'Three Billboards' sweeps female-focused SAG Awards

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Western-inspired revenge tale "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" swept the female-focused and led Screen Actors Guild Awards Sunday with wins for best ensemble, best actress for Frances McDormand and best supporting actor for Sam Rockwell.

It was almost an exact repeat of the major Golden Globe Awards wins with Gary Oldman also winning best actor for his portrayal of Winston Churchill in "Darkest Hour" and Allison Janney taking supporting actress for playing Tonya Harding's mother in "I, Tonya."

As with many of the awards shows this season, it was the treatment of women in Hollywood that stayed at the forefront of the show, which featured a roster of nearly all female presenters and Kristen Bell as its inaugural host.

"We are living in a watershed moment," Bell said in her opening monologue, which stayed light and mostly clear of politics. "Let's make sure that we're leading the charge with empathy and diligence."

With many prominent men in Hollywood facing accusations of sexual misconduct, virtually every aspect of awards season has been impacted by the scandal — from questions on the red carpet to anxiety over who might win.

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Shutdown extends into workweek, as Senate talks continue

WASHINGTON (AP) — The government shutdown is set to sow more disruption and political peril Monday after the Senate inched closer but ultimately fell short of an agreement that would have reopened federal agencies before the beginning of the workweek.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said negotiations were still underway late into the night, with a vote to break a Democratic filibuster on a short-term funding bill scheduled for noon Monday. Under the proposal taking shape, Democratic would agree to a three-week spending measure — until Feb. 8 — in return for a commitment from the Republican leadership in the Senate to address immigration policy and other pressing legislative matters in the coming weeks.

But Democrats appeared to be holding out for a firmer commitment from McConnell. "We have yet to reach an agreement on a path forward," Schumer said late Sunday.

McConnell's comments followed hours of behind-the-scenes talks between the leaders and rank-and-file lawmakers over how to end the display of legislative dysfunction, which began Friday at midnight after Democrats blocked a temporary spending measure. Democrats have sought to use the spending bill to win concessions, including protections for roughly 700,000 younger immigrants brought illegally to the U.S. as children.

Republicans have appeared increasingly confident that Democrats were bearing the brunt of criticism for the shutdown and that they would ultimately buckle. The White House and GOP leaders said they would not negotiate with Democrats on immigration until the government is reopened.

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Women's marches organizers hope to keep building momentum

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Thousands of people poured into a football stadium in Las Vegas on Sunday, the anniversary of women's marches around the world, to cap off a weekend of global demonstrations that participants hope will continue building momentum for equality, justice and an end to sexual harassment.

"This is a birthday party for a movement that has only begun to flex its power to change this democracy," Anna Galland, the executive director of the progressive group moveon.org, told the boisterous crowd.

Following marches that drew huge crowds across the U.S. on Saturday, one year after President Donald Trump's inauguration, protesters gathered Sunday on multiple continents, including in London, Paris, Sydney, Madrid and Buenos Aires.

The events culminated with the Las Vegas rally, which launched an effort to register 1 million voters and target swing states such as Nevada in the U.S. midterm elections later this year, which could shift control of Congress. Organizers said they are planning future events in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Texas.

Paula Beaty, 53, a tech worker from Durham, North Carolina, attended the Las Vegas rally wearing an outfit recalling the women's suffrage movement of the early 20th century. She cited the difference women made in helping Democrat Doug Jones upset conservative Republican Roy Moore for a Senate seat in Alabama in December.

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10 Things to Know for Monday

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

1. LAWMAKERS PURSUE DEAL TO END SHUTDOWN

Senate moderates in both parties search for a solution to a partisan stalemate as they race toward a vote to reopen the federal government and stop hundreds of thousands of furloughs.

2. WOMEN'S MARCHERS SEEK EMPOWERMENT

"For us it's all about women's rights and we're seeing them be eroded with Trump in office," says Paula Beaty, an Idaho Democratic state Rep. running for governor.

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Deaths of Canadian billionaire, wife a tantalizing mystery

TORONTO (AP) — There were no signs of forced entry on the cold December morning when a Canadian billionaire businessman and his wife were found dead inside their mansion, reportedly hanging from a railing at the edge of their indoor pool.

Since that time, investigators have scoured the 12,000-square-foot home, hauled away the couple's cars and even checked the sewers in one of Toronto's most exclusive neighborhoods for clues. But police haven't made any arrests or announced a search for any suspects nor have they said practically anything publicly about the deaths of drug company founder Barry Sherman and his wife, Honey.

Sherman was a fiercely competitive businessman, once musing that a rival might want to kill him. The day after the bodies were found, prominent media outlets, including the Toronto Star, quoted unidentified police officials as saying it appeared to be a murder-suicide. But that theory, which was never publicly confirmed by authorities, was dismissed out of hand by people who knew the philanthropic and politically connected couple, saying it would be wildly out of character.

Such a scenario was also ruled out by the couple's four adult children, who hired their own investigator and pathologist to conduct second autopsies on the Shermans, who were killed days before heading south to their winter home in Palm Beach, Florida.

"Nobody will support a theory of either murder-suicide or double suicide," said Brian Greenspan, a lawyer for the family. "To everyone who knew them it's inconceivable."

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Deportation fears have legal immigrants avoiding health care

MIAMI (AP) — The number of legal immigrants from Latin American nations who access public health services and enroll in federally subsidized insurance plans has dipped substantially since President Donald Trump took office, many of them fearing their information could be used to identify and deport relatives living in the U.S. illegally, according to health advocates across the country.

Trump based his campaign on promises to stop illegal immigration and deport any immigrants in the country illegally, but many legal residents and U.S. citizens are losing their health care as a result, advocates say.

After Trump became president a year ago, "every single day families canceled" their Medicaid plans and "people really didn't access any of our programs," said Daniel Bouton, a director at the Community Council, a Dallas nonprofit that specializes in health care enrollment for low-income families.

The trend stabilized a bit as the year went on, but it remains clear that the increasingly polarized immigration debate is having a chilling effect on Hispanic participation in health care programs, particularly during the enrollment season that ended in December.

Bouton's organization has helped a 52-year-old housekeeper from Mexico, a legal resident, sign up for federally subsidized health insurance for two years. But now she's going without, fearing immigration officials will use her enrollment to track down her husband, who is in the country illegally. She's also considering not re-enrolling their children, 15 and 18, in the Children's Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, even though they were born in the U.S.

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Title games: Brady vs. Bortles, then the matchup of backups

The Super Bowl matchup will be set after conference title games featuring three teams that have never won the big game.

The other participant is a five-time Super Bowl winner, the New England Patriots.

The Patriots and Tom Brady, nursing an injured right hand, start conference championship Sunday playing host to the Jacksonville Jaguars and quarterback Blake Bortles.

The night game with Minnesota playing at Philadelphia features two 29-year-old quarterbacks, Nick Foles and Case Keenum, both of whom started the season as backups.

Keenum played most of the season after Sam Bradford was injured, and Foles came in after star Carson Wentz was hurt in Week 14.

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Dismissive words on abuse scandal cast pall over pope's trip

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Pope Francis ventured into the Amazon to demand rights for indigenous groups, decried the scourge of corruption afflicting the region's politics and denounced a culture of "machismo" in which violence against women is too often tolerated.

Yet his latest visit to South America is likely to be remembered most for 27 dismissive words that sparked outrage among Chileans already angry over a notorious clerical abuse scandal and haunted the rest of his trip.

"That is the enigma of Pope Francis," Anne Barrett Doyle of the online abuse database BishopAccountability.org said Sunday. "He is so bold and compassionate on many issues but he is an old school defensive bishop when it comes to the sex abuse crisis."

Even before Francis landed in Chile for the first leg of his two-country trip, the pontiff's visit seemed ripe for contention. Vandals fire-bombed three churches in the capital of Santiago, warning in a leaflet that "the next bombs will be in your cassock," and an angry group protesting the high cost of hosting him briefly occupied the Nunciature where he would sleep.

Also looming over his visit to both Chile and Peru were damaging clerical sex abuse scandals and growing apathy over the Catholic Church. In a Latinobarometro annual poll last year, 45 percent of Chileans identified as Roman Catholic, a sharp drop from the mid-60s a decade ago. Even in deeply religious Peru, where nearly three-quarters of the population calls itself Catholic, the number of faithful has dipped notably from a generation ago.

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Among Rohingya, refugee squalor can seem better than home

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — Both Bangladesh and Myanmar insist the repatriations of Rohingya Muslims will go smoothly, with thousands of refugees who fled their homes in terror just a few months ago crossing the border back into Myanmar and returning safely to their villages.

Eventually, more than 650,000 Rohingya are supposed to leave Bangladesh in a process that guarantees them "safety, security and dignity," according to an agreement both countries signed late last year.

But with the first repatriations scheduled for as early as Tuesday, and more than 1 million Rohingya Muslims living in refugee camps in Bangladesh, international aid workers, local officials and the refugees themselves say preparations have barely begun. Many refugees say they would rather contend with the squalor of the camps rather than the dangers they could face if they return home.

"If they send us back forcefully we will not go," said Sayed Noor, who fled his village in Myanmar last August, amid a torrent of Rohingya heading for safety. He says Myanmar authorities "have to give us our rights and give us justice."

"They will have to return all our wealth that they have looted and hold people accountable. They will have to compensate us. We came here because we are fighting for those things," he said. "If we don't get all of this, then what was the point of coming here?"

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California highway swamped by deadly mudslides reopens

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (AP) — A coastal California highway swamped by deadly mudslides reopened Sunday after a nearly two-week closure that caused traffic headaches across the region, state officials said.

Traffic began moving again on U.S. 101 in Santa Barbara County shortly after noon, according to Jim Shivers, spokesman for the California Department of Transportation. Officials had promised a day earlier that the highway would be open again in time for the Monday morning commute.

All lanes were inundated Jan. 9 when a powerful storm brought down boulders and trees from hillsides in Montecito made bare by last month's wildfires. At least 21 people were killed and hundreds of homes were destroyed or damaged. A 17-year-old boy and 2-year-old girl remain missing.

Crews worked around the clock clearing drainage areas, stabilizing embankments and repairing guardrails and signs. They also cleaned and swept the highway.

During the U.S. 101 shut down, Amtrak added additional cars to its route between Santa Barbara and points east as travelers increasingly relied on rail service to get around the closure.