Reuters News Now

Politics

President Donald Trump forced out his attorney general and threatened to fight back if Democrats use their new majority in the House of Representatives to launch investigations into his administration and finances. The ouster of Jeff Sessions by Trump drew sharp criticism from Democrats, who warned Trump against moving to squash a probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

U.S. progressive groups will stage hundreds of protests nationwide to demand that Trump do nothing to hinder an ongoing investigation into Russian meddling to help him win the 2016 U.S. election. Trump appointed Matthew Whitaker, formerly Sessions’ chief of staff, as acting attorney general under the U.S. Vacancies Reform Act, which lays out general rules for temporarily filling vacant executive branch positions.

The new Democrat majority in the House of Representatives is likely to back Trump’s trade war with China and could even egg him on, but will offer tougher scrutiny of his negotiations with allies, trade experts and lawmakers say.

Commentary: Trump heads to Paris on Friday to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the truce that ended World War One, surrounded by more than 100 heads of state, all of whom have followed with intense interest the outcome of Tuesday’s congressional midterm elections in the United States. And not everyone might have liked what they saw, writes David A. Andelman, a former foreign correspondent for the New York Times and CBS News. Spin it as they might, each world leader arriving in Paris will be waiting to see just how the split outcome of the crucial midterms will affect Trump’s attitude toward them individually and the world collectively.

United States

A gunman killed 12 people, including a deputy sheriff, when he opened fire in a bar in Southern California on Wednesday night, Ventura County Sheriff Geoff Dean said.

It was the lunch-hour rush at the Court Square Diner in New York’s Long Island City, and co-owner Nick Kanellos pointed to the elevated subway tracks that rattle overhead as he fretted over the news that Amazon may build a major outpost in the neighborhood.

World

Beijing and Canberra should be cooperating in the South Pacific and not be cast as strategic rivals, China’s top diplomat said, after Australia launched a multi-billion dollar fund to counter China’s rising influence in the region.

The customary cordiality of Southeast Asian summits may be missing when the region’s leaders meet next week due to sharp differences over Myanmar, whose military has been accused of genocide against the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority. Two Reuters journalists have been imprisoned in Myanmar for 332 days. Follow updates on the case.

A seasonal shift in the weather and intensified international diplomacy are prompting Palestinians mounting protests along Gaza’s border with Israel to rethink their tactics. Since the demonstrations started more than seven months ago, protesters routinely made attempts to breach Israel’s frontier fence and launched incendiary balloons and kites that have burned forests and crops inside Israel.

Sponsored By IBM: Build your AI foundation. Learn how to implement the techniques and technologies associated with AI and machine learning, and unlock the massive potential of your data. Read the report.