AP News in Brief at 9:04 p.m. EDT
Dems claim votes to block Gorsuch; GOP will override them
WASHINGTON (AP) - Democrats claimed the votes they needed Monday to block President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee, but the victory was only fleeting, setting up a historic showdown with Republicans who intend to rewrite Senate rules and muscle Neil Gorsuch onto the high court.
The coming fight was assured as the bitterly divided Judiciary Committee voted 11-9, along party lines, to send Gorsuch's nomination to the full Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has vowed he will be confirmed on Friday.
Short of the 60 votes needed to overcome procedural hurdles, McConnell is ready to lead Republicans in a unilateral voting change so significant in the rules-conscious Congress that it's been dubbed the "nuclear option," lowering the confirmation threshold to a filibuster-proof simple majority in the 100-member Senate.
Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware became the key 41st vote for the Democrats Monday, declaring during committee debate that Gorsuch's conservative record showed an activist approach to the law and that he evaded questions during his confirmation hearings. Coons also said that Republicans' treatment of former President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, left lasting scars after they denied him so much as a hearing following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia early last year.
"We are at a historic moment in the history of the United States Senate" due to actions by both parties, Coons said. "We have eroded the process for reaching agreement and dishonored our long traditions of acting above partisanship."
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AP EXPLAINS: What is the Senate's 'nuclear option'?
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate is poised to "go nuclear."
Republicans and Democrats are on a collision course over Neil Gorsuch, President Donald Trump's nominee to the Supreme Court. The Judiciary Committee narrowly backed the 49-year-old appellate court judge on Monday, but Democrats secured the 41 votes to try to block the choice on a filibuster.
Short of the 60 votes in the 100-seat Senate to press ahead, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is likely to change the parliamentary rules for Supreme Court nominees, lowering the threshold to a simple majority. Such action has been called "the nuclear option" because of its probable impact on Senate traditions of bipartisanship.
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WHAT IS THE NUCLEAR OPTION?
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Blast on Russian subway kills 11; 2nd bomb is defused
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (AP) - A bomb blast tore through a subway train deep under Russia's second-largest city Monday, killing 11 people and wounding more than 40 in a chaotic scene that left victims sprawled on a smoky platform. Hours later, anguish and fear rose again when police found and defused a shrapnel-packed explosive device at another St. Petersburg station.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which came while President Vladimir Putin was visiting the city, his hometown. In the past two decades, Russian trains and planes have been frequent targets of terrorism, usually blamed on Islamic militants.
News reports initially said police were searching for two suspects, and Russian state television showed a photo of one suspect wearing what appeared to be a skullcap characteristic of Russia's Muslim regions. However, the Interfax news agency later cited unspecified sources as saying police now suspect the blast was the work of a suicide bomber linked to radical Islamists.
The National Anti-Terrorism Committee said it was looking for the "perpetrators and organizers of the terror attack."
St. Petersburg, a major tourist destination famed for its imperial palaces and lavish art museums, had been spared previous attacks.
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News of Iraq trip with Kushner mid-air poses security risks
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Trump administration's failure to keep senior adviser Jared Kushner's trip to Iraq secret isn't standard practice for top U.S. officials visiting warzones. Such trips are usually kept quiet, with the cooperation of journalists, until the officials arrive in order to ensure maximum security.
A senior administration official told reporters Sunday evening that Kushner - President Donald Trump's son-in-law - was in Iraq, even though he was still en route. For the military and security professionals managing the mission, the public disclosure of the unannounced trip was a security breach. Gen. Joseph Dunford, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, also was on board.
Although the plane landed safely in Baghdad on Monday, the Iraqi capital is hardly a secure location, having suffered countless extremist attacks over the years. The threat is no less acute today as Iraq wages a bitter battle to try to rid the Islamic State from its territory. For trips to the city, the military seeks to avoid public mention of plans ahead of time so extremist groups can't plot attacks.
"It's been longstanding practice to strictly avoid announcing the visits of senior U.S. officials in advance of their travels to warzones," said George Little, a Pentagon and CIA press secretary for Leon Panetta, who managed both departments under President Barack Obama. "The main reason is obvious. You want to avoid giving the enemy any information that could help them to target these delegations, especially in areas where the battle lines aren't clear on the map."
Knowing when and where a senior U.S. military or civilian official might arrive makes attacks easier. Such details could help groups target the plane as it takes off or lands, or use roadside bombs or shoulder-launched rockets to strike dignitaries while they're on the ground.
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The Latest: Commission says no Bill O'Reilly claim received
NEW YORK (AP) - The latest on sexual-harassment allegations at Fox News (all times local):
6:45 p.m.
New York City's Commission on Human Rights says it hasn't gotten a claim calling for an investigation into Fox News host Bill O'Reilly over sexual-harassment allegations from a former guest.
Lisa Bloom is a lawyer for Wendy Walsh, a former regular on "The O'Reilly Factor." She spoke out Monday for the investigation. She says Walsh's appearances on the show stopped after she refused to go to O'Reilly's hotel room after a dinner in Los Angeles in 2013.
A spokesman for the commission says no claim has been filed. Claims have to address activity that happened in New York and must be filed within a year of an alleged infraction.
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Fire chief: 3 dead, 4 hurt when boiler explodes in St. Louis
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) - An explosion launched a van-sized boiler through the roof a St. Louis box company and slammed much of it down onto a laundry business across the street on Monday, killing three people and injuring four others, authorities said.
One person died in the blast about 8 a.m. at the Loy-Lange Box Co. and two others were killed when a large piece of the boiler crashed into the nearby Faultless Healthcare Linen building's office area, Fire Chief Dennis Jenkerson said.
The explosion appears to have been an accident, but investigators were trying to pinpoint what caused the cast iron boiler - estimated to weigh a ton to a ton and a half - to explode, Jenkerson said. The blast occurred in a largely industrial area of south St. Louis.
Two injured victims were in critical condition, and one was undergoing surgery, Jenkerson said. The injured include a linen company worker who was found pinned beneath the boiler, which Jenkerson said was roughly 4 feet in diameter and 10 feet long (1.2 meters in diameter and 3 meters long). The boiler was used to produce steam to power the box company's equipment.
The boiler was still hot when rescuers arrived, the fire chief said, noting that the equipment traveled up to 500 feet (150 meters).
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AP Analysis: Can tough-talking Trump solve North Korea?
TOKYO (AP) - President Donald Trump is suggesting ahead of his meeting later this week with Chinese President Xi Jinping that he can handle Washington's North Korea problem with or without Beijing's help - "totally."
Is the self-proclaimed master of the deal doing what he does best - talking up his game?
Even Trump said going it alone is not his Plan A. While declaring the U.S. is ready to deal with Pyongyang on its own, Trump stressed in an interview with the Financial Times that he'd rather - much rather, actually - have Beijing on board. China, he noted, has the most influence over the North economically and politically.
But can he sway Beijing into doing more of what Washington wants? The big meeting is set to take place at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Thursday and Friday.
Here's a closer look at some of the rhetoric being tossed around, by Trump in the interview released Sunday, and by a top U.S. official:
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Fewer missing but more dead as rivers recede in Colombia
MOCOA, Colombia (AP) - Search teams were still digging and probing into dense piles of mud and debris Monday, refusing to give up the search for survivors of the deadliest floods in the recent history of this Colombian city.
Three days after floodwaters rushed through the city of Mocoa, Colombian authorities say will check any report of movement that could be a sign of life and are not yet ready to concede that it is too late find anyone alive from the list of the more than 200 people missing. Still, time is clearly running out.
"We do not like to create false expectations but where there is a possibility of life we will do everything possible," said Carlos Ivan Marquez, director of Colombia's National Unit of Disaster and Risk Management.
Late Monday, Deputy Interior Minister Guillermo Rivera said the death toll had increased to 273. It is likely to rise further as the rivers recede and more human remains emerge.
Much of Mocoa was strewn with rocks, tree limbs, debris and brown muck after heavy rain caused at least three rivers of six rivers that surround Mocoa to rise up and surge through the city of 40,000 in southern Colombia Friday night and early Saturday as people slept.
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North Carolina, Gonzaga set to settle NCAA title game
GLENDALE, Ariz. (AP) - Two of the top teams coming into March Madness are set to settle the title in the 67th game of the NCAA Tournament.
North Carolina and Gonzaga play Monday night at University of Phoenix Stadium, home of the NFL's Arizona Cardinals. Tipoff is set for about 6:20 p.m. local time, 9:20 p.m. EDT.
The final pits two of the most elite teams in college hoops against one another: both the Tar Heels and the Bulldogs boast top-level coaches, guards and interior players.
Down low, Gonzaga's 7-foot-1, 300-pound Przemek Karnowski faces North Carolina's 6-10, 260-pound Kennedy Meeks. Meeks had a career game in the Final Four against Oregon with 25 points. Gonzaga also has Zach Collins, a 7-foot freshman who could be a one-and-done player.
North Carolina coach Roy Williams is chasing a third title is his fourth championship game. Gonzaga coach Mark Few had never made the Final Four before this season, but has taken the Zags in all 18 years he's led.
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Kushner, Ivanka Trump face ethical land mines ahead
WASHINGTON (AP) - Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, presidential relatives with powerful White House jobs, can help shape America's foreign and domestic policies.
They've also built a business empire worth as much as $740 million that has ties around the world, newly released financial disclosures show.
What happens when their government and private sector worlds collide?
Like other federal employees, the daughter and son-in-law of the president are required to adhere to transparency and ethics rules, and by law they cannot take any action in their government positions that affects their individual financial holdings.
New disclosures of the breadth and tangle of Kushner's financial holdings demonstrate why determining whether either White House adviser is violating the rules is no simple question. If they help the president on tax reform, trade policy or banking regulations, the couple are likely to face a steady stream of ethics challenges and calls for recusal, forcing them to balance their desire to work on those issues against the political impact that negative attention may bring to the president - and themselves.
