North America

ANKENY, Iowa (AP) — Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg said Saturday the Oval Office benefits from the perspective of a wartime veteran, a niche he occupies exclusively among top-tier candidates in his party’s race for the 2020 nomination.

During an interview on Iowa PBS in suburban Des Moines, Buttigieg was asked if there’s value in a president who had faced hostile fire.

CIUDAD HIDALGO, Mexico (AP) — Mexican authorities closed a border entry point in southern Mexico on Saturday after thousands of Central American migrants tried to push their way across a bridge spanning the Suchiate River between Mexico and Guatemala.

Honduran migrants waved their country’s flag and sang the national anthem as they approached the bridge. At the height of the confrontation, Guatemalan authorities estimated 2,500 migrants were on the bridge, or attempting to get on it.

INDIANOLA, Iowa (AP) — Joe Biden has called for Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign to “disown” what he calls “doctored video” that some Sanders supporters say shows the former vice president endorsing Republican calls to cut Social Security and Medicare.

“There’s a little doctored video going around ... put out by one of Bernie’s people,” Biden told supporters Saturday in Indianola, Iowa, referring to a 2018 speech in which Biden discussed then-House Speaker Paul Ryan saying rising deficit demanded action on the popular entitlement programs.

Utah (AP) --- A boy armed with a gun killed three children and a woman inside a Utah home, then accompanied a fifth victim to a hospital, where he was arrested, police said Saturday.

Police were still trying to piece together who’s who and what happened leading up to Friday night’s shooting in Grantsville. Investigators believe the victims are all related to one another, and officials declined to release information about the shooter other than he is a juvenile male.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — People in a southern Puerto Rico city discovered a warehouse filled with water, cots and other unused emergency supplies, then set off a social media uproar Saturday when they broke in to retrieve goods as the area struggles to recover from a strong earthquake.

With anger spreading in the U.S. territory after video of the event in Ponce appeared on Facebook, Gov. Wanda Vázquez quickly fired the director of the island’s emergency management agency.

WASHINGTON (AP) — New documents released by House Democrats suggest that Rep. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, was more deeply involved than was previously known in efforts by allies of President Donald Trump to dig up dirt in Ukraine on former Vice President Joe Biden.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s legal team issued a fiery response Saturday ahead of opening arguments in his impeachment trial, while House Democrats laid out their case in forceful fashion, saying the president betrayed public trust with behavior that was the “worst nightmare” of the founding fathers.

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 18 (APP): Pakistan’s Ambassador to the U.N., Munir Akram, has said the flagship, multibillion dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project is an `outstanding example’ of South-South cooperation, which is aimed at achievement of shared economic and development goals.

18 Jan 2019; MEMO: Canada will give $25,000 to each of the families of the 57 victims of Flight PS752 that was shot down inadvertently by Iran, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced at a press conference Friday, Anadolu Agency reports.

As he spoke, Canada’s Foreign Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne and his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif were in a face-to-face meeting in Muscat, Oman.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon announced on Friday new restrictions on international military students’ access to guns on U.S. bases, as well as other measures, after a Saudi officer killed three U.S. sailors at a Florida naval base last month.

“Getting back to work does not mean getting back to business as usual. Going forward we will put several new policies and security procedures in place,” Garry Reid, a senior Pentagon intelligence official, said in a statement.