Biden to mark 20th anniversary of 9/11 at 3 memorial sites
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden will visit all three 9/11 memorial sites to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and pay his respects to the nearly 3,000 people killed that day.
Biden will visit ground zero in New York City, the Pentagon and the memorial outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where United Flight 93 was forced down, the White House said Saturday. He will be accompanied by first lady Jill Biden.
Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to Shanksville, Pennsylvania, for a separate event before joining the president at the Pentagon, the White House said. Harris will travel with her spouse, Doug Emhoff.
Biden’s itinerary is similar to the one President Barack Obama followed in 2011 on the 10th anniversary of the attacks. Obama’s visit to New York City coincided with the opening of a memorial at the site where the iconic World Trade Center towers once stood.
Afghan faction vows to still fight Taliban:
The leader of a resistance faction against Taliban militants in Afghanistan announced on Saturday that they will continue fighting.
“We will never give up the fight for God, freedom and justice,” the leader of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, Ahmad Massoud, wrote on his official Facebook page.
Massoud’s tweet came in apparent response to unconfirmed reports that Panjshir, the only province that the Taliban do not control, had been captured and that the resistance leaders had fled the country.
For around five days, there has been heavy fighting between the Taliban and Massoud’s National Resistance Front fighters around Panjshir valley, located in a small province of the same name north of Kabul. The area has long been an anti-Taliban bastion.
The Taliban have offered Massoud a position within their government, but he has rejected it, according to Fahim Dashti, a spokesman for the resistance organization.
The group is demanding the fair political participation of all ethnic groups as well as the protection of women’s rights, freedom of speech, and elections.
Sailors presumed dead off San Diego coast:
Five sailors who went missing after their helicopter crashed on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and fell into the sea are presumed dead, the Navy said Saturday.
The announcement marks an end to the threeday search for the crew and a transition to a search and recovery operation. The Navy has not yet found the wreckage, but it is known where the MH-60S Sea Hawk helicopter went into the water — about 60 nautical miles off the San Diego coast.
One of the helicopter’s crew was rescued from the water following Tuesday’s crash and is in stable condition ashore.
The Sea Hawk, assigned to Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 8, was conducting routine flight operations from the ship when it crashed about 4:30 p.m. The ship has been conducting exercises off the San Diego coast in preparation for a deployment next year, the Navy has said.
Facebook apologizes for ‘primates’ label: Facebook has issued an apology after
its artificial intelligence technology mislabeled a video featuring Black men in altercations with white police officers and civilians as “about primates.”
After social media users finished the clip, published by the Daily Mail earlier last week, they received a prompt asking if they would like to “keep seeing videos about Primates.”
“This was clearly an unacceptable error and we disabled the entire topic recommendation feature as soon as we realized this was happening so we could investigate the cause and prevent this from happening again,” Facebook spokeswoman Dani Lever said in a statement to USA Today.
The incident is the latest in a series of racial blunders online, caused but what is seeming racial bias in automated systems. According to recent studies, facial recognition technology can be prejudiced against people of color and typically has
more trouble identifying them. It has resulted in incidents where Black people have been discriminated against or arrested due to a computer error.
Protests for same-sex marriages in Switzerland:
Tens of thousands protested in Switzerland on Saturday for the legalization of samesex marriage in the Alpine country.
The protests came ahead of a national referendum on Sept. 26 on the legalization of gay marriage, which has already been introduced in many other European countries including Germany, Austria, France and the Netherlands.
Public broadcaster SRF reported that tens of thousands participated in the Zurich Pride parade which had the slogan “You can do it. Marriage for everyone now.”
So far, same-sex couples in Switzerland can only get official approval for civil unions, which are not on
equal footing as marriages. If a majority votes for the legalization of same-sex marriage in Switzerland this would also allow couple to adopt children.
More sharks, rays face extinction: The world’s sharks and rays have seen declines in their populations since 2014 and more and more are now threatened with extinction, according to a new red list released Saturday at a global conference aimed at protecting dwindling species.
The Komodo dragon is now listed as endangered, notably because of rising sea levels and rising temperatures in its Indonesian habitat. Ebonies and rosewoods threatened by logging were among trees put on the list for the first time this year.
There are signs of hope, too — fishing quotas have allowed several tuna species to be put on the “path to recovery,” according to the announcement from The
International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
2 babies for Buttigieg:
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and his husband, Chasten, are celebrating the arrival of not one — but two — bundles of joy.
The first openly gay person to be confirmed by the Senate for a Cabinet position had shared last month that the couple had become parents after seeking to adopt.
Buttigieg shared more on Saturday, tweeting a photo of Chasten and him each cradling a newborn.
“Chasten and I are beyond thankful for all the kind wishes since first sharing the news that we’re becoming parents,” the secretary wrote on his personal Twitter account. “We are delighted to welcome Penelope Rose and Joseph August Buttigieg to our family.”
He released no other details about the babies, such as whether they are twins.