defense department air bases. the state department defended the decision, raising concerns of possible terrorists being on board while having no one on the ground to verify the flight manifest. but these actions go against biden s promise that he wouldn t leave any americans behind. 90% of americans in afghanistan who wanted to leave were able to leave. and for those remaining americans, there is no deadline. we remain committed to get them out if they want to come out. rachel: well, that was clearly a lie. as the administration is now actively working to stop american citizens from escaping the failed nation. and we don t even know how many americans are left stranded in afghanistan. we have been able to identify a relatively small number of americans who we believe are seeking to depart from the airport with their families. we have been assured, again, that all-american citizens and
and azmat zahra. azmat, what have you heard? have many left afghanistan at this point? most of the journalists being evacuated are journalists who lived in kabul, so people in some of the more rural places like kandahar, elsewhere, have been having trouble. they also oftentimes don t have the paperwork and documentation ready that made it easy for them to enter the airport. for example, many friends of my own, we could get people on a flight manifest. we could get them a seat. we could put them in a convoy. we could prepare the documents that they needed, and they would approach the airport and get turned around. and this was happening repeatedly over the last week. some of them have made it through. others now it looks like their
extended family. they are americans still evaluating their decision based on the information on the ground that evolves daily, that evolving hourly. some are understandably very scared ed scared. each has a set of priorities and consideration that they can weigh. full-t finally, over the past ten days we have been moving hundreds of afghan citizens out every day. we cross check our list against flight manifest, against arrive records and other database. there s a lag of about 24 hours for us to verify their status. when you take into account all of these inputs that we arrive at our assessment are the number
cnn. well, a billionaire space race. richard branson announcing his plans to beat rival jeff bezos to space. virgin galactic revealed on thursday he will attempt to fly in the rocket powered plane on july 11th, nine days before bezos s launch. rachel crane joins me now. is this a little personal one-upmanship here. from the outside, it could look that way. but i spoke to branson just moments ago and he maintains that this is not a race. that bezos s plans did not impact his decision to join the flight manifest for this upcoming test launch. but it is news here. because originally branson was not intended to be on this next test flight. he was going to be on the following test flight.
um, but, you know, it might not just be egos here and the desire to be the historic-first billionaire in space, that is a reason for this update to the flight manifest. the faa, just last week, granted virgin galactic a new license to fly space-flight participants. so, prior to this updated license, the company had only flown pilots, as well as one virgin galactic employee. but now, with this new license, they are able to fly what they call space-flight participants. so now, they can extend this invitation to branson. but take a listen to what branson had to say about this upcoming flight, poppy. astronaut 001 richard branson. i ll be evaluating the customer space flight experience. as the virgin galactic founder, i am so proud to have this remarkable crew of mission