AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EST
No solution to shutdown in sight before Dems take House
WASHINGTON (AP) - It's looking increasingly like the partial government shutdown will be handed off to a divided government to solve in the new year - the first big confrontation between President Donald Trump and Democrats - as agreement eludes Washington in the waning days of the Republican monopoly on power.
Now nearly a week old, the impasse is idling hundreds of thousands of federal workers and beginning to pinch citizens who count on varied public services. Gates are closed at some national parks, the government won't issue new federal flood insurance policies and in New York, the chief judge of Manhattan federal courts suspended work on civil cases involving U.S. government lawyers, including several civil lawsuits in which Trump himself is a defendant.
Congress is closing out the week without a resolution in sight over the issue holding up an agreement - Trump's demand for money to build a border wall with Mexico and Democrats' refusal to give him what he wants.
That sets up a struggle upfront when Democrats take control of the House on Jan. 3. Trump has signaled he welcomes the fight as he heads toward his own bid for re-election in 2020.
"This isn't about the Wall," Trump tweeted Thursday. "This is only about the Dems not letting Donald Trump & the Republicans have a win." He added Democrats may be able to block him now, "but we have the issue, Border Security. 2020!"
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Father of dead Guatemalan boy heard rumors they could cross
GUATEMALA CITY (AP) - The father of an 8-year-old Guatemalan boy who died in U.S. custody took his son to the border after hearing rumors that parents and their children would be allowed to migrate to the United States and escape the poverty in their homeland, the boy's stepsister told The Associated Press.
Felipe Gomez Alonzo died Monday at a New Mexico hospital after suffering coughing, vomiting and fever, authorities said. It was the second such death this month. Another Guatemalan child, 7-year-old Jakelin Caal, died in U.S. custody on Dec. 8. Both deaths are under investigation.
"We heard rumors that they could pass (into the United States). They said they could pass with the children," said Catarina Gomez Lucas, the boy's 21-year-old stepsister, explaining why Felipe and his father, Agustin Gomez, made the dangerous journey.
Gomez Lucas would not say who spread the rumors or who transported the father and son to the border from Yalambojoch in Huehuetenango province, a poor community of returnees from Mexico who had fled Guatemala in the bloodiest years of that country's 1960-1996 civil war. The stepsister spoke to the AP on Wednesday by telephone from Yalambojoch.
The boy's death came during an ongoing dispute over border security and with the U.S. government partially shut down over President Donald Trump's insistence on funding for a longer border wall.
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GOP share of Latino vote steady under Trump
LITTLETON, Colo. (AP) - Pedro Gonzalez has faith in Donald Trump and his party.
The 55-year-old Colombian immigrant is a pastor at an evangelical church in suburban Denver. Initially repelled by Trump in 2016, he's been heartened by the president's steps to protect religious groups and appoint judges who oppose abortion rights. More important, Gonzalez sees Trump's presidency as part of a divine plan.
"It doesn't matter what I think," Gonzalez said of the president. "He was put there."
Though Latino voters are a key part of the Democratic coalition, there is a larger bloc of reliable Republican Latinos than many think. And the GOP's position among Latinos has not weakened during the Trump administration, despite the president's rhetoric against immigrants and the party's shift to the right on immigration.
In November's elections, 32 percent of Latinos voted for Republicans, according to AP VoteCast data. The survey of more than 115,000 midterm voters - including 7,738 Latino voters - was conducted for The Associated Press by NORC at the University of Chicago.
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In Iowa, Democrats see 2020 as head vs. heart moment
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - The romance of Barack Obama's surprise victory in Iowa hangs like a championship banner in the minds of Democrats in the state more than a decade after they set him on the road to being the nation's first African- American president.
But as they begin to think about Iowa's 2020 presidential caucuses - in which as many as two dozen Democratic candidates may seek their support - the wistfulness is fading fast. The same early Obama supporters who admit to being swept off their feet by the then-Illinois senator are now looking steely-eyed for someone who can simply seize the presidency from Donald Trump.
"We've got to go for the greater good of winning this election, no matter what," said Nancy Bobo, an early Iowa Obama backer who attended a 10-year commemoration of the 2008 campaign at a Des Moines bar this year. "We need to learn to compromise in a way that moves us ahead, and not keep looking back."
More than a year away, the 2020 caucuses are already shaping up for many of Obama's earliest supporters to be more about their heads than their hearts.
"The innocence in us wants to fall in love," said Niki Neems, an Iowa City Democratic activist who pledged herself to Obama before he even announced his candidacy. "But whoever we all think stands the best chance, then let's get out there and start door-knocking. So, for me, it's OK to just fall in like."
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Army looks for a few good robots, sparks industry battle
CHELMSFORD, Mass. (AP) - The Army is looking for a few good robots. Not to fight - not yet, at least - but to help the men and women who do.
These robots aren't taking up arms, but the companies making them have waged a different kind of battle. At stake is a contract worth almost half a billion dollars for 3,000 backpack-sized robots that can defuse bombs and scout enemy positions. Competition for the work has spilled over into Congress and federal court.
The project and others like it could someday help troops "look around the corner, over the next hillside and let the robot be in harm's way and let the robot get shot," said Paul Scharre, a military technology expert at the Center for a New American Security.
The big fight over small robots opens a window into the intersection of technology and national defense and shows how fear that China could surpass the U.S. drives even small tech startups to play geopolitics to outmaneuver rivals. It also raises questions about whether defense technology should be sourced solely to American companies to avoid the risk of tampering by foreign adversaries.
Regardless of which companies prevail, the competition foreshadows a future in which robots, which are already familiar military tools, become even more common. The Army's immediate plans alone envision a new fleet of 5,000 ground robots of varying sizes and levels of autonomy. The Marines, Navy and Air Force are making similar investments.
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Syria military takes control of flash-point Kurdish-led town
BEIRUT (AP) - Syria's military announced Friday it has taken control of the flash-point Kurdish-held town of Manbij, where Turkey has threatened an offensive.
The announcement was quickly welcomed by the Kremlin, whose spokesman Dmitry Peskov called it a "positive step" that could help stabilize the situation.
There was no immediate comment from Turkey or the U.S., whose troops have been patrolling the town and the tense front line between Manbij and adjacent towns where Turkey-backed fighters were based.
Turkey, which views the Kurdish militia as a terrorist group, had been threatening a military operation against Manbij. Turkey and its allied fighters have been amassing troops around Manbij in recent days.
The threats triggered the U.S. announcement it would withdraw troops from Syria. A timetable for the withdrawal has not yet been made public.
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Hui poet fears for his people as China 'Sinicizes' religion
JINAN, China (AP) - Cui Haoxin is too young to remember the days of his people's oppression under Mao Zedong.
The 39-year-old poet was born after the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76, when the Hui - China's second-largest Muslim ethnic group - were among the masses tormented by the Red Guard.
In the years since, the Hui (pronounced HWAY) generally have been supportive of the government and mostly spared the kind of persecution endured by China's largest Muslim group, the Uighur.
There are signs, though, that that is changing. Cui fears both that history may be repeating itself and for his own safety as he tries to hold the ruling Communist Party accountable.
In August, town officials in the Hui region of Ningxia issued a demolition order for the landmark Grand Mosque in Weizhou, though they later backed off in the face of protests.
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Euro currency remains a work in progress on 20th birthday
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) - The euro is about to celebrate its 20th birthday, but the countries that use it are still wrestling over how the shared currency should work and how to fix flaws exposed by the debt crisis that marred its second decade.
The euro was launched on Jan. 1, 1999, when 10 countries fixed their exchange rates to it and handed decisions on interest rates to the newly-founded European Central Bank. Euro notes and coins went into circulation three years later.
The shared currency was seen as a solution to the constant quarrels over exchange rates that had marked European politics after World War II and as a logical extension of the European Union's tariff-free trade zone. Britain, notably, opted out, but 19 of 28 EU countries use the euro.
The euro is credited with increasing trade between members. But countries have struggled to adjust to trouble after giving up two big safety valves: the ability to let their currency's exchange rate fall to boost exports, and to adjust their own interest rates to stimulate business activity.
One partial solution could be a central budget to keep paying bills when member countries are slammed with recessions. European leaders called for some sort of central pot of money in 2015 and are finally working on how to set one up. Finance ministers were tasked at this month's summit with filling in the details by June. The budget remains, however, a severely limited version of an original 2017 proposal from French President Emmanuel Macron.
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North Korea 'Singapore shops' reveal familiar sanction gaps
PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) - Despite the unwanted publicity of a criminal trial for one of their main suppliers, business is booming at Pyongyang's 'Singapore shops,' which sell everything from Ukrainian vodka to brand-name knock-offs from China. The stores stock many of the very things United Nations' sanctions banning trade in luxury goods are intended to block and provide a nagging reminder that not all potential trade partners are lining up behind the U.N.'s pronouncements or the Trump administration's policy of maximum pressure on the North.
Especially when there's a buck - or a few million bucks - to be made.
The stores are anything but secret.
They are well marked, open to walk-ins and distribute their own membership cards to reward regular customers. Until recently, the name of their Singaporean partner, the OCN Group, was printed on the Bugsae shop's plastic shopping bags. And while being the focus of the court case that could land OCN's former director in prison for a very long time, they continue to unabashedly specialize in imported products - perfumes, fine jewelry, wines, clothing and cosmetics - that would appear to blatantly violate U.N. restrictions.
Formally known as the Potonggang Ryugyong Shop and the Bugsae Shop, the stores are a fixture of the upscale shopping scene in Pyongyang, catering to the capital's elites, Chinese businessmen and members of the diplomatic corps. Purchases can be made in dollars, euros and Chinese yuan. The price in each is displayed digitally on the cash register.
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US fossil fuel exports spur growth, climate worries
GEOJEDO, South Korea (AP) - In South Korea's largest shipyard, thousands of workers in yellow hard hats move ceaselessly between towering cranes lifting hulks of steel. They look like a hive of bees scurrying over a massive circuit board as they weld together the latest additions to the rapidly growing fleet of tankers carrying super-chilled liquefied natural gas across the world's oceans.
The boom in fossil-fuel production in the United States has been matched by a rush on the other side of the Pacific to build the infrastructure needed to respond to the seemingly unquenchable thirst for energy among Asia's top economies. When Congress lifted restrictions on shipping crude oil overseas in 2015, soon after the Obama administration opened the doors for international sales of natural gas, even the most boosterish of Texas oil men wouldn't have predicted the U.S. could become one of the world's biggest fossil-fuel exporters so quickly.
Climate experts say there is little doubt increased American production and exports are contributing to the recent rise in planet-warming carbon emissions by helping keep crude prices low, increasing consumption in developing economies.
Backers of U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas, or LNG, argue that the boom will produce environmental benefits because it will help China and other industrial nations wean themselves from coal and other dirtier fossil fuels.
Environmentalists counter that the massive new supplies unleashed by American advances in extracting natural gas from shale doesn't just make coal-fired power plants less competitive. LNG also competes with such zero-carbon sources of electricity as nuclear, solar and wind - potentially delaying the full adoption of greener sources. That's time climate scientists and researchers say the world doesn't have if humans hope to mitigate the worst-case consequences of our carbon emissions, including catastrophic sea-level rise, stronger storms and more wildfires.