Trump, McConnell: No matter what people say, we're friends

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell reaffirmed their alliance of necessity Monday in a raucous Rose Garden news conference that also underscored their sharp differences. The garrulous president claimed they were longtime friends now closer than ever; the reserved Senate Republican leader allowed that they share goals and speak often.

It was a spectacle that mesmerized Washington, as Trump and McConnell appeared side by side for more than a half hour, the president tossing off answers — sometimes mini-speeches — on all topics while McConnell, disciplined as always, delivered brief, scholarly explanations about the legislative process and the risks to their party of nominating candidates who can't win.

At various points, the president denounced the Russia-Trump campaign investigation, lauded himself for his record on judicial nominations, argued wrongly that "it took years for the Reagan administration to get taxes done," and claimed that past presidents hadn't necessarily contacted bereaved family members to mourn lost service members — before backtracking on that assertion when pressed. He also noted, as he often does, that he won the presidential election last fall, and he implored Hillary Clinton to run again.

In front of a hastily assembled White House press corps, jostling each other on the lawn because there wasn't time to bring out chairs, Trump began his remarks by saluting McConnell and, as he described it, their longstanding friendship.

"We're probably now closer than ever before," the president proclaimed as McConnell grinned stiffly at his side. "My relationship with this gentleman is outstanding."

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Iraqi forces push into disputed Kirkuk as Kurds withdraw

KIRKUK, Iraq (AP) — Two weeks after fighting together against the Islamic State group, Iraqi forces pushed their Kurdish allies out of the disputed city of Kirkuk on Monday, seizing oil fields and other facilities amid soaring tensions over last month's Kurdish vote for independence.

The move by the Iraqi military and its allied militias so soon after neutralizing the Islamic State group in northern Iraq hinted at a country that could once again turn on itself after disposing of a common enemy.

Civilians and federal troops pulled down Kurdish flags around the city. Kurdish Gov. Najmaddin Karim, who had stayed at his post despite being dismissed by Baghdad weeks ago, fled to Irbil, the capital of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish zone.

Revelers waving Iraq's national flag and the flag of its Turkmen minority flooded central Kirkuk in an evening celebration. But the Shiite sectarian chants heard above the din of the rally underscored the coming political battles between Iraq and its Kurdish region.

Iraqi forces were supported — as they always are now in major operations — by the Popular Mobilization Forces, a predominantly Shiite militia coalition that the Kurds see as an instrument of Iranian policy.

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10 Things to Know for Tuesday

Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about Tuesday:

1. WHY TRUMP MAY WITHDRAW DRUG CZAR NOMINEE

The president may rethink his support of Republican Rep. Tom Marino amid reports the lawmaker played a key role in weakening federal authority to stop opioid distribution.

2. 'THE MOST SPECTACULAR FIREWORKS IN THE UNIVERSE'

That's how California Institute of Technology's David H. Reitze describes the collision of two neutron stars, which has left astronomers awestruck.

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Houses spared by massive fires bring joy and sense of loss

SANTA ROSA, Calif. (AP) — Tom and Catherine Andrews live on the edge of devastation.

On one side of their mid-century style home, the deadly wildfires that ravaged parts of Northern California for more than a week wiped away the houses of neighbours they have known as long as two decades. On the other side, were those like the Andrews, who were spared.

On Monday as calm winds gave an advantage to firefighters trying to tame the flames, the couple balanced their good fortune against the losses suffered by many friends.

"It was disbelief and just feeling like the luckiest guy on earth," Tom Andrews said. "I can't believe, I mean, total destruction 50 feet away and to have our house still standing here."

For his wife, a real estate agent who sold many of the homes to friends on Wikiup Drive, there was bitter along with the sweet.

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Trump returns favour by campaigning for an early supporter

GREENVILLE, S.C. (AP) — President Donald Trump waded back into Southern politics Monday, showering praise on one of his earliest supporters, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster.

At a closed-door campaign fundraiser, Trump praised McMaster as his "friend" and "compatriot" and predicted McMaster would be the state's governor for "many years," according to video of the event posted by the South Carolina newspaper The State.

"He's a terrific person, terrific man. He works so hard," Trump told the crowd. "He loves South Carolina, he loves the people."

Trump's appearance at a private fundraiser for McMaster in Greenville came less than a month after the defeat of Sen. Luther Strange, the president's preferred candidate in a Republican runoff for a U.S. Senate seat from Alabama.

McMaster greeted Trump at the airport in nearby Greer, South Carolina, before they travelled to an Embassy Suites hotel for the event. Two of the state's Republican lawmakers in Washington, Sen. Lindsey Graham and Rep. Joe Wilson, flew with Trump on Air Force One.

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Trump says predecessors didn't honour fallen; response heated

WASHINGTON (AP) — For U.S. presidents, meeting the families of military personnel killed in war is about as wrenching as the presidency gets. President Donald Trump's suggestion Monday that his predecessors fell short in that duty brought a visceral reaction from those who witnessed those grieving encounters.

"He's a deranged animal," Alyssa Mastromonaco, a former deputy chief of staff to President Barack Obama, tweeted about Trump. With an expletive, she called Trump's statement in the Rose Garden a lie.

Trump said in a news conference he had written letters to the families of four soldiers killed in an Oct. 4 ambush in Niger and planned to call them, crediting himself with taking extra steps in honouring the dead properly. "Most of them didn't make calls," he said of his predecessors. He said it's possible that Obama "did sometimes" but "other presidents did not call."

The record is plain that presidents reached out to families of the dead and to the wounded, often with their presence as well as by letter and phone. The path to Walter Reed and other military hospitals, as well as to the Dover, Delaware, Air Force Base where the remains of fallen soldiers are often brought, is a familiar one to Obama, George W. Bush and others.

Bush, even at the height of two wars, "wrote all the families of the fallen," said Freddy Ford, spokesman for the ex-president. Ford said Bush also called or met "hundreds, if not thousands" of family members of the war dead.

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North Korea says 'a nuclear war may break out any moment'

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — North Korea's deputy U.N. ambassador warned Monday that the situation on the Korean peninsula "has reached the touch-and-go point and a nuclear war may break out any moment."

Kim In Ryong told the U.N. General Assembly's disarmament committee that North Korea is the only country in the world that has been subjected to "such an extreme and direct nuclear threat" from the United States since the 1970s — and said the country has the right to possess nuclear weapons in self-defence.

He pointed to large-scale military exercises every year using "nuclear assets" and said what is more dangerous is what he called a U.S. plan to stage a "secret operation aimed at the removal of our supreme leadership."

This year, Kim said, North Korea completed its "state nuclear force and thus became the full-fledged nuclear power which possesses the delivery means of various ranges, including the atomic bomb, H-bomb and intercontinental ballistic rockets."

"The entire U.S. mainland is within our firing range and if the U.S. dares to invade our sacred territory even an inch it will not escape our severe punishment in any part of the globe," he warned.

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911 calls on nursing home dying: 'Oh my God, this is crazy'

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — At first there was no hint of distress in the 911 calls, no sense of a crisis unfolding. But newly released emergency calls from a sweltering Florida nursing home that lost its air conditioning to Hurricane Irma showed staffers becoming increasingly agitated by a disaster that would eventually claim 14 elderly lives.

The six calls made from the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills between 3 a.m. and 6:30 a.m. on Sept. 13, the day the first eight patients died, show that several patients were in respiratory distress and at least two were in cardiac arrest. By the second call, an employee is heard muttering "Whatta night." On the fourth call, another tells someone, "Oh my God, this is crazy."

But it wasn't until the final call did one of the 911 dispatchers realize that the sick patient wasn't an individual event but part of a series. The dispatcher, seeing the earlier calls on his computer screen, questioned if this was the same patient. No, the unidentified employee replied, a different one.

The dispatcher then asks if additional paramedics are needed.

"You guys already have a few other paramedics here, so I'm not sure," the employee responds.

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Venezuela opposition looks for answers after election loss

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Voting sites were shifted to distant neighbourhoods with rampant crime. Ballots featured the faces of opposition candidates who lost in primaries. The government-stacked National Electoral Council denied monitoring accreditation to one of Venezuela's most important independent observers.

The opposition pointed on Monday to those irregularities and others that began the moment regional elections were called to explain a staggering loss in gubernatorial contests it had expected to win in Sunday's voting.

"We encountered an absolutely fraudulent system," said Carlos Ocariz, the opposition's candidate in Miranda, the nation's second most populous state where the candidate of the ruling socialist party won.

Opposition leaders vowed to contest the vote and called for protests, though there was no sign of the mass anti-government demonstrations that wracked Venezuela this year.

National Electoral Council officials stood by the results showing that socialist candidates won at least 17 of the country's 23 governorships despite widespread anger over a crumbling economy where triple-digit inflation, soaring crime, and food and medicine shortages make life a daily struggle for many Venezuelans.

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Questions and answers about Colin Kaepernick's grievance

Let's assume that Colin Kaepernick is better than several quarterbacks — backups, and even starters — who have managed to find jobs on NFL rosters this season.

(He is.)

And let's also say that teams refused to sign Kaepernick not because he isn't good enough, but because he decided to kneel during the national anthem to protest racial injustice in America.

(That, too.)

It still isn't enough for the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback to win the grievance he filed against the NFL on Sunday. To prove collusion, Kaepernick will need hard evidence that owners worked together — rather than decided individually — to keep him out of the league.

News from © The Associated Press, 2017