Special counsel questions Sessions; Is Trump coming soon?

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Jeff Sessions was questioned for hours in the special counsel's Russia investigation, the Justice Department said Tuesday, as prosecutors moved closer to a possible interview with President Donald Trump about whether he took steps to obstruct an FBI probe into contacts between Russia and his 2016 campaign.

The Sessions interview last week makes him the highest-ranking Trump administration official, and first Cabinet member, known to have submitted to questioning. It came as special counsel Robert Mueller investigates whether Trump's actions in office, including the firing of FBI Director James Comey, constitute improper efforts to stymie the FBI investigation.

With many of Trump's closest aides having now been questioned, the president and his lawyers are preparing for the prospect of an interview that would likely focus on some of the same obstruction questions. Expected topics for any sit-down with Mueller, who has expressed interest in speaking with Trump, would include not only Comey's firing but also interactions the fired FBI director has said unnerved him, including a request from the president that he end an investigation into a top White House official.

In the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump said he was "not at all concerned" about what Sessions may have told the Mueller team.

The recent questioning of the country's chief law enforcement officer shows the investigators' determined interest in the obstruction question that has been at the heart of the investigation for months through interviews of many current and former White House officials.

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Schumer takes back wall offer in new immigration push

WASHINGTON (AP) — Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer on Tuesday pulled back an offer of $25 billion for President Donald Trump's long-promised southern border wall, as lawmakers scrambled to figure out how to push a deal to protect 700,000 or more so-called Dreamer immigrants from deportation.

Schumer had made the offer last Friday in a last-ditch effort to head off a government shutdown, then came scalding criticism from his party's liberal activist base that Democrats had given up too easily in reopening the government without more concrete promises on immigration.

"We're going to have to start on a new basis, and the wall offer's off the table," Schumer, D-N.Y., told reporters Tuesday.

The shutdown battle — settled mostly on Trump's terms — complicated the already difficult search for an immigration pact: GOP hard-liners appeared emboldened, while Democrats absorbed withering criticism from progressives. Neither development seemed likely to push the combatants toward the compromises needed to produce a bill that can pass both the tea party-driven House and the more pragmatic Senate.

Still, there were fresh signs of a willingness to keep hunting for a solution, with a flurry of meetings on Capitol Hill and an assessment from White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders that "I don't think they're that far apart."

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'People just ran': Students fled for lives in fatal shooting

BENTON, Ky. (AP) — They ran silently, too stunned to shout.

Some of the children ran into classrooms to hide from the boy with the gun. Some ran out of the building, into the fields, across the streets, through the doors of nearby businesses.

"No one screamed," said 16-year-old Alexandria Caporali, recounting the moment her high school became the site of the latest American mass shooting. "It was almost completely silent as people just ran."

Bailey Nicole Holt and Preston Ryan Cope, both 15, were killed and another 17 people injured when a classmate opened fire Tuesday morning in the school's busy atrium, a common area in the center of Marshall County High School, where several hallways meet and children gather before classes.

The trauma consumed the rural town of about 4,300 people, where nearly everyone has a connection to the school. Parents left cars on both sides of an adjacent road, desperately trying to find their teenagers; business owners pulled fleeing children to safety; a state trooper rushed to the school, terrified he would find his own daughter among the dead.

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Puerto Rico awaits foreclosure wave as moratoriums expire

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Aylsa Torres sighed in relief when she received a letter from her bank two weeks after Hurricane Maria hit. She was among the hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans awarded a three-month moratorium on their mortgage payments as the U.S. territory reeled from the storm's destruction.

Believing she was temporarily freed from those financial obligations, the 46-year-old government worker drained her savings to pay for a $750 generator and $786 worth of repairs for storm damage. But when Torres visited her bank in December, she says, she was shocked to hear that she was behind on payments and that officials threatened to foreclose on her apartment and ruin her credit rating.

Confusion and panic is spreading across this U.S. territory as the majority of moratorium agreements expire this month, with many people discovering they never qualified for the moratorium in the first place or struggling to obtain extensions because they cannot pay what is owed to the banks.

"It's incredibly frustrating," Torres said. "You feel like everyone is closing a door in your face. No one has a genuine interest in helping you."

Legal experts say it is a scene that will repeat itself in the coming weeks and months on an island that already was seeing a sharp rise in foreclosures before the hurricane as a result of an 11-year-old recession that has forced government austerity measures.

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Car bombs kill at least 27 in east Libya city of Benghazi

BENGHAZI, Libya (AP) — Twin car bombs exploded as people left a mosque in a residential area of the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi on Tuesday night, killing 27 and wounding over 30 in an attack timed to cause mass casualties among first responders, officials said.

Capt. Tarek Alkharraz, spokesman for military and police forces in Benghazi, said the first explosion went off in the Salmani neighborhood around 8:20 p.m. Tuesday and the second bomb went off a half hour later as residents and medics gathered to evacuate the wounded.

Local health official Hani Belras Ali said at least 27 people died had died so far and 32 were wounded.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the bombings.

The United Nations condemned the attack on social media, saying that direct or indiscriminate attacks on civilians are prohibited under international humanitarian law and constitute war crimes.

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US pulled multiple ways in Syria as Islamic State recedes

WASHINGTON (AP) — For the last few years, the United States could neatly sum its objective in Syria in a single, uncontroversial bullet point: fighting the Islamic State group. Now that the extremists have been squeezed from all but the last bits of their former territory, the Trump administration is struggling to define the boundaries of its mission, and how and when America's lengthy engagement will end.

A crisis between the U.S. and Turkey, triggered by the latter's new military offensive in Syria, has laid bare how a dizzying array of alliances in Syria is growing even more convoluted in the absence of IS as a major force. Either the Americans must abandon the Kurds who fought alongside them in Syria, or a profound rift with a NATO ally appears all but inevitable.

Although Turkey has long been incensed by U.S. military support for Syrian Kurdish fighters, calling them terrorists, the U.S. could make a compelling case while the Kurds spearheaded the anti-IS fight. As IS recedes as an immediate threat, the legs of that argument are falling away, fueling growing Turkish outrage that even the Trump administration acknowledges has some merit.

"This is a tough circle to square. It's the ultimate in heavy diplomatic lifting," said Frederic Hof, who oversaw Syria policy in the Obama administration's first term and is now at the Atlantic Council.

The Islamic State's retreat also has forced the U.S. to stretch thinner its legal rationale for operating in Syria. Doing so has raised delicate questions about whether Congress and the American people have truly signed off on a mandate for Syria that goes far beyond killing terrorists.

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Ex-gymnast tells disgraced doctor: 'You only hurt me'

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — A former elite gymnast said Tuesday that a sports doctor who treated Olympic athletes overlooked what turned out to be a broken leg while he molested her in the basement of his home, one of the latest victims to testify at a Michigan sentencing hearing for Larry Nassar.

Isabell Hutchins practiced for weeks at a Lansing-area gymnastics club and even competed at national events despite acute leg pain as a teen in 2011. She said Nassar did nothing to encourage her to get help and instead molested her during late-night appointments at his home.

"You were never a real doctor. You did not heal me. You only hurt me," Hutchins told Nassar, who was seated a few feet away in the Ingham County courtroom as the sentencing phase reached a sixth day.

Nassar has admitted sexually assaulting athletes when he was employed by Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics, which is the sport's national governing organization and trains Olympians. His accusers said he would use his ungloved hands to penetrate them, often without explanation, while they were on a table seeking treatment for a variety of injuries.

The accusers, many of whom were children, said they trusted Nassar to treat them properly, were in denial about what was happening or were afraid to speak up. He sometimes used a sheet or his body to block the view of any parent in the room.

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Under criticism from Trump, FBI director shakes up staff

WASHINGTON (AP) — FBI Director Christopher Wray is making changes to his senior leadership team, as President Donald Trump has continued to attack the bureau for perceived biases against him and has been calling for a shakeup at the top.

Officials said Tuesday that Wray, who started the job in August, is replacing two top aides who were promoted into their roles by his predecessor James Comey. Such changes are not unusual when a new director takes change, but they are notable amid Trump's public pressure on Wray to get rid of officials who were confidantes of Comey, who was fired by the president in May.

The Justice Department confirmed that Dana Boente, the outgoing U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia who has also been acting as head of the department's national security division, will become the FBI's general counsel. He replaces James A. Baker, an ally of Comey's who was reassigned in December.

Wray said his chief of staff, Jim Rybicki, notified him last month of his decision to take a job in the private sector. Zachary Harmon, a former Justice Department official who also worked with Wray in private practice, will be taking Rybicki's place.

Trump's blistering attacks on the FBI have proven a tough challenge for Wray in his first months on the job as he tries to make changes while maintaining public confidence and restoring bureau morale.

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Undersea quake sends Alaskans fleeing from feared tsunami

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A powerful undersea earthquake sent Alaskans fumbling for suitcases and racing to evacuation centers in the middle of the night after a cellphone alert warned a tsunami could hit communities along the state's southern coast and parts of British Columbia.

The monster waves never materialized, but people who fled endured hours of tense waiting at shelters before they were cleared to return home.

"This was a win as far as I could tell," said Marjie Veeder, clerk for the city of Unalaska, which is home to the international fishing port of Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands. "We got advance warning and were so thankful for that."

The magnitude 7.9 quake in the Gulf of Alaska triggered the jarring alert that roused people shortly after midnight Tuesday. Fleeing motorists clogged some highways in their rush to higher ground. Many took refuge at schools or other shelters.

Even for Alaskans accustomed to tsunami threats and tsunami drills, the phone message was alarming. It read: "Emergency Alert. Tsunami danger on the coast. Go to high ground or move inland. Listen to local news."

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Ursula K. Le Guin, best-selling science fiction author, dies

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Ursula K. Le Guin, the award-winning science fiction and fantasy writer who explored feminist themes and was best known for her Earthsea books, has died at 88.

Le Guin died suddenly and peacefully Monday at her home in Portland, Oregon, after several weeks of health concerns, her son, Theo Downes-Le Guin said Tuesday.

"She left an extraordinary legacy as an artist and as an advocate of peace and critical thinking and fairness, and she was a great mother and wife as well," he said.

"Godspeed into the galaxy," Stephen King tweeted, saying Le Guin was a literary icon, not just a science fiction writer.

Le Guin won an honorary National Book Award in 2014 and warned in her acceptance speech against letting profit define what is considered good literature.