20-year U.S. effort in Afghanistan "marked by many failures," new oversight report finds
CBSN
Incoherent strategy. Politically motivated timelines. Unchecked cash spigots. As the Taliban takes control in Afghanistan after 20 years of U.S. involvement, a new watchdog report outlines what went wrong.
It may be true, as President Biden said Monday, that the U.S. trained and equipped an Afghan military force of 300,000, that we paid their salaries, maintained their air force and equipped them, and that what the key thing we could not give them was "the will to fight" for their future. But in the eyes of the special inspector general for reconstruction in Afghanistan, the U.S. still fell short in its 20-year-long effort, one that was largely obliterated in a few short months. . The report "What We Need to Learn: Lessons from 20 years of Afghanistan Reconstruction" details how over $145 billion spent on reconstruction efforts added up to only minimal progress.
A Texas internal medicine doctor was convicted of accepting more than $200,000 in kickbacks for sending patient samples to particular labs, according to officials from the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas.
A man has been arrested in connection with a spate of random stabbings over two days in Seattle, in which a woman and eight men were injured — five of them on Friday afternoon, police said.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is now on a short list being floated by some Trump allies to serve as the next head of the Department of Health and Human Services, multiple people close to the president-elect's campaign say.
Three NASA astronauts who just wrapped up a 235-day mission to the International Space Station discussed their flight with reporters Friday, but steadfastly refused to comment on a medical issue of some sort that resulted in one astronaut spending the night in a hospital after landing.
While the 2024 presidential election was among the closest in recent memory — with President-elect Donald Trump ahead by about 3 percentage points over Vice President Kamala Harris — Trump's vote share grew in a diverse array of regions across the country and across different demographic groups.
INDIANAPOLIS — The first full day of jury deliberations ended without a verdict on Friday in the trial of Richard Allen, who is accused in the 2017 killings of two teenage girls who had vanished during a hike in Delphi, Indiana, in 2017.
One company is already responding to President-elect Trump's proposed tariffs, which if imposed could result in higher prices for American consumers as retailers pass along added costs on imports to shoppers.
Washington — President-elect Donald Trump's victory Tuesday has stirred up whispers about whether Justice Sonia Sotomayor should step down from the Supreme Court to allow President Biden to nominate a successor before Republicans take control of Washington.
President-elect Donald Trump took to Truth Social on Friday to reiterate that he doesn't plan to sell shares of Trump Media & Technology Group. He also called for an investigation from "the appropriate authorities" into "market manipulators or short sellers," whom executives at the company and shareholders have previously blamed for volatility in the stock, which trades under the ticker symbol DJT.
The Northeastern U.S. is experiencing ongoing drought conditions, which is helping to fuel an uptick in fire danger. For Friday, an elevated fire weather outlook was issued by the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center for the area stretching from Massachusetts to the northern edge of Virginia and West Virginia.
An operative working for Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps told federal investigators that he was tasked in September with "surveilling, and, ultimately, assassinating" President-elect Donald Trump, according to court records unsealed Friday.