A new federal report on climate is warning that extreme weather disasters will continue and will get worse.
As AP correspondent Sagar Meghani reports the report often contradicts President Donald Trump's stance on climate change.
The report says hurricanes and wildfires have already gotten more frequent and extreme and it blames global warming. It details how the burning of coal, oil and gas is leading to warming that has major impacts on human health like air pollution from the wildfires and says there are also big risks to the economy.
The report written by outside scientists and officials from federal agencies says damaging weather has cost the nation nearly $400 billion over three years.
The report frequently contradicts President Trump who has questioned climate change science, saying just how much impact humans are actually having.
Sagar Meghani, Washington.
The Trump administration wants the U.S. Supreme Court to skip over federal appeals courts and take up cases that concern a military policy that would prevent transgender people from serving openly.
AP's Jennifer King reports.
The Trump administration has made several moves that have drawn an eye on transgender activists and their supporters.
David Kilmnick, the president of the LGBT Network, had this to say in October. "Trump seems to be fixated on attacking the transgender community for personal, political gain."
Now the Solicitor General Noel Francisco is asking the Supreme Court to fast track cases on the president's decision to prevent certain transgender people from serving in the military.
Lower courts had blocked the administration from implementing the policy and the three-judge panel on the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments in one of the cases but hasn't ruled.
Jennifer King, Washington.
A down day on Wall Street, with a shortened session having all three major indices closing in negative territory.
This is VOA news.
At least 34 people were killed and dozens of others injured in two separate attacks in Pakistan Friday.
Authorities in the southern port city of Karachi say at least four people were killed when a group of three armed men carrying suicide vests attacked the Chinese consulate. The Baluch Liberation Army, a separatist group based in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, claimed responsibility for the attack.
Later Friday, a powerful bomb ripped through a crowd of people in the northwestern Orakzai region, killing at least 30 and wounding more than 40 others.
In eastern Afghanistan, a suicide blast at a mosque on an army base killed at least 26 people and wounded 50 others.
AP correspondent ???Lee Keefe reports the victims were gathered for Friday prayers in the Ismail Khel district of Khost province.
"An explosion tore through a mosque inside an Afghan army base in an eastern province called Khost in a devastating attack that killed and wounded dozens of soldiers as they were praying in Friday prayers.
It's unclear who carried out the attack, but it very likely was the Taliban who have regularly been carrying out devastating attacks against Afghan military, police forces around the country.
President Ashraf Ghani quickly condemned the attack. He called it anti-Islamic and "inhumane," and he demanded an investigation into how security was breached at this army base.
Earlier in the week, a suicide bomber killed 55 people in the capital, Kabul.
Hundreds of Central American migrants in Mexico massed on Thursday around a tense U.S. border crossing.
Now the mayor of Tijuana has declared a humanitarian crisis.
Mike Gracia of AP reports.
Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel Gastélum's government is requesting help from the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs to deal with the nearly 50,000 Central American migrants who have converged on his border city.
The migrants who started their caravan in Honduras on October face the prospect of months in Tijuana as they seek asylum in the United States.
Gastélum says the Mexican government has offered little in assistance and he is not willing to commit city resources. Gastélum also says the situation has led to a decline of tourism from the United States.
I'm Mike Gracia.
Pope Francis named the Vatican's top sex abuse investigator and a close U.S. ally to an organizing committee for a February abuse prevention summit.
Greg Burke is a Vatican spokesman: "The states are certainly high. The lot of eyes upon us, we realize that. But this is a process, this is a process, I think the first thing that comes out is a recognition we have a problem."
Notably absent from the lineup announced Friday was Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley, who heads the pope's sex abuse advisory commission. One of that commission's members, the Reverend Hans Zollner, is the point-person for the group.
