Nation and World briefs for August 31

Pentagon: US troop total in Afghanistan larger than reported

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon is poised to have roughly 15,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan in the coming months, as defense officials on Wednesday finally acknowledged the actual number of American forces in the country after long camouflaging the total in misleading accounting measures and red tape.

Senior Defense officials for the first time said there are about 11,000 U.S. forces currently deployed to Afghanistan — thousands more than the 8,400 that were allowed under the previous administration’s troop cap. Military officials have long quietly acknowledged there were far more forces in the country than the cap allowed, but commanders shuffled troops in and out, labeled many “temporary,” and used other personnel accounting tactics to artificially keep the public count low.

The officials, however, refused to provide similar details for Iraq and Syria, where there also are thousands more than the Pentagon publicly admits.

Chief Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said that while the same “principles of transparency” will apply in Iraq and Syria, those countries have their own interests. There have long been political sensitivities within the Iraq government about the number of American troops on the ground, and those concerns raise questions about whether the Pentagon will be less candid about force numbers there to avoid conflicts.

Based on troop caps instituted by the Obama administration, the number of U.S. forces in Iraq has consistently been reported as 5,262, but officials say there are actually more than 7,000. And there are at least 1,500 U.S. troops in Syria — three times the 503 that the Pentagon will acknowledge. White said details on troop numbers in Iraq and Syria would be announced in the future.

US airstrikes block evacuation of Islamic State militants

BEIRUT (AP) — U.S. airstrikes blocked the advance of an Islamic State convoy carrying militants toward Iraq on Wednesday, derailing a Hezbollah-negotiated deal that removed the extremists from the Lebanon-Syria border, where they have been for years.

The airstrikes came amid U.S. criticism of the deal, reflecting a growing outrage within the Trump administration over the decision to give the militants safe passage from the battlefield instead of killing them, and Iran-backed Hezbollah’s leading role in it.

The developments also were an embarrassment for the U.S.-backed Lebanese military, which agreed to the deal and had declared victory over the militants.

U.S. officials said the airstrikes to disrupt the fleeing militants were intended to send a strong signal that the deal, while helping to clear IS from the border, undermined a broader U.S.-led strategy for defeating the group in Syria and Iraq.

More than 48 hours after they left the Syria-Lebanon border for eastern Syria, the buses carrying 300 militants and almost as many of their relatives were stuck in a desert area on the outskirts of the largely IS-held Deir el-Zour province near the frontier with Iraq.

It is not clear how the standoff will be resolved. Syrian activists say alternate routes are being considered to bring the militants to Boukamal, an IS-controlled town on the Iraqi border, according to the agreement.

But officials of the U.S.-led coalition said they will continue to monitor the convoy and aren’t ruling out more airstrikes.

Trump order undermines rebuilding better for future floods

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two weeks before Harvey’s flood waters engulfed much of Houston, President Donald Trump quietly rolled back an order by his predecessor that would have made it easier for storm-ravaged communities to use federal emergency aid to rebuild bridges, roads and other structures so they can better withstand future disasters.

Now, with much of the nation’s fourth-largest city underwater, Trump’s move has new resonance. Critics note the president’s order could force Houston and other cities to rebuild hospitals and highways in the same way and in the same flood-prone areas.

“Rebuilding while ignoring future flood events is like treating someone for lung cancer and then giving him a carton of cigarettes on the way out the door,” said Michael Gerrard, a professor of environmental and climate change law at Columbia University. “If you’re going to rebuild after a bad event, you don’t want to expose yourself to the same thing all over again.”

Trump’s action is one of several ways the president, who has called climate change a hoax, has tried to wipe away former President Barack Obama’s efforts to make the United States more resilient to threats posed by the changing climate.

The order Trump revoked would have permitted the rebuilding to take into account climate scientists’ predictions of stronger storms and more frequent flooding.

Trump to Harvey victims: ‘All of America’ grieving with you

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump set aside his focus on talking up Harvey recovery efforts to speak directly to the suffering of victims, saying “all of America is grieving with you.”

Trump’s Wednesday remarks on the ravages of the hurricane came at the top of an address in Springfield, Missouri, about the tax code. The president sought to reassure those who had lost loved ones and property. “We are here with you today, we are here with you tomorrow, and we will be with you every single day after to restore, recover and rebuild,” he said.

Earlier Wednesday, Trump tweeted that on his Tuesday trip to Texas he had witnessed “first hand the horror & devastation” wrought by Harvey. He wrote that after seeing the widespread damage, “my heart goes out even more so to the great people of Texas!”

But Trump saw little damage during his visit to Corpus Christi — mostly boarded-up windows, downed tree limbs and fences askew. And that was through the tinted windows of his SUV as his motorcade took him from the airport to a firehouse in a city already nearly back to normal.

The president deliberately kept his distance from the epicenter of the damage in Houston to avoid disrupting recovery operations. Trump also visited Austin during Tuesday’s trip, when he met with officials at the state emergency operations center.

Trump pushes tax overhaul to ‘bring back Main Street’

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) — President Donald Trump launched his fall push to overhaul the nation’s tax system by pledging Wednesday that the details-to-come plan would “bring back Main Street” by reducing the crushing tax burden on middle-class Americans, making a populist appeal for a proposal expected to heavily benefit corporate America.

Trump said his vision for re-writing the tax system, a key campaign pledge, would unlock stronger economic growth and benefit companies and workers alike. He promised it would be “pro-growth, pro-jobs, pro-worker and pro-American.”

True to form for the president, Trump dangled the prospect of the “biggest ever” tax cut and warned that without it, “jobs in our country cannot take off the way they should. And it could be much worse than that.”

Trump, who rarely travels to promote his policy agenda, chose to debut his tax overhaul pitch before employees at a manufacturing plant in Springfield, Missouri, a community known as the birthplace of Route 66, one of the nation’s original highways, and one known as America’s Main Street.

“This is where America’s Main Street will begin its big, beautiful comeback,” the president declared.

US clears breakthrough gene therapy for childhood leukemia

WASHINGTON (AP) — Opening a new era in cancer care, U.S. health officials on Wednesday approved a breakthrough treatment that genetically engineers patients’ own blood cells into an army of assassins to seek and destroy childhood leukemia.

The Food and Drug Administration called the approval historic, the first gene therapy to hit the U.S. market. Made from scratch for every patient, it’s one of a wave of “living drugs” under development to fight additional blood cancers and other tumors, too.

Novartis Pharmaceuticals set the price for its one-time infusion of so-called “CAR-T cells” at $475,000, but said there would be no charge for patients who didn’t show a response within a month.

“This is a brand new way of treating cancer,” said Dr. Stephan Grupp of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who treated the first child with CAR-T cell therapy — a girl who’d been near death but now is cancer-free for five years and counting. “That’s enormously exciting.”

CAR-T treatment uses gene therapy techniques not to fix disease-causing genes but to turbocharge T cells, immune system soldiers that cancer too often can evade. Researchers filter those cells from a patient’s blood, reprogram them to harbor a “chimeric antigen receptor” or CAR that zeroes in on cancer, and grow hundreds of millions of copies. Returned to the patient, the revved-up cells can continue multiplying to fight disease for months or years.