USA

Pennsylvania (AP) --- Five people were killed and about 60 were injured on the Pennsylvania Turnpike early Sunday morning, when a loaded bus went out of control on a hill and rolled over, setting off a chain reaction that involved three tractor-trailers and a passenger car.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump insisted Sunday that Iranian cultural sites were fair game for the U.S. military, dismissing concerns within his own administration that doing so could constitute a war crime under international law. He also warned Iraq that he would levy punishing sanctions if it expelled American troops in retaliation for a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad that killed a top Iranian official.

NEW YORK (AP) — Four years after President Donald Trump drove the rules of politics over a cliff to win the Republican presidential nomination and ultimately the White House, Democrats will go through their own version of the same test.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump closed out the old year by reprising a selection of his most familiar falsehoods and putting a few of his predecessor’s accomplishments in his own win column.

His vice president, seeking to justify the U.S. military’s targeted killing of a top Iranian general, helped begin the new year with a baseless claim tying that general to the 9/11 attacks.

A look at some of the Trump administration’s rhetoric on the tumultuous events in Iraq, impeachment, the economy and more:

IRAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — His 17-day holiday stay at his Florida resort over, President Donald Trump has returned to the White House facing twin challenges: the fallout from the strike he ordered to kill an Iranian general and his looming impeachment trial in the Senate.

The dueling images — one of potential chaos in the Middle East, the other a politicized ritual occurring for only the third time in the nation’s history — will shape a defining month of Trump’s presidency, one that comes just before the first votes of the 2020 campaign are cast.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump insists that Iranian cultural sites are fair game for the U.S. military, dismissing concerns within his own administration that doing so could constitute a war crime under international law. He also warned Iraq that he would levy punishing sanctions if it expelled American troops in retaliation for a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad that killed a top Iranian official.

WASHINGTON, January 5. /TASS/: Undefined people hacked an American government website on Saturday posting statements supporting Iran and against US President Donald Trump on its home page.

American users clicking on the American Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) portal late on Saturday were greeted with a "message from the Islamic Republic of Iran." "We will not stop supporting our friends in the regions, the oppressed people of Palestine, Yemen, Bahrain, the people and government of Syria and Iraq," it said.

NEW YORK (AP) — Rose McGowan’s tweet that apologized on behalf of the U.S. to Iran for “disrespecting their flag and people” in the wake of an airstrike that killed the country’s top general was not anti-American, the actress said in the face of harsh criticism.

“I don’t support Iran over America. I want America to be better,” McGowan said during an exclusive interview with The Associated Press on Friday.

MISSISSIPPI, USA (AP) --- Mississippi authorities were searching for two prisoners believed to have escaped Saturday from one of several prisons rocked by violence that has left at least five inmates dead in the past week.

Gov. Phil Bryant on Saturday said via Twitter that he has directed “the use of all necessary assets and personnel” to find the two inmates who escaped from the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Demonstrators in dozens of cities around the U.S. gathered Saturday to protest the Trump administration’s killing of an Iranian general and decision to send thousands of additional soldiers to the Middle East.

More than 70 planned protests were organized by CODEPINK and Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, a U.S.-based anti-war coalition, along with other groups.

From Tampa to Philadelphia and San Francisco to New York, protesters carried signs and chanted anti-war slogans.