While You Were Sleeping: 5 stories you might have missed, April 7
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National security spokesman John Kirby announces the release of a report summarising the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
PHOTO: EPA-EFE
Afghanistan withdrawal report mostly blames Trump
President Joe Biden’s administration on Thursday released a summary of classified reports that mostly blamed the chaotic US pullout from Afghanistan on his predecessor, Donald Trump, for failing to plan for the withdrawal he had agreed on with the Taliban.
The Democratic administration’s summary, drawn from top-secret State Department and Pentagon after-action reviews sent to Congress, ignited angry reactions from Republican lawmakers who have demanded the documents for their own assessment of the August 2021 pullout.
US House of Representatives Oversight Committee chairman James Comer, a Republican, in a statement called the summary an “excuse for the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal.”
The withdrawal that ended America’s longest war saw tens of thousands of Afghans desperate to flee a return of hardline Taliban rule besiege Kabul’s international airport, some handing babies to US troops or breaking in and hanging onto departing aircraft.
Netanyahu says enemies will pay after rockets hit Israel
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to hit back hard in response to a volley of rockets fired from Lebanon on Thursday, as tensions following Israeli police raids on Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem this week threatened to spiral out of control.
Mr Netanyahu was due to meet ministers in his security Cabinet following the biggest rocket attack from Lebanon since 2006, when Israel fought a war with the heavily armed Hezbollah movement.
In brief televised remarks before the meeting, he called for calm at Al-Aqsa, known to Jews as Temple Mount.
Moscow says foiled bid by Ukraine ‘saboteurs’ to enter Russia
Russia said on Thursday its security forces had foiled an attempt by a group of Ukrainian “saboteurs” to enter Russia via the southern Bryansk region that borders Ukraine.
The announcement came a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin warned saboteurs were acting inside Russia.
In a video posted online, the Russian Volunteer Corps, a far-right group of Russian nationalists fighting on Ukraine’s side, appeared to claim the incursion. It showed some of its members talking to locals and firing weapons.
Brazil mourns children killed in pre-school attack
REUTERS
The families of four children killed at a Brazilian pre-school held emotional funerals for them on Thursday, a day after an attacker murdered them with a hatchet in a crime that has shocked the nation.
Brazil is still reeling from Wednesday’s attack, in which authorities say a 25-year-old man with a history of violent behaviour jumped a wall to get into the pre-school in the southern city of Blumenau and went on a murderous rampage on the playground.
Devastated family members gathered to mourn the four victims, who were from four to seven years old, as residents left flowers and teddy bears outside the school.
Rusty Tiger Woods fights to keep alive Masters cut streak
Getty Images via AFP
A rusty Tiger Woods will need to find a little polish after he opened the Masters with a two-over 74 on Thursday that left the five-times Green Jacket winner in danger of missing his first ever cut as a professional at Augusta National.
It was a disappointing afternoon among the towering Georgia pines for Woods who a year ago stunned the galleries when he returned from a car crash that almost resulted in the loss of his right leg to fire a 71 that had the golf world buzzing.
Even in Thursday’s ideal scoring conditions Woods could not conjure up the same magic and he limped off the 18th green lamenting a lost opportunity with the forecast predicting rain and cold temperatures that are sure to put his surgically repaired leg to an even bigger test.
