USA

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General William Barr waded into ongoing diplomatic tensions between the United States and China on Thursday, decrying what he said was Beijing’s determination to establish “dominance” in the market of next-generation, high-speed wireless networks.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump’s impeachment ended with a reminder of why House Speaker Nancy Pelosi resisted the idea for so long — an acquittal everyone saw coming, followed by a bombastic presidential victory lap and a bump in his poll numbers just as the 2020 campaign officially began.

Now Democrats have to decide how to navigate the legislative and political landscape that they’ve helped reshape.

MIAMI (AP) — Six American oil executives under house arrest in Venezuela were rounded up by police hours after President Donald Trump met Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s chief opponent at the White House, according to family members of the men.

Alirio Zambrano said early Thursday that the executives of Houston-based Citgo were abruptly taken from their homes last night by the SEBIN intelligence police. Zambrano, the brother of two of the six detained men, said their current whereabouts are unknown.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Exulting in his impeachment acquittal, a defiant President Donald Trump took a scorched-earth victory lap Thursday, unleashing his fury against those who tried to remove him from office and pointing ahead to his reelection campaign.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The man accused of killing 22 people and wounding two dozen more in a shooting that targeted Mexicans in the border city of El Paso, Texas, has been charged with federal hate crimes.

Patrick Crusius, 21, has been charged with 90 counts under federal hate crime and firearms laws for his role in the Aug. 3 shooting that authorities said was aimed at scaring Hispanics into leaving the United States, according to an indictment unsealed Thursday.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The chief architect of the U.S. blueprint to resolve the decades-old conflict between Israelis and Palestinians on Thursday blamed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for soaring tensions and violence in the occupied West Bank since the plan’s release last week.

Jared Kushner, the son-in-law and adviser to President Donald Trump who spent nearly three years working on the plan, said leaders who are ready for a state “don’t call for days of rage and encourage their people to pursue violence if they’re not getting what they want.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — Long before Donald Trump’s impeachment landed in the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had one piece of advice for the president: Focus on the House.

Gin it up. Use maximum effort. Make sure Republicans are united. And leave the Senate to him.

The Republican leader encouraged the president not to turn attention on wayward GOP senators, like Mitt Romney, who were “troubled’’ by Trump’s actions toward Ukraine, but to stir the partisan passions of the House.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Thursday that the U.S. at his direction has conducted a counter-terrorism operation in Yemen that killed Qassim al-Rimi, an al-Qaida leader who claimed responsibility for last year’s deadly shooting at Naval Air Station Pensacola, where a Saudi aviation trainee killed three American sailors.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — A powerful winter storm raked the Southeast on Thursday with high winds, rain and floods that killed at least four people and injured several more across a dozen states. Rescue crews repeatedly pulled people from cars that got stuck in high water, but couldn’t reach a person whose vehicle disappeared into a rain-swollen creek.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The chairman of the Democratic National Committee on Thursday called for a “recanvass” of the results of the Iowa caucuses, saying it was needed to “assure public confidence” after three days of technical issues and delays.

”Enough is enough,” party leader Tom Perez wrote on Twitter.