AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EDT
House panel votes Barr in contempt, escalating Trump dispute
WASHINGTON (AP) - The House Judiciary Committee voted Wednesday to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress, escalating the Democrats' extraordinary legal battle with the Trump administration over access to special counsel Robert Mueller's Trump-Russia report.
The vote capped a day of ever-deepening dispute between congressional Democrats and President Donald Trump, who for the first time invoked the principle of executive privilege, claiming the right to block lawmakers from the full report on Mueller's probe of Russian interference to help Trump in the 2016 election.
Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler of New York declared the action by Trump's Justice Department a clear new sign of the president's "blanket defiance" of Congress' constitutional rights to conduct oversight.
"We did not relish doing this, but we have no choice," Nadler said after the vote.
The White House's blockade, he said, "is an attack on the ability of the American people to know what the executive branch is doing." He said, "This cannot be."
___
Teen who charged attackers was lone death in school shooting
HIGHLANDS RANCH, Colo. (AP) - The lone fatality in the Colorado high school shooting was Kendrick Castillo, a friendly 18-year-old who, witnesses said, leaped from his desk in a literature class and charged the two attackers, sacrificing his life to buy classmates time to escape.
Another 18-year-old who was preparing to enter the Marines also tackled at least one of the shooters. And an armed security guard then confronted and detained one of the gunmen, officials said.
Authorities said these acts of bravery helped minimize the bloodshed from the attack, which also wounded eight people.
"We're going to hear about very heroic things that have taken place at the school," Douglas County Sheriff Tony Spurlock said Wednesday.
The attackers were identified by law enforcement officials as 18-year-old Devon Erickson and a younger student who is a juvenile and was not named. They allegedly walked into the STEM School Highlands Ranch through an entrance without metal detectors and opened fire in two classrooms.
___
Trump's tariff hike menaces strong economy
WASHINGTON (AP) - What trade war?
For months, the U.S. economy has shrugged and chugged along as America and China slapped tariffs on tens of billions of dollars of each other's goods in the fiercest trade fight since the 1930s.
Growth was steady. The unemployment rate dropped to 3.6%, a 50-year low. Stocks soared to record levels.
But President Donald Trump's decision to hike import taxes on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports from 10% to 25% could upend all that.
"A game changer," Steven Cochrane, chief Asia-Pacific economist at Moody's Analytics, said of the tariffs slated to take effect at 12:01 a.m. Friday. He called the move a "worst-case scenario" that after one year will slash 1.8 percentage points from U.S. economic growth, which was a healthy 2.9% last year. (And it could get even worse. Trump has threatened to extend 25% tariffs to another $325 billion in Chinese imports, covering everything China ships to the United States.)
___
Europeans struggle to preserve Iran nuclear accord
BERLIN (AP) - The world powers struggling to preserve a nuclear deal with Iran are facing an increasingly uphill battle, with a new deadline from Tehran on finding a solution to make up for last year's unilateral U.S. withdrawal from the accord and the increasing economic hardship that has put on the Islamic Republic.
After Iran notified Britain, Russia, China, the European Union, France and Germany of its intentions in a letter, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said in a televised address Wednesday that the nations have 60 days to come up with a plan to shield his country from the sanctions imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump after he pulled Washington out of the deal.
"If the five countries join negotiations and help Iran to reach its benefits in the field of oil and banking, Iran will return to its commitments according to the nuclear deal," Rouhani said.
The 2015 deal, intended to keep Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, promised economic incentives in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear activities. Despite efforts so far by the others to keep the deal from collapsing, Iran's economy has been struggling and its currency has plummeted in value after the re-imposition of U.S. sanctions.
Later Wednesday, Trump issued an executive order announcing new sanctions targeting Iran's steel, aluminum, copper and iron sectors, which provide foreign currency earnings for Tehran.
___
Trump administration seeks to target nationwide injunctions
WASHINGTON (AP) - Vice President Mike Pence said Wednesday that the Trump administration intends to try to challenge the right of federal district courts to issue nationwide injunctions.
In a speech at the Federalist Society conference in Washington, Pence argued that nationwide injunctions issued by federal judges "prevent the executive branch from acting, compromising our national security by obstructing the lawful ability of the president to stop threats to the homeland where he sees them."
He said the administration will seek opportunities to put this question before the Supreme Court "to ensure that decisions affecting every American are made either by those elected to represent the American people or by the highest court in the land."
Top administration officials have often complained about the proliferation of nationwide injunctions since Trump became president on issues ranging from immigration to health care, so the idea of pushing back is not new.
Indeed, the administration has asked the Supreme Court to deal with nationwide injunctions in the past, including in the travel ban case. But the court never addressed the nationwide extent of the injunction against the ban issued by lower courts because the justices upheld the ban in its entirety.
___
New York Senate OKs giving US House Trump state tax return
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - New York's Senate easily approved a bill Wednesday that would allow three congressional committees to get access to President Donald Trump's state tax returns, giving Democrats a potential end-run around the administration's refusal to disclose the president's federal returns.
The bill, which now goes to the state Assembly, doesn't target Trump by name but would authorize state tax officials to release any state returns filed in New York if requested by the leaders of the House Ways and Means Committee, the Senate Finance Committee or the Joint Committee on Taxation. Both chambers of the state Legislature are controlled by Democrats.
The vote fell along party lines, with 39 Democrats in the 63-seat Senate voting for the measure.
Republicans said Democrats should be focused on lowering the state's high taxes and improving the lives of New Yorkers, not going after the president's tax returns, a move GOP senators deemed intrusive and a violation of privacy rights.
"I find that extremely troubling. This is bad public policy," said John Flanagan, a Long Island Republican who leads the Senate's GOP minority.
___
Midwest downpours prompt more evacuations, flash flood fears
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) - Rain swamping the nation's midsection forced people from their homes in Kansas, stranded dozens of Texas children at school overnight and strained levees along the surging Mississippi River in Illinois, Missouri and elsewhere Wednesday prompting yet more flash flood concerns.
The flooding began in earnest in March, causing billions of dollars of damage to farmland, homes and businesses across the Midwest. Rivers in many communities have been above flood stage for more than six weeks following waves of heavy rain.
Some parts of Kansas received up to 10 inches (25 centimeters) from Tuesday through Wednesday morning, said Kelly Butler, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Wichita. She described that as a "ridiculous amount of water" on top of grounds that already were saturated by days of rains. Several Kansas districts canceled classes, and numerous water rescues were reported.
Emergency management officials began evacuating people from their homes near the Kansas college town of Manhattan around 5 a.m. Wednesday as Wildcat Creek overflowed its banks. The Cottonwood River spilled over in Marion County, prompting more evacuations and the surging Slate Creek also forced people from their homes in Wellington and closed a stretch of the Kansas Turnpike near the Oklahoma border.
"It seemed like our poor fire department folks were going out constantly overnight, whether it was sandbagging, barricading streets or assisting citizens," said Keri Korthals, the emergency management director in Butler County, where crews rescued around a dozen people from vehicles stuck in rising water from the Walnut and Whitewater rivers.
___
Records: 9-year-old boy charged in mother's shooting death
FAWN RIVER TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) - A 9-year-old boy has been charged with murder in the fatal shooting of his mother in their southern Michigan home, according to court documents.
The woman was found early Monday morning in Fawn River Township, St. Joseph County Prosecutor John McDonough told WWMT-TV . Fawn River Township is about 160 miles (260 kilometers) west-southwest of Detroit.
The boy also is charged with using a firearm during the commission of a felony. Documents filed Tuesday in St. Joseph County Circuit Court show the woman was shot with a rifle. WOOD-TV first reported the charges.
The Associated Press is not identifying the victim because to do so would identify the juvenile suspect. The boy was undergoing a psychiatric evaluation at a state-run juvenile facility, according to county Sheriff Bradley Balk.
It isn't clear if he was charged as an adult or a juvenile. Authorities have not released the circumstances of the killing or details of why the child was charged.
___
Travel ban forces Americans to wait years for loved ones
NEW YORK (AP) - Eight-year-old Mutaz cries when he sees his classmates with their mothers at teacher conferences. His 9-year-old brother, Adel, gets into trouble at school.
In hourslong weekend calls with their mother, the children always have the same question: When are you coming to America?
It's a question with no answer. Their mother, Amena Abdulkarem, is stuck in Yemen with her two younger sons, the boys' brothers. She's been waiting three years for a visa to come to the United States to join her husband, Sadek Ahmed, and the children.
Their family's situation is representative of the toll that the Trump administration's travel ban has taken on an untold number of families. Ahmed, a 31-year-old school maintenance worker in New York and a U.S. citizen, and other Americans with relatives from countries targeted by the ban see no end to their separations. And they say they have no idea how to get a coveted waiver created, but seldom issued, by the government to help families avoid being apart for so long.
"I really don't understand how long it's going to take ... I have two kids here. I need to know when she's going to come. The kids keep asking me," said Ahmed, tears in his eyes. "It's hard for them, because they're so young."
___
South Africa votes with corruption, jobs as big issues
JOHANNESBURG (AP) - South Africans voted Wednesday in presidential and parliamentary elections, with signs of a relatively low turnout and voters saying they were disillusioned by widespread corruption and unemployment.
Despite the demise of apartheid 25 years ago, South Africa remains divided by economic inequality .
The African National Congress, the party of Nelson Mandela that has been in power since 1994, is likely to win a majority but it will face a difficult challenge to match the 62% of the vote it got five years ago.
The party has been tarnished by corruption scandals and a national unemployment rate of 27%. President Cyril Ramaphosa, who leads the ANC, has campaigned on promises to clean up his party, an acknowledgment of the problems that forced out his predecessor last year.
"Corruption got into the way," Ramaphosa said after voting, saying graft has prevented his party from serving the people.