USA

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — The leader of House Democrats’ political arm wants to build on 2018 midterm gains by turning out more voters who are young and diverse.

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairwoman Cheri Bustos said Friday that the organization is honing in on 70-plus districts held by Republicans or newly-minted Democrats.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Two Navy SEALs testified Friday that their platoon chief gunned down a young girl and an old man in Iraq in 2017 from his sniper’s perch, though neither witnessed him pulling the trigger.

The SEALs said shots came from the tower where Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher was posted and they watched through their scopes as the civilians fell to the ground.

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — The Oregon Capitol will be closed Saturday due to a “possible militia threat” from right-wing protesters as a walkout by Republican lawmakers over landmark climate change legislation drags on.

Republican state senators fled the Legislature — and some, the state — earlier this week to deny the majority Democrats enough votes to take up the climate bill, which would dramatically reduce fossil fuel emissions by 2050. It would be the second program of its kind in the nation after California if passed.

CLINT, Texas (AP) — Lawmakers on Friday were calling for swift change after reports this week of more than 250 infants, children and teens being held inside a windowless Border Patrol station, struggling to care for each other with inadequate food, water and sanitation.

It’s a scene that is being repeated at other immigration facilities overwhelmed with too many migrant children and nowhere to put them.

WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s a perilous time to have temps running the Pentagon.

President Donald Trump’s brinkmanship with Iran is on the boil, spilling beyond diplomacy to a planned air attack on Iran that Trump said he ordered, then pulled back at least for now. This, as the U.S. undertakes an unusual troop deployment to the Mexican border , tends its nearly two-decade-old war in Afghanistan and grapples with stalled talks with North Korea over its nuclear weapons program.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States is blacklisting five Chinese organizations involved in supercomputing with military-related applications, citing national security as justification for denying its Asian geopolitical rival access to critical U.S. technology.

The move Friday by the U.S. Commerce Department could complicate talks next week between President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, aimed at de-escalating a trade dispute between the world’s two biggest economies.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday threw out the murder conviction and death sentence for a black man in Mississippi because of a prosecutor’s efforts to keep African Americans off the jury. The defendant already has been tried six times and now could face a seventh trial.

The removal of black prospective jurors deprived inmate Curtis Flowers of a fair trial, the court said in a 7-2 decision written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Friday he abruptly called off the swiftly planned military strikes on Iran because the likely deaths of 150 Iranians would have been so out of proportion to the shootdown of an unmanned American surveillance drone. He also indicated he still hopes for talks with Iranian leaders rather than any escalation of military conflict.

“I am in no hurry,” he wrote on Twitter, adding that increasingly severe sanctions meant to push Iran to the nuclear negotiating table are “biting” the Iranian economy.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The planes were ready — their deadly cargo poised for delivery within a half-hour.

President Donald Trump had been given a series of options Thursday night on how to respond to Iran’s downing of an unmanned American surveillance drone. Senior military advisers zeroed in on a plan to launch strikes on a trio of sites within Iran, and it was up to Trump to give the final go-ahead.

If the planes took off, Trump later recounted to NBC, they would soon be at “a point where you wouldn’t turn back or couldn’t turn back.”

SAN FRANCISCO, June 20 (Xinhua) -- A U.S. federal court of appeal Thursday ruled that U.S. President Donald Trump's government can go ahead with a policy that prohibits American women from receiving abortion operations at federally-funded clinics.

A three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco allowed the U.S. government to enforce a controversial rule to ban Title X recipients from performing abortion as a method of family planning.