" on cable news because they keep booking a parade of people, many in the employ of the Bush administration, who bungled our entry into Afghanistan in the first place.

"As we have watched the rapid dissolution of the Afghan government, the takeover of the country by the Taliban and the desperate effort of so many Afghans to flee, the U.S. media have asked themselves a question: What do the people who were wrong about Afghanistan all along have to say about all this?" wrote Waldman.

Scotland's ruling party on Friday announced a landmark power-sharing deal for a pro-independence majority in the devolved parliament in Edinburgh, catapulting the Greens into their first ministerial positions in UK politics.

The agreement between the Scottish National Party (SNP) and the Scottish Green Party needs to be approved by members but tightens ties between the two parties, which both back a new vote on independence.

Former Homeland Security adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, Olivia Troye, noted that top aide to Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, would "peddle racist hysteria about Iraq and Afghanistan" while she was working in the White House.

Tweeting about her experience, Troye responded to Ben Domenech, who tweeted that Trump would have gotten everyone out. According to Troye, there were cabinet meetings where he would make his comments about people from the two countries. Anyone working on visa issues would ultimately get undermined by Miller and his "enablers," she said.

Gunmen flanked an Islamic scholar as he delivered a fiery speech Friday to a packed Kabul mosque at the most important prayers of the week -- the first since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan five days ago.

The preacher rallied the faithful at the Abdul Rahman Mosque with a history lesson on how Afghans had beaten the British empire, the Soviet Union and now the United States on the battlefield.

A Wall Street Journal report Thursday claimed that State Department contacts in Afghanistan sent July cables warning of the collapse of the country's government.

"The cable, sent via the State Department's confidential dissent channel, warned of rapid territorial gains by the Taliban and the subsequent collapse of Afghan security forces, and offered recommendations on ways to mitigate the crisis and speed up an evacuation," The Journal reported.

The swift collapse of the Afghan military in recent days caught many in the U.S. by surprise, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

In the months after President Joe Biden's April 2021 announcement of the troop withdrawal, intelligence reports warned that the Afghan military might not fight on its own, opening the way for a Taliban takeover after U.S. forces withdrew.

The Week editor Peter Weber noticed that as the Afghanistan withdrawal continues, the only prominent ex-Trump officials willing to promote the so-called peace plan between former President Donald Trump and the Taliban are Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo and Trump himself.

Earlier this week, former Trump Secretary of Defense Mark Esper revealed that Trump "undermined the agreement" and he warned without a slower withdrawal "we would see a number of things play out, which are unfolding right now in many ways."

While attacking President Joe Biden for the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, Fox News hosts and conservative leaders have also started a campaign against settling Afghan refugees in the United States.

Many Afghan people being rescued are those who worked with the U.S. in the war. As a result of their service with the military, they and their families have become targets. The right-wing argument against those being rescued was denounced Friday in a Wall Street Journal editorial board statement saying to abandon them is to neglect conservative values.

This past weekend, researchers at the National Science Foundation's Summit Station observed rainfall at the peak of Greenland's rapidly melting ice sheet for the first time on record—an event driven by warming temperatures.

"It's something that's hard to imagine without the influence of global climate change."
—Ted Scambos, University of Colorado at Boulder

A GoFundMe campaign to raise money for the evacuation of 300 vulnerable Afghans fleeing the Taliban has raised over $6 million, according to figures published Thursday.

The creator of the fundraising page, New York-based Tommy Marcus, asked for funds to organize flights out of the country for Afghans who risk being targeted by the Taliban.