North America

WASHINGTON (AP) — Kurt Volker was little known outside of foreign policy circles as the special U.S. envoy to Ukraine until last week, when the whistleblower complaint against President Donald Trump recast the once obscure diplomat as a central figure in the unfolding impeachment inquiry.

Volker is scheduled to testify in private Thursday to congressional investigators who want to ask about any role he may have played in Trump’s efforts to press Ukrainian officials for damaging information about the son of former Vice President Joe Biden.

SAN BENITO, Texas (AP) — On a recent day in a remodeled brick church in the Rio Grande Valley, a caregiver tried to soothe a toddler, offering him a sippy cup. The adult knew next to nothing about the little 3-year-old whose few baby words appeared to be Portuguese. Shelter staff had tried desperately to find his family, calling the Brazilian consulate and searching Facebook.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Kamala Harris is refocusing on Iowa in hopes that momentum there will reinvigorate a presidential campaign that is so far falling short of expectations. But the California senator has a problem: She may be too late.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Facebook’s CEO said his company is ready to “go to the mat” to stop Elizabeth Warren from breaking up tech giants. Amazon accused her of getting facts wrong. And some Democratic donors with ties to Wall Street have quietly said they’ll sit out the election or vote for President Donald Trump if Warren wins her party’s presidential nomination.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Some have regrets. A few can’t talk about it. Others would do it all again.

But the Republicans who carried out President Bill Clinton’s impeachment in 1998 are unanimous in urging caution and restraint as Congress embarks on yet another impeachment struggle, this time over accusations that President Donald Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate his political rival, Joe Biden, and his son.

DALLAS (AP) — A white Dallas police officer who said she mistook a neighbor’s apartment for her own and fatally shot him in his living room was sentenced to a decade in prison in a stunning courtroom scene that included the dead man’s brother and the black judge embracing the sobbing officer.

People outside of the courtroom reacted angrily to the sentence given to Amber Guyger in the death of Botham Jean, believing it was too lenient. But Jean’s brother addressed her directly from the witness stand.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Agitated and angry, President Donald Trump squared off against House Democrats, packing his increasingly aggressive impeachment defense with name-calling and expletives. Quietly but just as resolutely, lawmakers expanded their inquiry, promising a broad new subpoena for documents and witnesses.

2 Oct 2019; MEMO: Before leaving New York last week, French President Emmanuel Macron made a failed last-minute push to get US President Donald Trump and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to speak on the sidelines of the annual UN gathering of world leaders, according to several sources familiar with the situation, Reuters reports.

2 October 2019; AFP: NASA on Tuesday released two audio clips of seismic activity on Mars after an "exquisitely sensitive" detector was set down on the planet's surface late last year.

The quakes, far too quiet to be picked up by the human ear, were recorded by the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) in May and July.

Scientists hope that studying how seismic waves move through the planet's interior will reveal the deep inner structure of Mars for the first time.

2 October 2019; AFP: Donald Trump on Tuesday denounced the impeachment inquiry threatening his presidency as a "coup," as his administration pushed back hard against the investigation.

Trump's comments came after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo vowed to prevent or delay five State Department officials from testifying in the investigation probing accusations that Trump abused his office by seeking dirt from Ukraine on a 2020 election rival.