i t giants in china and they are making money of parents anxiety. but some worry that the government may just lead to a black market in private tutoring. just because the government has banned or is trying to cut back on a certain kind of education. i don't think that was thought parents from trying to pursue it. the government says it's offering support to thousands of people affected by the measures, but that may not be enough to help all of those really from the shock of seeing that teaching career in china. suddenly at an end, katrina you are the 0 aging. ah . it is as you get around them now other top stories, several rockets have been fired a cobble airport as the last us flights take off before tuesdays departure deadline . i say ok says it was behind the attack. rob mcbride has more from comp these rockets were launched early monday morning and it has to be said it must be. it's

a troubling attack psychologically for the u. s. in that final stages of this evacuation, although it seems a little actual damage, was done that islamic state affiliate here and i've kind of stand, has claimed responsibility. they say total of 6 could to sca style rockets were fired, it's from the back of a car, a vehicle and we have seen video uploaded of a vehicle on file. that presumably was the vehicle from which these rockets were large. un security ma'am, members are meeting to talk about keeping up aid efforts in afghanistan separately . the u. s. is holding a virtual meeting with allies and regional partners, turkey and carter to discuss the future of the country. pakistan. army says 2 of its soldiers were killed along the afghan border attack as fight the military boast post in our district. it is the 1st cross border assault since the taliban seas cobble over 2 weeks ago. rescue teams are trying to reach people stranded after

hurricane ida may land full on the u. s. gulf coast power has been out to the city of new orleans. ida has since been downgraded to a tropical storm. but forecasters warned the danger is not over. palestinian and israeli leaders have held high level talks for the 1st time in a decade. president bus spoke to israel's defense minister benny gas for 2 hours in ramallah. can says they discuss cooperation on security and the economy. the you, an atomic agency says north korea appears to have restarted a nuclear reactor site, is able to produce weapons, grade plutonium, us as urgent dialogue is needed to de nuclear arise, the korean peninsula. those, the headlines talk i just 0 is next. how many nukes is too many new america has in many ways driven the arms race parties are much more like the british

parties down to the there are you regulations to own a tiger than their our own a dog? how can this be happening? your weekly take on us politics and, and that's the bottom line with the the cobra, 1900 pandemic has had a devastating impact around the world from putting enormous pressure on health care systems in many cases, to breaking point, to putting the world economy on track to a possible recession. but the pandemic has also made clear another problem of our time global inequality. ah, if you live now to a briefing in washington where the us pentagon is updating on the situation in afghanistan, amount of explosive material. we are aware of reports of civilian casualties and we take these reports very seriously. and we are continuing to assess the situation

separately at approximately 11 pm eastern time. last night, as many as 5 rockets were fired at the cowboy airport, u. s. military forces successfully employed our force protection measures to thwart that attack. us forces retain the inherent right of self defense and are authorized to meet threats with a swift and forceful response. force protection is paramount in this phase of the operation over the weekend. and in today he vacuum ration operations continued. yesterday 26 u. s. military aircraft, all. busy busy fi 17th, departed with approximately 1200 evacuees. in total, there were $28.00 flights out of cabal airport in the last 24 hours, which included the remaining coalition departures. as of

today, more than 122000, including 5004 and americans have been evacuated from afghanistan. u. s. military troops have shown tremendous bravery and compassion as they put themselves in harm's way to evacuate as many american citizens and afghans as possible during this operation. that work by u. s. m. service members continues across the globe at a number of intermediate staging bases. and d o. d installations incent calm more than 27000 passengers await follow on movement from 6 active locations in new come 3 active locations currently have more than 200-2000 passengers. and today, 17 flights we'll transport about 3700 passengers to both dulles international airport with approximately 11 flights in philadelphia. international airport with 6

flights in north com, there are nearly 13000 passengers that remain at 5 different u. s. installations. these numbers are a snapshot in time and movement. personnel is very fluid. we do not expect these passenger totals to match the total number of evacuees from afghanistan, nor will they match the total afghans arriving to the united states. the mission of the evacuation operation was to help as many people as possible leave afghanistan. some of these evacuees include, included american citizens, 3rd country, nationals or afghans whose credentials permitted them to otherwise depart without processing at a military installation. military, civilian and contract personnel continue to work closely with both government and non governmental agencies to meet requirements and provide additional capabilities

for families as they continue their transition. while operations in afghanistan will conclude soon, the d. o d effort to support the inner agency is ongoing. additionally, the department of defense continues to support humanitarian relief operations in response to national disasters. here closer to home. in haiti, the u. s. military assets of flown, 560 sorties were providing rapid, logistical, and air lift support. including delivery of more than 348000 pounds of aid on the golf course on the gulf coast with the hurricane. i the north. com as of this morning and coordination with fema or national guard has activated more than 5200 personnel in louisiana, mississippi, texas, and alabama. in response to the hurricane. they bring a variety of assets including high water vehicles, rotary lift, and other transportation transportation capability to support recovery efforts. u.

s. army corps of engineers is operational in new orleans and is assessing the storms impact. d o. d stands ready to assist as requested by fema. thank you. hank taylor. ok, i don't have any thing to add, so we'll go to questions lena. general 11 quick follow up and then a question. the answer, they strike and get all of the 5 rock and started some land in areas where they're just no casualties. we assess the reporting from last night's rocket attack. we said that 5 rockets were in the air and went 3 landed off the airfield. were no effect and the ram was able to effect and for to the attack of one and the other rocket landed with no effect to the mission or any danger to our personnel. and then certainly on a vacuum we are,

does the us and us military assess that the number of americans still in the country are only the ones that no longer want to leave. are the ones who want to leave, or they largely out now and are saying that the vaccination of afghans is largely complete also. so are you now it's solely concentrating on just getting us troops out and equipment. so just go back total, you know, 122000 word vacuum, approximately 5400 americans. we continue to have the capability to evacuate and fly out those until the very end. but as you talk about active peace, we're continue to work with department of state on that and continue evacuation and military operations in the state department on on the, the numbers of americans are still in contact with us. such something for them to

speak to tar. could you both speak to the continuing rocket to the final planes that are leaving and the role of the room is playing well is going to be left behind? or is it so vital to protecting the planes as are leaving what will happen to the room after those? we certainly assess as the said that there's a, there's still an active threat in various ways that we have to be prepared for. and what i will tell you without getting into the specific systems and in their availability, i think you can understand why we wouldn't we continue to have and will maintain the capability to protect ourselves and defend ourselves as we continue to complete the retrograde. and i think that's probably the best place to put it in just one follow up, please give me a number of us of gotten reports from either american citizens or vulnerable atkins that are still on the ground and can't get through the gates anymore. they've been

got getting notices that the evacuation is over. what happens next for those that are left behind? will there be any sort of military operation to help get them out of the country? i think you heard secretary blinking, talk about this for, for americans. and, and other individuals that, that want to be able to leave afghanistan after our withdrawal is complete, that the state department is going to continue to work across many different levers to facilitate that transportation. and as i say, as i said earlier, right now, we do not anticipate a military role in that effort. john and general taylor, you just said that one rocket landed with no effect to the mission. you mean? it landed inside the airport perimeter? not effectiveness, landed inside the printer and had no effect whatsoever. and these ice is kate

fighters are planners that you have targeted, withdrawn strikes in the last few days, or any of them, were they released from the prison or from poli charged prison, where they known combatants who were inside those prison. i don't think we have that information. and lastly, if 5800 americans were left in afghanistan when you pulled out a background at the end of july, why did the u. s. military not begin evacuation to americans before pulling out of the country again? we talked about this quite some time ago and happy to revisit it. we were already baked into the retro grade plan, way back in the spring was the possibility for noncombatant evacuations and, and helping people get out. and we were in constant com. conversations with the government as well as our colleagues across the interagency, about what that would look like. and when would be the right time to do that. and

in anticipation of it well before the provincial capital started toppling there towards the middle of august secretary austin. preposition forces closer and region into degree of taking an entire marine battalion off of the u. s. s. he would you mind moving them short equates to that they will be ready. so this was something that we had been planning for and preparing for. the timing of these things is always very delicate as you might, as you might imagine, essentially stopped by the state department from beginning those evacuation. i wouldn't say that and i don't think it's important right now to get into internal deliberations. we were obviously still in close contact with the gunny government, which was still he was still the president of the country and you know, you, you have to have, you have to be able to have those conversations to because our expectation was that the government would stay in place,

nobody could have imagined how quickly that government would have literally just dissipated almost overnight. there was simply no way to predict that address and have a question from on the, on the gate or any of the gates still open and are any of the get under taliban control? i think it's right now as we get into the this always been a dangerous operation, but we're in a particularly dangerous time right now. it reese, i think you can understand that we're not going to be detailing the status of any particular gate right now. as the general said, we still have the ability and capability to conduct evacuation operations even while we are completing and working to complete the retrograde of us forces for follow up, you know, to incident one on thursday and one on sunday where there may have offensively reports of it beyond investigating, do you have any indications that those reports may be accurate? we are not in a position to dispute it right now, adriece, and as the general said,

we're assessing and we're investigating, look, make no mistake, no military on the face of the earth. works harder to avoid civilian casualties than united states military and nobody wants to see innocent life taken. we take it very, very seriously and. and when we know that we have caused innocent life to be lost in the conduct of our operations, we're transparent about it. we're investigating this, i'm not going to get ahead of it. but if we have, you know, verifiable information that we did in fact take innocent life here, then, then we will, we'll be transparent about that too. nobody wants to see that happen. but you know, what else we didn't want to see happen. we didn't want to see happen. what we believe to be a very real, a very specific and a very imminent threat to the how many cars that international airport and to our

troops operating at that airport as well as civilians around it and in it. and that was another thing that we were very, very concerned about. we are david, the president had said the hood of an attack when in the next 20 or 36 hours was highly likely he'd been told that by military managers, then after that there was the strike on this, this vehicle after that strike is the, is this is another attack still considered highly likely? we are operating under the assumption that we need to be prepared for future potential threats. and as the general detailed for you in his opening statement, there was in fact, after we took this air strike against this vehicle, there were rocket attacks, indirect fire rocket attacks on the airport. so the threat stream is still real, it's still active. and in many cases it's still specific and we're taking it very

seriously and we will right up until the end. you didn't specifically answer the question about whether the taliban you said you are going to talk about who is that? what game like taliban on the airport? not to my knowledge. they are. yeah. i have a few today. sorry. you mentioned 822000 have been evacuated. how many of those are s i b and their families. don't have a good breakdown of how many in 122000 r as in their families. that's really a better question for the state department. we know that roughly 5400 of the 122000 are american citizens and the vast majority of course, are afghan, and i just don't have a breakdown of that. well, our reporting is saying that there are about 7000 of the 88000 so that we leave more than 80000 s i. d 's and their family members left behind the pentagon and see

that as a success, leaving 80000 people s i. b 's who worked alongside our troops behind a call. i can't verify that number that matthew just gave me and i can't tell you what the breakdown is right now between the, the more than a 100 and what 12000 maybe more afghans that we are able to evacuate in the course of less than a couple of weeks i can't give you the breakdown right now. i just, i honestly can't. and what i will tell you is that obviously we want to get as many people out as, as we could. and in the course of a very short order of time, 122000 the largest air lift at the us military is conducted got 122000 people to safety. now, there will be a time when this is complete, that the state department can do the math and, and figure this out. but i think we're all focused right now on continuing the

mission that the general described us doing and making sure that right up until the end that we can get people out safely, including evacuees. and then secondly, we have sources that say marine starting the airport allow relatives and extended family members of cobbler embassy level staff, despite having not having documentation, but meanwhile thousands in children back and mold american citizenship and legal permanent resident status were turned away. in some cases, have you heard this as well and can you confirm that i have not heard those reports and i cannot verify them. i will tell you that without speaking to these reports, the marines and the soldiers that have for the last couple of weeks been helping counselor officers may and these gates and help process people and have been did horrific work. and they had to make decisions in real time about trying to help people get out. and the numbers speak for themselves. $122000.00 plus is that that

is, that is significant and a lot of lives were saved and a lot of lives are now in a better place and they're going to have opportunities they could have had before. thanks to the work that these troops did in concert with their state department colleagues at these very dangerous gates. one more, if i may not on afghanistan, beijing has come out within himself trying to see policy, which forces people to self identify while approaching their self claim maritime territories. policy were formerly goes into effect on wednesday to do plan on following that policy. i haven't seen this report card, so i'm not going to take it from the podium right now. i will do is take the question back and we'll try to get you a better answer. but your, me up with a steam from the chinese that i have not seen. and i'm not going to speculate at this time 0. thank you, john. there is a question that many of john asked me to once me to ask you. this is why president biden not a warning to talk about this. any of us citizen, our lives are killed,

offset our departure from again to sun. the leadership will be targeted just like isis was target. that personally there i stench for the question i, i think the president has been very clear that what our expectations are once this retrograde is complete with respect to the safety and security of american citizens. i mean, i think we've been very clear about that and, and as you heard secretary blink and say, we're going to continue to pursue a variety of means to help those americans who want to get out after we're gone. get out both talked about slides, heading to dollars in philly. can you give us a sense of how many people are on those floyd's and the breakdown of afghans and us? i can give you the, you know, by manifest. you know, so what we think is of today's 17 flights 3700. the majority of those are or

afghans now as the priority at these lily pads that are done or merely to get the american citizens there 1st. and then you know, other green card holder and those piece, but the majority of the flight today of those 17 or, or atkins, understand the congressional people are being free. that you're starting to destroy your munitions as well as equipment. can you give us a sense of that effort at all? yeah. you know, what, what i go back to is, is no commanders on the ground retain the that authority and the capability to remove or destroy equipment and weapons, to ensure that those don't fall into the hands of anybody else. or can we, are we going to get an accounting of what has been destroyed, let's say, black hawks or other equipment. i think when the time is right, we'll be able to, to try to help better flesh that out times. not right for that right now. tom or 2

quick questions. if i made on the strike because the vehicle do you use the central command talked about secondary explosives? i think that to actually have visual evidence that there were secondary explosion. are you convinced that there was because that seems to be one of the potential contributing factors to civilian casualties. so do you, are you, are you certain that were secondary? yes. can i just have a follow up on a different part of this? can you say how you're sure? now, my other question is, this is we inevitably come down to the final hours. what is the voice or thoughts for american passports? being part of their 2 might be trying to get to the airport and get through. is there still time for them? there is still time and the state department is in touch. we know with the,

with the additional american citizens, again, given the 10 security environment that we're dealing with, i think i'm just, i think it be better to just not talk about it much more than that but, but they are and they are in contact course. there's still time that the flights will continue tomorrow on the 31st, so i'm not going to get ahead of the actual operational schedule. courtney, you're not going to do that. and then a little bit more on the continuing strike promises k, after the us is completely out on the 31st. will you coordinate with the taliban or give them notice if you plan to strike? i just, i don't think it's useful to get into a pathetically operations for future operations. one way or the other. the only thing i would tell you is that the president has made it very clear that we will maintain robust over the horizon counterterrorism capability. the kinds of capabilities that you've seen as use and just the last 2436 hours. and we'll have

the ability to act in ways that are in keeping with our national security interest and help prevent attacks on the homeland. we still have that capability. we will use that capability pathetically. the fact that the us military has been coordinating with the talent on the ground for the last 2 weeks or so. so, and so to ask if they're going to continue coordinating with them in this case against isis. k isn't hypothetical, will you continue to coordinate with the taliban after august 30? first i beg to differ. i actually think your question is entirely hypothetical about something that is entirely different than what we've been coordinating with the taliban on over the last 2 weeks, which has been to help help us get as many people onto that airport as possible. i do appreciate the sense of the question, i'm not trying to market, it's just a, i don't think it's helpful for us to talk about what over the horizon counter terrorism capability is going to look like going forward and how we're going to execute it. suffice to say we have the capability, we've demonstrated that over just the last couple of days in strikes that were not

coordinated with the taliban. and we have that ability to go forward and then does he or the pentagon or st. kara whomever it would be? have the authority to continue to, to conduct strikes again. i just came after august 31st or do those decisions. have to go to the president on a case by case basis. the commander commander on the ground has the authorities. he needs right now. i'm not going to talk about authorities going forward. i will say this not in terms of, i know what you're asking, you know, specific approval authority for each and every strike. i won't talk about policy decisions going forward, except to say that the entire interagency, certainly the entire military chain of command understands the, the, the existence of this threat and the possibility of this threat to continue to exist over time. and we have the capability to deal with it in talking funny contacts with the taliban. have there been contacts with the taliban? about the us withdrawal? it's going to be taking place right now and over the coming days to ensure that

there are no mis interpretations of what's going on. the short answer, your question is yes. without getting into detail, our commanders underground remain in communication with taliban leaders around the airfield to d. conflict and to prevent miscalculations and misunderstandings. and so far that communication has been effective by through the withdrawal that's going on right now. it does ask you about to follow to address this question in the initial read out from thank home on the strike over the weekend on the car bomb. and the suspects in the us said that initially the initial assessment was there were no civilian casualties. what basis do you have to make that assessment? initial statement said that we are assessing and we have no indications at this time of civilian casualties. if i remember the statement exactly, and that was true when it was said, we also put in there are the st. com put in there that we are assessing and, and we continue to assess on what basis and then over horizon capability,

are you making assessments? and how is that being done? because well, we're, certainly, we're, we're looking at a variety of age of information and, and we're obviously collecting open press reporting. and we're doing the best we can to try to understand the situation locally as best we can. and that would include discussions with the taliban about about what they might be seeing. so there's a variety of ways that we are trying to do this assessment more clarity on why we can't know the names of the isis case suspects that we're head on thursday. i am having a hard time understand they were described as high profile planners. facilitators, the president said that we will hunt you down. why can't we know who's probably a time when we can talk to you about the names? that's not the time right now. we are still dealing with, as we saw from last night's rocket attacks, very real ongoing threats. and i think we're doing,

we believe to be the prudent thing with respect to the release of information. we're giving you as much as we can and as close to real time as we can. but we're not going to be able to give you everything. and we talked about that a couple of days ago when, when we talked about the retrograde beginning, that there was going to be more judicious approach about information release. so there will probably become a time when we can be more forthcoming now. is not that time. me go to the phone here. i haven't done this at all. it alex horton. ok. we'll come back the alex jeff shobel. thanks. i have a question and it's difficult, but i hope you can entertain it. according to politico, the u. s. knew where the attack would roughly where the attack would take place on thursday and when it would attack when it would take place. why were there us

troops at that gate? at that time, jeff, what i can tell you is that we have been monitoring as close as we can intelligence that led us to believe that we were in a very dynamic and in some cases, specific threat environment. number one, number 2. as gentlemen, kennedy said, we're going to, we're going to investigate, we're going to get to the bottom of what happened last thursday. 13 precious lives were lost. we're going to take that seriously and we're going to and we're not going to investigate it in public. at number 3, i am absolutely not going to speak to a press story that was informed by the unlike.