North America

WASHINGTON (AP) — European and other members of the international coalition fighting the Islamic State group must take back and prosecute their nationals detained in Iraq and Syria to help keep IS from regaining territory, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Thursday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Democrats are refining part of their impeachment case against the president to a simple allegation: Bribery.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday brushed aside the Latin phrase “quid pro quo” that Democrats have been using to describe President Donald Trump’s actions toward Ukraine. As the impeachment hearings go public, they’re going for a more colloquial term that may resonate with more Americans.

“Quid pro quo: Bribery,” Pelosi said about Trump’s July 25 phone call in which he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for a favor.

SANTA CLARITA, Calif. (AP) — Authorities say the biography on an Instagram account believed to belong to the gunman who killed two students at his California high school said, “Saugus, have fun at school tomorrow.”

Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials say the message was posted Thursday morning but it’s unclear when. They say it was later removed, and they don’t know who made the change.

Authorities say off-duty officers whose children went to Saugus High School in Santa Clarita were the first on scene and provided first aid to the victims.

BOSSIER CITY, La. (AP) — President Donald Trump said the impeachment probe has been “very hard” on his family, even as he tried to flex his political muscle to flip the governor’s mansion in deep-red Louisiana.

Speaking in friendly territory in a state he carried in 2016 by 20 percentage points, Trump lashed out Thursday at Democratic investigators and what he called a “deranged impeachment witch hunt.” While arguing it was a political boon for his reelection, he acknowledged for the first time a personal toll from the impeachment process that stands to cloud his legacy.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Amazon is protesting the Pentagon’s decision to award a $10 billion cloud-computing contract to Microsoft, citing “unmistakable bias” in the process.

Amazon’s competitive bid for the “war cloud” project drew criticism from President Donald Trump and its business rivals. The project, formally called the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, pitted leading tech titans Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle and IBM against one another

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to block a subpoena for his tax returns, in a test of the president’s ability to defy investigations.

The filing Thursday sets the stage for a high court showdown over the tax returns Trump has refused to release, unlike every other modern president. The justices also could weigh in more broadly on Trump’s claim that sitting presidents can’t be prosecuted or investigated for crimes.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Deval Patrick was in need of a pep talk.

He was staring down reelection as Massachusetts governor in 2010, in the midst of a sluggish economic recovery that would ultimately contribute to sweeping Democratic defeats across the country. In stepped President Barack Obama, a close friend and political ally, who was in town for an event. The two men met for a “get in the game” conversation that helped put Patrick on the path to a second term.

SANTA CLARITA, Calif. (AP) — A student pulled a gun from his backpack and opened fire at a Southern California high school Thursday, killing two students and wounding three others before shooting himself in the head on his 16th birthday, authorities said.

The attacker was hospitalized in critical condition, officials said, and investigators offered no immediate motive.

WASHINGTON (AP) — An ambassador, her firing and a pair of fixers.

Those details stand at the center of Marie Yovanovitch’s story, a personal ordeal she’ll relate to Americans and the world Friday as part of the Democrat-driven impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump.

What led to the career diplomat’s firing, Democrats say, is a key chapter in Trump’s holdup of military aid while he pressured Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden’s son. Republicans dismiss that as not credible.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House will hear from a singular witness Friday in the Trump impeachment hearings: Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who was targeted by the president’s allies in a “smear” campaign now central to the inquiry.

The career diplomat, who served both Republican and Democratic presidents, is expected to relay her striking story of being suddenly recalled by Donald Trump and told to “watch my back” in a swiftly developing series of events that sounded alarms about the White House’s shadow foreign policy.