Biden Condemns Kabul Attack and Vows Retaliation

President Biden on Thursday denounced a terrorist attack at the Kabul airport that killed at least 13 American service members and injured 18 more, saying that the frantic evacuation of U.S. citizens and allies from Afghanistan will continue even as he pledged to hunt down those responsible for the attacks.

Mr. Biden spoke after the U.S. military sustained one of its highest single-day American tolls during its 20-year Afghanistan campaign.

“To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this: We will not forgive,” the president said. “We will not forget. We will

At Least 13 U.S. Troops Among Masses of Dead in Kabul Suicide Attack

KABUL, Afghanistan — Two explosions killed dozens of people, including at least 13 U.S. troops, ripping through the crowds outside Afghanistan’s main airport on Thursday, just hours after Western governments had warned of an imminent Islamic State attack and told their people to stay away from the airport.

The attack, by at least two suicide bombers, struck at the only avenue of escape for the thousands of foreign nationals and tens — or hundreds — of thousands of their Afghan allies who are trying to flee the country following the Taliban takeover and ahead of the final withdrawal of U.S.

‘A thing of shame’: Rome’s pizza machine

(CNN) — It’s known for its ancient ruins, the seat of Catholicism and some of the world’s best pizza.

Yes, in Rome, the art of pizza is up there with the art of constructing buildings that will last for 2,000 years, and guiding one of the world’s major religions.

Compared to the original Neapolitan style, Roman pizza is thinner, flakier and crunchier, since it’s baked for a little longer. The pizzerias of Trastevere, the boho neighborhood across the River Tiber from central Rome, are lauded as some of the best places in the world to try the dish.

Now there’s

Live Updates: Security Threats at Kabul Airport Prompt Multiple Warnings

U.S. Embassy warned Americans to stay away from the Kabul airport and told anyone outside the perimeter to “leave immediately,” citing unnamed security threats.

The British and Australian governments issued similar warnings, with Australian officials describing “an ongoing and very high threat of terrorist attack.”

The warnings came as the last of the estimated 1,500 Americans and countless other foreigners still in Afghanistan try to make it to the airport to leave before the U.S. withdrawal on Aug. 31. Thousands of Afghan nationals are camped outside the perimeter of the airport in desperate attempts to escape on the last flights …

‘Window Is Rapidly Closing’ to Gather Key Evidence on Virus Origins, Scientists Say

Experts studying the origins of the coronavirus for the World Health Organization warned on Wednesday that the inquiry had “stalled” and that further delays could make it impossible to recover crucial evidence about the beginning of the pandemic.

“The window is rapidly closing on the biological feasibility of conducting the critical trace-back of people and animals inside and outside China,” the experts wrote in an editorial in the journal Nature. Several studies of blood samples and wildlife farms in China were urgently needed to understand how Covid-19 emerged, they said.

Amid a rancorous debate about whether a laboratory incident could

Military Ramps Up Evacuations From Kabul, but Bottlenecks Persist

WASHINGTON — With the Aug. 31 deadline for a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan rapidly approaching, the Pentagon has sharply ramped up the speed of evacuations from the Kabul airport, flying out 21,600 people in 24 hours, Defense Department officials said Tuesday. But bottlenecks in the system, and President Biden’s insistence that all troops leave the country by the end of the month, may prevent the military from keeping that pace.

The race against time means that the 5,800 Marines and soldiers at Hamid Karzai International Airport must try to evacuate thousands more Americans and Afghan allies, and then get themselves

Biden Briefs G7 on U.S. Afghanistan Withdrawal

President Biden said Tuesday that the United States was on track to end its two-decade-long military involvement in Afghanistan by his Aug. 31 deadline.

But Mr. Biden, speaking at the White House, said he had spoken to military leaders so they would be prepared to “adjust that timetable, should that become necessary.”

U.S. forces are still working around the clock to evacuate Americans and some of their Afghan allies from Kabul, the capital.

“It is a tenuous situation,” he said.

Mr. Biden gave reporters a barrage of figures about the accelerating evacuation effort at the Kabul airport, saying 70,700 people

Rain in Greenland: A Glaciologist Explains a Rare and Dangerous Event

DER SPIEGEL: In fact, the Arctic is warming more dramatically than any other part of the world. What does that mean for Greenland?

Ahlstrøm: In recent decades, circulation patterns in the atmosphere have changed. We have evidence that warm air is reaching the ice sheet more and more frequently. This has to do with changes in the jet stream. They ensure that the air over Greenland in summer comes less frequently from the far north – and very often from the mid-latitudes, where it is warmer.

The Summit Station was established in 1989. The purpose was to support a research

Live Updates: U.S. Forces Go Into Kabul to Extract Stranded Americans and Allies


U.S. Marines guarding the perimeter of the airport in Kabul on Sunday.
Credit…Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

Some Afghan military interpreters and other close U.S. allies, a stated priority group for evacuation from Afghanistan, are being turned away from the Kabul airport by American officials in order to give priority to U.S. citizens and green card holders, a State Department official said on Monday.

The details, given on the condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to brief the news media, were supported by interviews with Afghans who have

Chaos Persists at Kabul Airport as Taliban Discuss New Government

As lethal mayhem persisted outside Kabul airport, with thousands of terrified Afghans trying to flee, the Taliban have reached out to a former Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, and to Russia in an attempt to fulfill their pledge to form an “inclusive” government and defeat holdouts against their rule.

Little in the Taliban’s history suggests readiness to compromise on their harsh Islamist principles or to share power, but the United States has warned the militant group that going it alone will result in continuous conflict and isolation. In this context, Mr. Karzai, who led the country between 2001 and 2014, has