USA

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. is deploying dozens more fighter jets and additional air defenses to Saudi Arabia, beefing up efforts to defend the kingdom against Iran even as President Donald Trump repeatedly insists that America must get out of endless Middle East wars.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday signed a law that will make the state the first to allow employers, co-workers and teachers to seek gun violence restraining orders against other people.

The bill was vetoed twice by former governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, and goes beyond a measure that he signed allowing only law enforcement officers and immediate family members to ask judges to temporarily take away peoples’ guns when they are deemed a danger to themselves or others.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Top Pentagon officials on Friday denied the U.S. is abandoning its Syrian Kurdish allies in the face of a Turkish military offensive, although the future of a counterterrorism partnership with the Kurds was in grave doubt.

“We have not abandoned the Kurds. Let me be clear about that,” Defense Secretary Mark Esper told reporters. “We have not abandoned them. Nobody green-lighted this operation by Turkey — just the opposite. We pushed back very hard at all levels for the Turks not to commence this operation.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — Kevin McAleenan, a career civil servant who became the unlikely point man for President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policies, is stepping down as acting Homeland Security secretary after six months on the job.

USA (AP) —  As the threat of impeachment looms, President Donald Trump is digging in and taking solace in the base that helped him get elected: conservative evangelical Christians who laud his commitment to enacting their agenda.

Trump told reporters last week that “the biggest pastors” have assured him that Christians are “electrified” by his clash with Democrats who are probing his pushes for Ukraine to launch an investigation into a political rival, former Democratic Vice President Joe Biden.

HOUSTON (AP) — A man who prosecutors say was driven by vengeance when he fatally shot six members of his ex-wife’s family in Texas, including four children, was sentenced Friday to death, a decision the lone survivor of the attack says will help her let go of “hurt and anger.”

Jurors sentenced Ronald Lee Haskell after deliberating for little more than four hours. The jury had to choose between life in prison without parole or a death sentence.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — An aggressive wildfire in Southern California seared its way through dry vegetation Friday and spread quickly, destroying more than a dozen homes as tens of thousands of residents were ordered to get out of its way, authorities said.

The blaze broke out Thursday evening in the San Fernando Valley and spread westward, burning its way into hilly subdivisions on the northern edge of Los Angeles as terrified residents grabbed what they could and ran. One man went into cardiac arrest and died, authorities said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration and China declared a temporary truce Friday in their 15-month trade war. Yet the grievances that led them to impose tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of each other’s goods remain largely unresolved.

The administration agreed to suspend a tariff hike on $250 billion worth of Chinese imports that was set to take effect Tuesday. And China agreed to buy up to $50 billion in U.S. farm products.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Democratic presidential race that had been largely static through the summer has tumbled into a chaotic fall, shaped by unpredictable events and the deepening impeachment crisis surrounding President Donald Trump.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Testifying in defiance of President Donald Trump’s ban, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch told House impeachment investigators Friday that Trump himself had pressured the State Department to oust her from her post and get her out of the country.

Yovanovitch told lawmakers investigating Trump’s dealings with Ukraine that there was a “concerted campaign” against her based on “unfounded and false claims by people with clearly questionable motives.”