North America

WASHINGTON (AP) — Robert Mueller warned that Russian interference is still happening “as we sit here.”

State election officials are anxious and underfunded, some running systems with outdated software and scrounging for replacement parts off e-Bay.

And on Thursday a report from the Senate Intelligence committee concluded all 50 states were targeted in 2016 and ahead of the 2018 election “top election vulnerabilities remained.”

But there’s no help coming from Congress.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Congressional Democrats on Thursday pivoted away from questions of impeachment by saying they are going to “own” the upcoming August recess on issues like health care and prescription drug costs.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on a bipartisan budget and debt deal in Congress (all times local):

5:12 p.m.

A hard-won, bipartisan budget and debt compromise between President Donald Trump and Speaker Nancy Pelosi has easily passed the Democratic-controlled House.

The bill would head off another government shutdown, permit the Treasury to borrow freely to pay the government’s bills, and lock in place recent budget gains for the Pentagon and domestic agencies.

It’s a must-do measure that represents a relatively rare moment of detente in Trump’s Washington.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — An investigation into Marines accused of helping smuggle migrants into the United States led to the arrest Thursday of 16 of their fellow Marines at California’s Camp Pendleton, just north of the U.S.-Mexico border.

In a dramatic move aimed at sending a message, authorities made the arrests as the Marines gathered in formation with their battalion.

None of the 16 Marines were involved in helping enforce border security, the Marine Corps said in a news release. They are accused of crimes ranging from migrant smuggling to drug-related offenses.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department said Thursday the federal government will resume executing death-row inmates for the first time since 2003, ending an informal moratorium even as the nation sees a broad shift away from capital punishment.

Attorney General William Barr instructed the Bureau of Prisons to schedule executions starting in December for five men, all accused of murdering children. Although the death penalty remains legal in 30 states, executions on the federal level are rare.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Twenty years ago, a knock on the door opened the past for Arlinda Valencia.

A relative had come to pay his respects on the death of Valencia’s father. He then revealed a shocking secret: The family was descended from survivors of a 1918 massacre along the U.S.-Mexico border.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The question to Michael Dukakis, the Democratic presidential candidate in 1988, was brutally personal.

“If Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?” Bernard Shaw, a CNN anchor, asked, referring to the Massachusetts governor’s wife. Dukakis said he wouldn’t favor it because “I don’t see any evidence that it is a deterrent.”

GREELEY, Colo. (AP) — The disappearance of 12-year-old Jonelle Matthews shortly after singing “Jingle Bells” with classmates at a 1984 Christmas concert stunned this rural town in northern Colorado. Her case attracted the attention of the White House, and came at a time when the faces of missing children across the nation were being placed on milk cartons.

SEATTLE (AP) — Rachel Whalen remembers feeling gutted in high school when a former friend would mock her online postings, threaten to unfollow or unfriend her on social media and post inside jokes about her to others online.

The cyberbullying was so distressing that Whalen said she contemplated suicide. Once she got help, she decided to limit her time on social media. It helps to take a break from it for perspective, said Whalen, now a 19-year-old college student in Utah.

DETROIT (AP) — When Barack Obama was on the ballot in 2008 and 2012, there was no question that Terrance Holmes would vote for the first black president. But as he helped fix cars this week at a repair shop on Detroit’s west side, he recalled his ambivalence about the 2016 campaign.

“I just didn’t feel no reason to” vote, said Holmes, who is black and holds a second job at an auto parts factory.