North America

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani insisted Sunday there was “nothing wrong” with the president’s 2016 campaign taking information from the Russians, as House Democrats pledged stepped-up investigations into campaign misconduct and possible crimes of obstruction detailed in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report .

Giuliani called the Trump campaign’s effort to get political help from representatives of the Russian government possibly ill-advised but not illegal.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is poised to tell five nations, including allies Japan, South Korea and Turkey, that they will no longer be exempt from U.S. sanctions if they continue to import oil from Iran, officials said Sunday.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo plans to announce on Monday that the administration will not renew sanctions waivers for the five countries when they expire on May 2, three U.S. officials said. The others are China and India.

UNITED NATIONS, April 20 (Xinhua) -- United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Saturday night that the killing of an Egyptian peacekeeper in Mali may constitute war crimes.

The UN chief issued a statement in New York, giving details of a deadly bombing that took place on Saturday morning against a UN peacekeeping convoy in central Mali, close to the border with Burkina Faso.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Special counsel Robert Mueller all but boldfaced this finding in his report on the Russia investigation: No exoneration for President Donald Trump on whether Trump criminally obstructed justice.

But Trump and his aides are stating that Mueller’s report did exonerate. No words from the report will throw them off their mischaracterization of it.

LITTLETON, Colo. (AP) — A ceremony marking the 20th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting has ended with the names of 12 students and a teacher killed being read aloud, accompanied by the release of white doves.

More than 2,000 people attended the event in a park near the suburban Denver high school on Saturday afternoon.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two months before special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed in the spring of 2017, President Donald Trump picked up the phone and called the head of the largest U.S. intelligence agency. Trump told Mike Rogers, director of the National Security Agency, that news stories alleging that Trump’s 2016 White House campaign had ties to Russia were false and the president asked whether Rogers could do anything to counter them.

Rogers and his deputy Richard Ledgett, who was present for the call, were taken aback.

WASHINGTON, April 20. /TASS/. US prosecutors have recommended a judge in Washington to sentence Russian citizen Maria Butina to 18 months in prison, according to documents submitted to the court.

"The government’s recommended sentence of 24 months (prior to factoring in cooperation), with a downward departure to 18 months, based on substantial assistance to law enforcement, is well within the range of sentences imposed by courts for similar conduct," the document reads.

18 Apr 2019; AFP: Donald Trump has said he's in love with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. But if there's someone with whom the US president is even more smitten, it's Mike Pompeo.

North Korea on Thursday demanded that the United States remove the secretary of state from future negotiations after Pompeo apparently encouraged Trump to stand firm and walk away from a summit with Kim in Hanoi in February.

20 Apr 2019; AFP: Thirteen people, including a child, were killed Friday when a group of unidentified gunmen opened fire on a party in the violence-wracked eastern Mexican state of Veracruz, officials said.

The Secretariat of Public Safety said the gunmen arrived at a family reunion in Minatitlan asking to see someone named "El Becky' -- the owner of a local bar -- before opening fire.

It said seven men, five women, and a child were killed, and four others injured in the attack.

20 Apr 2019; DW: US President Donald Trump labeled accusations in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report as "total bullshit" in a series of Twitter posts on Friday.

"Statements are made about me by certain people in the Crazy Mueller Report, in itself written by 18 Angry Democrat Trump Haters, which are fabricated & totally untrue. Watch out for people that take so-called "notes," when the notes never existed until needed," Trump railed on Twitter.